Pope
Benedict’s new encyclical:
‘Know God, receive hope’
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — In an encyclical on Christian hope, Pope Benedict
XVI has warned that, without faith in God, humanity lies at the mercy
of ideologies that can lead to “the greatest forms of cruelty
and violations of justice.”
The Pope said the modern age has replaced belief in eternal salvation
with faith in progress and technology, which offer opportunities for
good but also open up “appalling possibilities for evil.”
“Let us put it very simply: Man needs God, otherwise he remains
without hope,” Pope Benedict said in the encyclical, Spe Salvi
(on Christian hope), released Nov. 30.
The 76-page text explores the essential connection between faith and
hope in early Christianity, and addresses what the Pope called a “crisis
of Christian hope” in modern times.
It critiques philosophical rationalism and Marxism, and offers brief
but powerful profiles of Christian saints — ancient and modern
— who embodied hope, even in the face of suffering.
The encyclical also includes a criticism of contemporary Christianity,
saying it has largely limited its attention to individual salvation
instead of the wider world, and thus reduced the “horizon of its
hope.”
“As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: How
can I save myself? We should also ask: What can I do in order that others
may be saved?” the Pope wrote.
It is the Pope’s second encyclical and follows his 2006 meditation
on Christian love. He worked on the text over the summer during his
stay in the Italian mountains and at his villa outside Rome.
The Pope wrote that the essential aspect of Christian hope is trust
in eternal salvation brought by Christ. In contrast with followers of
mythology and pagan gods, early Christians had a future and could trust
that their lives would not end in emptiness, he wrote.
Yet, today the idea of “eternal life” frightens many people
and strikes them as a monotonous or even unbearable existence, the Pope
wrote. It is important, he said, to understand that eternity is “not
an unending succession of days in the calendar, but some
thing more like the supreme moment of satisfaction.”
“It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a
moment in which time — the before and after — no longer
exists,” he wrote. This is how to understand the object of Christian
hope, he said.
The encyclical’s main section examines how the emphasis on reason
and freedom — embodied in the French revolution and the rise of
communism — sought to displace Christian hope. Redemption was
seen as possible through science and political programs, and religious
faith was dismissed as irrelevant and relegated to a private sphere.
While praising Karl Marx for his great analytical skill, the Pope wrote
that Marx made a fundamental error in forgetting that human freedom
always includes “freedom for evil,” which is not neutralized
by social structures.
In the same way, the Pope wrote, those who believe man can be “redeemed”
through science and technological advances are mistaken.
“Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind
more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it
is steered by forces that lie outside it,” he said.
The Pope said that while Christians have a responsibility to work for
justice, the hope of building a perfect world here and now is illusory.
Hopes for this world cannot by themselves sustain one’s faith,
he wrote.
“We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by
day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass
everything else. This great hope can only be God,” he wrote.
The second half of the encyclical discusses how Christian hope can be
learned and practiced — particularly through prayer, acceptance
of suffering and anticipation of divine judgment.
The Pope calls prayer a “school of hope,” and as an example
he holds out the late Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan,
who spent 13 years in prison, nine of them in solitary confinement.
In that “situation of seemingly utter hopelessness,” the
fact that he could still listen and speak to God gave him an increasing
power of hope, the Pope wrote.
He emphasizes that prayer should not be isolating, and should not focus
on superficial objectives. Nor can people pray against others, he said.
“To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own
private corner of happiness,” he wrote.
“When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification
which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well,”
the Pope wrote.
Suffering is part of human existence, and the sufferings of the innocent
appear to be increasing today, the Pope said. He said Christians should
do whatever they can to reduce pain and distress.
Yet suffering cannot be banished from this world, and trying to avoid
anything that might involve hurt can lead to a life of emptiness, he
wrote. Instead, Christians are called to suffer with and for others,
and their capacity to do so depends on their strength of inner hope,
he said.
The Pope wrote that the idea of judgment — specifically the Last
Judgment of the living and the dead — touches strongly on Christian
hope because it promises justice.
“I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential
argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in
eternal life,” he said.
It is impossible for the Christian to believe that the injustices of
history will be the final word, he wrote.
The Last Judgment should not evoke terror, however, but a sense of responsibility,
the Pope said. It is a moment of hope, because it combines God’s
justice and God’s grace — but “grace does not cancel
out justice,” he wrote.
“[Grace] is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that
whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value,”
he said. “Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal
banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing
had happened.”
The Pope said the idea of purgatory as a place of atonement for sins
also has a place in the logic of Christian hope. Heaven is for the “utterly
pure” and hell for those who have destroyed all desire for truth
and love, but “neither case is normal in human life,” he
said.
Thus, the souls of many departed may benefit from prayers, he said.
The Pope begins and ends his encyclical with profiles of two women who
exemplified Christian hope. The closing pages praise Mary for never
losing hope, even in the darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion.
The encyclical opens by describing a similar sense of hope in a 19th-century
African slave, St. Josephine Bakhita, who, after being flogged, sold
and resold, came to discover Christ.
With her conversion, St. Bakhita found the “great hope”
that liberated and redeemed her, the Pope wrote.
The Pope emphasizes that this was different from political liberation
as a slave. Christianity “did not bring a message of social revolution,”
he wrote, but something totally different: an encounter with “a
hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore
transformed life and the world from within.”