Holy Father's encyclical connects faith with hope

Just as Advent began, Pope Benedict XVI issued his second encyclical, “Spe Salvi” — on the Christian virtue of hope. True hope, the Holy Father reminds us, is based on God’s unconditional love found in Jesus Christ, whose birth we prepare to celebrate during the Advent season.

In this encyclical, the Holy Father defines for us a “hopeful” person: “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” The hopeful person looks at the world through the eyes of eternity, not through the fads of the moment. The truly hopeful person knows that the kingdom of God “is not an imaginary hereafter situated in a future that will never arrive; his kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us.”

Hopes and wishes

Hope can mean many things, and often we confuse it with “wish”: I hope the Steelers win; I hope I can get another 3,000 miles out of my tires; I hope I can pass my math test. There is nothing wrong in wishing for such things. But it is important that we understand that these “wishes” can never be a substitute for true Christian hope. Even if those wishes were somehow satisfied — the Steelers win, the tires last and the test is passed — what they accomplish in our lives rarely goes beyond the moment and can never provide a substitute for true hope.

True hope — particularly when we are talking about true Christian hope — means much more. It is not momentary. It is eternal. It is a hope upon which we can build our whole lives, not just a moment in time. It is a hope that we can get excited about.

We long for God and the infinite, for something more than we can ever reach within our days on earth. True Christian hope means trusting that death is not the end — that we were made for God and that our lives are a pilgrimage to God.

Rather than seeing “hope” and “wish” as almost interchangeable, the Holy Father asks us to see “faith” and “hope” as two words better connected. “To come to know God — the true God — means to receive hope,” the Holy Father explains. Christians believe that we have a future. That is our faith. From that faith comes trustworthy hope, as the Holy Father writes, “that life will not end in emptiness.”

If there is one virtue that seems sorely lacking in our world it is most assuredly hope. We have a million wishes, but often very little true hope. Without our hope for the eternal, the past can be a hindrance, the present seem meaningless, the future appear “hopeless.” For those who ground their lives in Christian hope, “the dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who has hope has been granted the gift of a new life.”

Offer up hardships

There is so much in “Spe Salvi,” but let me briefly focus on one little section of the encyclical. The Holy Father talks about the hardships we encounter in our lives. He doesn’t dismiss them with a wave, nor tell us that they matter little in the face of greater trials. In fact, he writes that our daily hardships can build in us that true sense of Christian hope, that ability “to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day.”

The Holy Father then tells us that we should consider “offering up” those minor daily hardships. He acknowledges that in referring to “offering up” he is calling for the revival of a traditional Catholic practice that was once common.

There are many good people today who have been offering up daily hardships for a lifetime. I can certainly remember the religious sisters who were always there to remind us to offer up life’s difficulties. Maybe you can remember those reminders, too. Perhaps over time — and without the sisters to remind us — we forgot this devotional.

Offering up is a way that we can “somehow become part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In this way, even the smallest inconveniences of daily life could acquire meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love,” the Holy Father writes.

Advent is our season to “wait in joyful hope.” The Holy Father’s encyclical is about that joyful hope — which is our faith in God, our faith in eternal life. It is that faith and hope that give us the strength to offer up whatever life can deal us.

Have a prayerful — and hopeful — Advent!