A Talk on “Spe Salvi” the Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI
“Spe Salvi: Saved in Hope”
A Presentation to the Hamilton Council of the Knights of Columbus
On the Pope’s Recent Encyclical”
April 28, 2008
Fr. John C. Garrett
In October 2000, I had the privilege of being in Rome for the canonization of St. Katharine Drexel. There were several persons raised to the Altar of the Saints that day; one of them being St. Josephine Bakhita.
St. Josephine was born in the Sudan, and at the age of 9 she was kidnapped into slavery. As a slave, she was beaten regularly. Throughout her entire life she bore 144 scars left from the many times that she was flogged. Five times she was sold in the slave-markets of Sudan.
In 1882, when she was about 13, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the consul Callisto Legnani, who then took Josephine back with him to Italy. It was then that she came to know a completely different kind of “master,” and I do not mean Mr. Legnani, who did treat her kindly. No, Josephine learned about the “master” above all masters; the living God, who was goodness in person. She came to know that this “master,” the Lord, knew her and loved her. She came to know that this Lord had been flogged like her, and now awaited her at His Father’s right hand.
In fact, she came to more than just know about Jesus; rather she encountered Him through His disciples, His Church. From her encounter with Jesus, Josephine came to have hope. Not just a hope to have a less cruel master, but the great hope. In her own words, “I am definitely loved, and whatever happens to me — I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.”
In 1890 Josephine was baptized, and in 1896 she took vows as a Canossian Sister. In addition to working in the sacristy and as the porter, Sr. Josephine promoted the missions, “the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people” (Spe Salvi #3).
Now you might be wondering what does this story about St. Josephine Bakhita have to do with the topic of tonight’s talk, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, which is translated, Saved in Hope. I started with this personal connection to St. Josephine Bakhita because His Holiness holds her up in his encyclical as an example of true Christian hope.
What is hope? The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes hope as, “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #1817). In developing a deeper understanding of this definition of hope, the Holy Father starts by presenting an analysis demonstrating how throughout much of the Sacred Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, the word “hope” is often used interchangeably with the word “faith.” I will not go through all the examples of this from the New Testament that the Holy Father uses to show this — you will have to read the encyclical for that — rather I just want to emphasize the importance of this point. For many people in our world the word “hope” is equated with the idea of a wish for a better future, but largely cut off from any connection to the present reality of their lives. The Christian concept of hope is much different. While certainly looking towards the future, it is not focused on just the “not yet.” Certainly the Kingdom of Heaven will not come to completion until the end of time, as Christians we are called to start building up the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. Our faith in Jesus Christ draws the future into the present, so that the present is actually changed. Life itself is given a new basis. If we really have hope, we live our lives differently. As the Holy Father says in the encyclical, “Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well” (Spe Salvi #2).
What is Christian hope? It is to come to know God, the true God. St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians says that before they encounter Christ Jesus, through his preaching, they were without hope because they were without God in the world. Christianity is not a message calling for some kind of social revolution. Rather Christianity is an encounter with the Lord of Lords, the living God, or the Master above all the other “masters” as St. Josephine Bakhita discovered.
A point emphasized by the Pope is that our encounter with Christ is both informative and performative. By this His Holiness means that it is not sufficient to know a lot of facts about the Church. It does not matter if one has memorized a bunch of the doctrines of the Church. What is essential — that is pertaining to the core or heart of the matter — is the encounter that changes how we now live our lives. It is not necessarily a changing in “what we are doing” but a change in “how and with what attitude we are doing it.” As Christians, that is as a person who has encountered the Risen Christ and has formed a relationship with Him, we live as pilgrims: living in the here and now, the particular circumstances of our lives, while always remembering that our true homeland is heaven.
Why is this encounter with Christ Jesus so profound? The Holy Father uses two images found on ancient Christian tombs to explain this. The first image is that of the philosopher, represented on the tombs as Jesus holding a staff and a scroll. When we think of an image of a philosopher today, we probably think of the stereotypical “absent-minded professor” who seems to be lost in the world of ideas and out of touch with the practical reality of normal life. This is not the idea of the philosopher in the ancient world. The philosopher was someone who taught the essential art, the art of living and dying, the art of being authentically human. The philosopher was seen as a person who really knew what life was all about. The early Christians clearly saw Jesus as someone who really knew what life was all about, and took seriously His promise, “I have come that you might have life, life to the full.”
The other image from the ancient Christian tombs is one one more familiar to us; Christ as a Shepherd. The image of the shepherd recalls for us the dream of a tranquil and simple life. In the words of the Holy Father, “The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has 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 realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his ‘rod and 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” (Spe Salvi #6).
The Holy Father asks each of us a fundamental question: Is the Christian faith for us today a life-changing and life-sustaining hope? Does it change the shape of our lives?
The Pope then uses the example of the Baptismal Rite as means for exploring this issue. In the Rite of Baptism, the priest or deacon should meet the child to be baptized with their parents at the door of the church. Then, after asking the name given to the child, the priest asks, “What do you ask of God’s Church for this child?” One of the responses that the parents can give is “Faith”, and then the priest asks, “What does faith give you?” and the parents respond “Eternal life.” This is what baptism is really all about. It is not just an act of socialization within the community. It is about receiving the gift of Faith, which is oriented towards Eternal life.
Perhaps the reason so many people seem to reject the Faith today is because they are not attracted to the prospect of eternal life. The Pope points out that this is due to confusing eternal life with living this life forever. What we call “life” in everyday language is not real “life.” Ultimately we do not know what the reality of the blessed life is really like, but there is a knowing in our not knowing. We know that this blessed life exists because we desire it. “We do not know what we would really like; we do not know this ‘true life’, and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven” (Spe Salvi #11). We want a true life, untouched by death. This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us. It can cause despair if in our pride we are not patient with our not knowing. The Holy Father describes eternal life as “To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality” (Spe Salvi #12).
The Holy Father then turns to an analysis of the modern world’s critique and deformation of Christian hope. The most common critique of the Christian concept of hope is that it involves an abandoning of the world to its misery, in order to take refuge in a private form of salvation. Christian hope is portrayed as being individualistic. Nothing can be further from the truth. Sin was understood by the early Church Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race. They understood redemption and salvation as the re-establishment of the unity. In fact the word “community” comes from the Latin “com” which means “with” and “unitas” which means “oneness.” Thus the redemption and salvation that Jesus won for us begins to take shape in the world through the community of believers, which we call the Church.
It is rather interesting that this critique that the modern world makes of Christian hope — that it is individualistic — really stems from its own deformation of Christian hope. The basis of the modern age is the correlation of experiment and method to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws. Everyone can see that Man’s dominion over the world has become disorder (as Christians we would say it is because of the Fall), and up until the modern age it was expected that what was lost by the Fall would be recovered (redeemed) by faith in Jesus Christ. However, with the modern age came the idea that redemption/recovery of the lost unity and dominion will only come through scientific discovery that is put into practice (what we might call a short definition of “technology”). In doing this, religious faith is not denied explicitly, rather it is just made a purely private matter that is irrelevant for the world. Hope becomes “faith in progress.” Just consider the example of all the “promises” made on behalf of embryonic stem cell research — if only the religious fanatics would stop bringing their religious faith into the public square we are promised we will have cures for all the worse diseases in the world. They rather not be bothered by the “inconvenient truth” that other, more ethical means that respect the dignity of the human person are available, and have already demonstrated to be more useful than stem cells from embryos.
This “progress” which we are now expected to put our faith in is the growing dominion of “scientific” reason. Progress is the overcoming of all forms of dependency so that we can achieve “perfect” freedom. Both “freedom” and “reason” are seen by the modern world as being in conflict with religious faith. This “faith in progress” develops not just in natural science but in political “science” that calls for new structures of society that will lead to freedom; i.e. communism.
Pope Benedict asks what does this progress really mean? Certainly scientific and technological progress offers new possibilities for good, but they also offer possibilities for evil; e.g., nuclear weapons, the “Final Solution” that attempted to rid the world of those races that were “scientifically” seen as inferior. Clearly these scientific and technological developments need to be checked with ethical development. Moral growth is also needed. We need a criterion of measurement in order to tell good from evil, and when we look at every human criteria all are found lacking. Something infinitely Good, True, and Beautiful is needed. We discover that Man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope for discovering the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Faith and reason are not in conflict with each other, rather they need each other in order for each to fulfill their mission.
Incremental progress is only possible in the material sphere. While we can build on the moral treasury of the past, moral decision making is always new and free. Science can help, but it cannot redeem Man. Man is redeemed by Love, which implies a relationship, and unconditional Love provides true certainty in life. An honest looking at our relationships with other people shows us that they cannot provide this unconditional love we need for certainty. No matter how hard people try, we human beings are all finite. Hope can only be founded on our relationship with He who is Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself. Hope is our relationship with He who is the source of life; God, who embraces the totality of Reality. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
Finally the Holy Father discusses several settings for learning and practicing hope. Unsurprisingly, the first setting is prayer. St. Augustine once said that “prayer is the exercise of desire.” Man was created for God, however our hearts are too small for the greatness to which they are destined. God stretches our hearts. God always listens to us even when others do not. Prayer is not a stepping out of history into a private happiness. Rather it must be incarnate, it must be rooted in our time and place. While prayer is personal, an encounter with God, yet it is guided by the public, liturgical prayer of the whole Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ.
Another setting for learning about and practicing hope is action and suffering. While we cannot “build” the kingdom of God by our own efforts, we can receive the grace of God’s Kingdom. We must open ourselves to allow God to enter us. We must open ourselves to truth, love, beauty and goodness so that we will do God’s will. While we should do what we can to banish suffering, we must have the humility to recognize that it is not within our power to completely banish suffering. By accepting our finiteness we open ourselves to God’s infiniteness. “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer…. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society” (Spe Salvi #38).
Allow me to end with the invocation that the Holy Father ends the encyclical, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way!” (Spe Salvi #50).
