Expressing Christian hope.

Two recent events have called public attention to hope--hope being one of the three cardinal virtues--faith and love the other two.

First, US Senator Barack Obama has made hope a theme of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Second, Pope Benedict XVI made hope the subject of his second encyclical (Spe Salvi), released just before Christmas.

It is safe to predict that the Pope's encyclical will be read and pondered long after Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric has been mercifully forgotten.

The Pope begins by reminding us that the greatest Christian evangelist, St. Paul, told the Romans "you are saved by hope" (Romans 8:24). Hope is a gift from God, says Pope Benedict, a trustworthy gift, a gift that enables us to survive through arduous, uncertain times.

Hope is a key word in Scripture--in fact, it is often used interchangeably with faith. So to have hope, or to have faith, is to have received a divine gift. St. Paul reminded the church at Ephesus that before their encounter with Christ they were "without hope," or, as Pope Benedict expresses it "in a dark world facing a dark future." But the light of Christ illuminates the darkness and assures us that we have a future. Oh, true, much of that future remains hidden; "it is not that [Christians] know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness".

To come to know God, says the Pope, is to encounter hope. The earliest Christians--for the most part poor people, uneducated and oppressed-apart from the resurrection had nothing to hope for. Except for this--they had the assurance, often directly from apostles who had been there and seen it, that the tomb that once contained Jesus was empty. That was their hope, and with that hope, they turned the world upside down with a crazy allegiance to this other King, this upside-down King, this Jesus, the carpenter's son from Nazareth.

So the early Christian hope in a risen God was not a "not yet" kind of hope, rather an "already happened" hope. The Pope explains how the Catholic understanding of hope provides "even now something of the reality that we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a "proof" of things that are still not seen."

What is the "present reality" of Christian hope?

Well, God's Church--universal, apostolic, tracing its origin to Christ's words and to its first Primate, Peter. And the Eucharist, by which we come to share in Christ's body and blood. And the peace of Christ, not that peace which the politician on the campaign trail fraudulently offers, but a peace that passes understanding.

In the section of the encyclical entitled "The True Shape of Christian Hope," the Pope draws a distinction between the material and the ethical realms of life. In the material realm, we observe "continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature." But no comparable mastery can or will occur in the ethical realm because "man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew." Therefore, "the moral wellbeing of the world can never be guaranteed;" man's earthly hopes, and his freedoms, remain fragile and conditional.

Hope is God's gift to us at baptism. "Man's great true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God-God who has loved us and who continues to love us "to the end" (John 13:1) until "all is accomplished (John 19:30)."

The Pope concludes by giving examples of schools, or "settings," in which we learn hope; these settings are prayer; suffering, facing judgment; and intimacy with Mary, the Mother of God, whom Pope Benedict calls "our star of hope." He writes: "Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her 'Yes' she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14)."

Catholics have double cause for rejoicing: in our hope as Christians, and in having a Pope who can express our Christian hope with such conviction, eloquence, and humility.

Editor's note: Pope Benedict's Encyclyical Spe salvi is available from your Catholic bookstores (See advertisements in the magazine) or from Dr. Vicki Bennett, Director of Publications, CCCB, 2500 Don Reid Drive, Ottawa, ON K1H 2J2. E-mail: [e-mail] Telephone: [phone] ext. 113.

Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus from the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.