Hope Alfonso Carrasco Rouco

Hope is a Locus
Fr. Carrasco Rouco comments on the theological foundation for hope, from God’s covenant with Abraham to the fulfillment of the promise in Jesus of Nazareth, in the reality of the Church

by Alfonso Carrasco Rouco*

How big must be my grace, the strength of my grace, for this small hope… to be invincible, immortal, and unquenchable! (C. Péguy)

Who can bear in his heart and testify to the reasons for a hope that does not fear the difficulties of the journey and the contradictions of life, the challenge of the world and of history? How much courage is needed to sustain the hope of men, so that they can embrace every new day as a gift, as a promise of true good?

The promise of the Infinite
True hope exists in the world through the work of God, who makes it arise in the heart of man as a certainty that would otherwise be impossible, a certainty that all of reality, the universe, and history are destined to fulfill the deepest desire of human essence, a desire which, for this reason, will not shrink back, either from life or from death. Hope thus implicates the overcoming of a disproportion that man inevitably perceives, but cannot resolve, such that, on the one hand, he consciously accepts the evidence that he is a tiny part of the universe and history but, at the same time, this fact paradoxically determines his self-awareness, and with this, the desire for totality. The birth of hope, of a positive and concrete tie between one’s own being, one’s own existence, and the destiny of the universe, is the fruit of an intervention of God, who comes to man with a promise of communion and the infinite.

The companionship of God
The first revelation to Abraham already testifies that the relationship God establishes is always personal, with the concrete person, who thus acquires a unique and unimaginable value. The relationship that God established with Abraham made him so precious in His eyes, that in a surprising way it bound his concrete person to the universal horizon: All the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you (Gen 12:3). The relationship is concrete, and proportioned to the person of Abraham: in fact, God does not expect extraordinary actions from him, while, for His own part, the horizon of His promise is limitless. The divine intervention consists in offering Abraham the possibility that his history not belong simply to the set of earthly events, mutable and fleeting, insufficient for affirming the full value of his life, but that his history enter into a true relationship with God, with the promise of a fecundity in the context of the universal horizon and of the destiny of the world. The divine pedagogy offers him from the very beginning a stable companionship, which inscribes his life in the covenant with God. This is the basis for the birth of a real hope, which would not arise on any other foundation, not even if God had provided Abraham the full knowledge of the laws sustaining the world and history. In fact, this knowledge would have heightened, rather than overcome, Abraham’s perception of the disproportion between the littleness of his own being and the greatness of the universe and of God’s plans.

The faith of Israel
Thus, hope is born from the fact that God establishes a relationship precisely with a given person. For this reason, everything hinges on acknowledging God’s initiative, the meaning of which can be understood by man as a gesture of gratuitous love. This is how the people of Israel interpreted it in the course of its history, learning bit by bit to trust the mercy and faithfulness of Yahweh, who related in different ways with His people–at times choosing the route of chastisement–but who would never break His covenant, nor abandon it definitively. This faith and hope enabled Israel to survive in the midst of much more superior cultures and empires, and to avoid the people’s journey ending in its disappearance, in its dissolution in the flow of a history constituted by a multitude of peoples and nations.

The Incarnation, the form of hope
The fullness of hope appeared among men through the manifestation of the full closeness of God in the person of His Son made flesh, Jesus Christ. In Him, the love of God was definitively revealed, the truthfulness of His promises, His faithfulness to man, and the power of his salvific intervention. In fact, Jesus Christ, “dead and resurrected for all, always gives man, through His Spirit, light and strength to respond to his very high vocation”(Gaudium et Spes 10). He wins back man’s dignity and restores hope in a happy destiny to those who had despaired of reaching it (cf. Gaudium et Spes 18:21). “In reality, only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does man’s mystery find light” (Gaudium et Spes 22); here, history takes on meaning and humankind finds its center. In this way, joy and the fullness of the aspirations of the heart are possible, for man knows that, together with Him, he walks toward the fullness of human history, according to the plan of His love (cf. Gaudium et Spes 45). In other words, the definitive form of hope is born in man in the encounter with Jesus Christ, with the Word of God made flesh, which definitively illuminates the essence of man, his dignity and destiny, putting him in relationship with the realization of the divine plan for the universe.

Through a real encounter
For this reason, one can say, in the strict sense of the term, that the root of hope lies in a historic encounter, one between a concrete person and the real presence of Jesus Christ in history. Unless a person encounters the love of He who watches over and cherishes the destiny of the world, his heart will never grasp the certainty that His existence can truly respond to his own needs for dignity, meaning, and fullness. Obviously, and above all, the encounter must be real in order truly to sustain the weight of life. It also must always be an encounter with the gratuitous love of the Lord, for only this gratuitousness makes the greatness of such a gift believable; only this love keeps such a deep bond of one’s own existence from limiting freedom; quae enim per amicos possumus, per nos aliqualiter possumus (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 5, a. 5, ad1). For this reason, in this encounter, the freedom of the person is completely in play. The person is also invited to decide about the birth of his own hope, about his personal adherence to the plan of love of the Lord of the universe.

A comfort for the human heart
With the gift of His Spirit, Christ reveals the profundity of His victory over everything that limits man, over sin and death, over the loss of the relationship with God and with the brothers, over the loss of value and of the meaning of life and of the world. With the gift of His Spirit, Jesus introduces us to the true knowledge of His Person and mission, to true unity with Him, and He constitutes us in “communion of life, love, and truth,” in a “people of God” that may often seem like a little flock, but is “the strongest seed of hope” for all humankind (cf. Lumen Gentium 9). The very fact of the presence of the Church of Christ in the world keeps men from forgetting the Father, so that in some way, the memory of His love remains in the world, communicated through Jesus Christ. The existence of the Church is already in this way a principle of hope for humankind, keeping the horizon of the world from closing in on itself, suffocating the heart of man. The real, personal encounter with the life of the People of God, with the “fraternal communion”(Gaudium et Spes 32) arising from the presence and merciful embrace of Christ, comforts the human heart, urges it to a new life, and evokes a powerful hope, not founded on one’s own strength, but based forever on the unyielding love of the Lord. Thus, the testimony to Christ given by those who have entered into communion with Him is the instrument through which the Spirit continues to raise up in history true hope. In the life of a man, the encounter with the Christian communion–as a real fact that does not just express the limited capacities of the individual or his neighbor, but the initiative of Christ, who unites men in His Body and in His Blood, in the Eucharist–is the principle of salvation that the person experiences as hope. Each grace, each gift and charism of the Spirit are destined for this principal work: leading men to the truth of the love of Jesus Christ and thus kindling in their hearts the light of hope, that it may illuminate the whole house, so each person may walk toward his own destiny. It is not the dark of night, because the light of the world still shines. *Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Theology Faculty at San Damaso, Madrid