HOPE2025 – Hope and our redemption

In 2007 the then Pope Benedict XVI issued a letter called Spe Salvi, the first two words of the full title: in hope we are saved. The document focusses on Christian hope and what it does for the Christian life and the blessings it offers the world.  What follows below are my ruminations on that letter.   

Introduction:

Paul clearly set out for us the role of hope in the life of the Christian when he taught:  in hope, we were saved.  According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given.  It is an unearned gift. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can live the present in confidence, without fear.   We know our sins have been forgiven and can live in Christ.

 The present, even if it is dark and overwhelming, can be overcome if it leads towards a goal if there is something beyond the immediate darkness.  It is “the goal” that keeps our eyes pointed in the right direction that makes the struggles worthwhile. If we can be sure of the goal, if we trust the reliability of that offered goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey, then nothing can overwhelm us.  This is the gift Hope offers to all who come to Christ. 

What kind of hope can justify saying that we are redeemed because we hope? What certainty does this imply?

Faith is Hope -they are indivisible

The appropriate starting point in our reflections on hope is of course the Bible.   “Hope”, we find there is a significant word in Biblical faith (used 169 times in the Bible and 58 times in the New Testament —so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus, we find the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter encourages Christians to be always ready to confess that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, “hope” he says, is equivalent to “faith”.  This is because hope is faith lived out, faith in action.  We believe and we build our lives around the content of those beliefs.

Only the Risen and Reigning Christ can guarantee hope

We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped through them having received the gift of trustworthy hope.  They knew Jesus was Lord; they knew that he had Risen and now Reigns, and it was their faith in this Truth as a reality, that enabled them to live the Gospel, to witness to the Kingdom and to bring souls to Christ.  

Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). He knew they had their own gods, and he also knew they had a religion, but their gods had proved to be unreliable, and no hope emerged from their often-contradictory myths.

Even though they had their gods, they were without the only True God and so they frequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. They had no confidence their gods would be there for them in their time of need. This is why Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). This was an early distinguishing mark of Christians:  they were sure they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaited them, but they knew in general terms that their life would not end in emptiness. It is only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it then becomes possible to live in the present as well.

We can now say: that Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of something that was previously unknown. In our theological language we would say: that the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”.

That means: the Gospel not only communicates things that can be known—the Gospel makes those things happen and is therefore life-changing.

In the language of the early spiritual writers of the Church, the dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. We are no longer left in uncertainty. We know what lies in store for us beyond the door, beyond the grave.

This is why it is Good News: The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

The Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. 

Faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early Church

If faith and hope does not transform the way we live in the world, then it is not Christian faith and Christian hope. Those two things together must be informative and performative.  We need to discern the ways in which hope and faith impact our lives by assisting us in understanding that we are redeemed.  The logic itself is clear enough: Hope exists because we are redeemed, and knowing we are redeemed in Christ is the wellspring of hope.

In answering that question, we need to once more go back to the early Church.  Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus; he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within.

What was new here can be seen in Saint Paul's Letter to Philemon, the shortest letter in the New Testament.  This is a very personal letter, one written by Paul from prison and entrusted to the runaway slave Onesimus for his master, Philemon. It might seem odd to us today to read of Paul sending the slave back to the master from whom he had fled; not ordering but asking:

“I appeal to you for my child … whose father I have become in my imprisonment … I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart … perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother …” (Philem 10-16).

 Onesimus was one of the thousands of slaves who existed in the Roman Empire under a system where relationships were those of master and slave.   Paul was using this secular model as a way of understanding the relationship of Christians to their Master, Jesus Christ.  All shared the one Master, whatever of their standing in the wider world. They were all of the one household under that master. This is why those early followers of Christ could genuinely address each other as brother and sister. By virtue of their Baptism, they had been reborn, they had been enlivened by the same Spirit and received the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if the external structures of the oppressive regime remained unaltered, they changed society from within.

Our homeland is not here on earth

When the Letter to the Hebrews says that Christians here on earth do not have a permanent homeland but seek one which lies in the future (cf. Heb 11:13-16; Phil 3:20), this does not mean for one moment that they live only for the future: the present society is recognised by Christians as an exile. They belong to a new society, and it is the growing and spreading of that society which gives meaning and purpose to the pilgrimage they share.

We need to go back to the Bible again, this time the First Letter to the Corinthians (1:18-31) where Paul reveals that many of the early Christians belonged to the lower social strata, and precisely for this reason were open to the experience of new hope.  Yet from the beginning, there were also conversions in the aristocratic and cultured circles, since they too were living “without hope and without God in the world”.

The reality was that the pagan religions were losing their allure, and the legends of the ancient myths that had helped shape the Empire had lost their credibility.  The Roman State religion had become so rigid that it was little more than simple ceremony scrupulously carried out and a rubber stamp to whatever the divine emperor wanted.  It was by this stage, little more than a “political religion”.

The Divine was seen to be woven into the cosmos in various ways but what it did not have was a personal God to whom one could pray.  Paul sheds light on the essential problem of the religion of that time quite accurately when he contrasts life “according to Christ” with life under the dominion of the “elemental spirits of the universe” (Col 2:8).

 There is a well-known text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen that sheds some light on this. He says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ.

That is quite a revolutionary vision, one that challenged the worldview of his time.  It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind.  It is a personal God who governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, and love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the unalterable power of the material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free.  Free while we live in Christ.

In ancient times, honest inquiring Christian minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love.

History provides us with some clues

The sarcophagi of the early Christian era illustrate this concept visually—in the context of death, in the face of which the question concerning life's meaning becomes unavoidable. The figure of Christ is interpreted on ancient sarcophagi principally by two images: the philosopher and the shepherd. Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human—the art of living and dying.

To be sure, it had long since been realised that many of the people who went around pretending to be philosophers, teachers of life, were just charlatans who made money through their words while having nothing to say about real life. More, then, the true philosopher who really did know how to point out the path of life was highly sought after.

Towards the end of the third century, there is a different sarcophagus, this time of a child in Rome.  Here we find for the first time, in the context of the resurrection of Lazarus, the figure of Christ as the true philosopher, holding the Gospel in one hand and the philosopher's travelling staff in the other. With his staff, he conquers death; the Gospel brings the truth that itinerant philosophers had searched for in vain., for which the people yearned.  In this image, which then became a common feature of sarcophagus art for a long time, we see clearly what both educated and simple people found in Christ: he tells us who humans truly are and what we must do to be truly human. He shows us the way, and this way is the Truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. We should not underestimate the power of this short statement.  He is the very life for which we yearn.  It is not just his message that is life.  He himself is life. 

Only Christ offers a pathway through death

 Jesus also shows us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life. The same thing becomes visible in the image of the shepherd. As in the representation of the philosopher, so too through the figure of the shepherd, the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art.

There the shepherd was generally seen as living the ideal life, one of tranquillity and simplicity.  For people living in the confusion and meaninglessness of the cities, the life of the shepherd offered a much better alternative.  A virtual nirvana.   Now the image was read as part of a new scenario which gave it a deeper content: “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want ... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ...” (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4).

The true shepherd is one who knows even that pathway to the grave, one that passes through the valley of death and comes out the other side.  The Shepherd is the one who walks with me even on that final path we all must walk alone with no one to accompany us.  But he himself (Jesus) has already walked that path.  He has descended into the kingdom of death, but it could not hold him fast.  He conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realisation that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his “rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers, a hope for which the world around them yearned. It was God’s great gift to the world.

The eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) offers us something of a definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope… Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Ever since the Reformation there have been disputes among exegetes over the central word of this phrase, but today a way towards a common interpretation seems to be opening once more.  It takes a bit of prayer and reflection to come to a clear understanding of what the Church means by its interpretation of this verse, but we must undertake that task of reflection.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

 the conviction of things not seen.

Because of the complex history that is attached to this word, it will be useful to leave it untranslated. The sentence therefore reads as follows: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen”.

Some philosophy first:  In philosophy, "habitus" refers to a system of embodied, unconscious dispositions, or learned ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, that shape an individual's behaviour and understanding of the world within a specific social context. 

For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia, in English, substance. 

The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads — faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the popular philosophies of his time, explains it as follows: Faith is a habitus, that is, a disposition of the Spirit who is alive within us, an inner space in which the gift of eternal life takes root.  We believe.  We are different.  From this unseen, immeasurable habitus, hope grows as a certainty.   The things for which we hope are already transforming who we are and how we live.  We are already living something of the eternal hope that will be ours beyond the grave. 

And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence.  A self-examination will make this clear. 

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come, realities that are still totally absent: it truly does something to us. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”.  That “now but not yet” is the essence of a genuine Hope.

 The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into our lives today.

Bishop Michael Hough                                              March 2025