SPE SALVI FACTI SUMUS – “IN HOPE WE WERE SAVED”

 

SPE SALVI FACTI SUMUS – “IN HOPE WE WERE SAVED”

(Romans 8:25)

Hope must have a sure foundation if it is to give meaning and consolation to our lives.  It cannot be based on whimsical desires or unachievable goals.  It cannot be based on a person since human beings are fickle, prone to self-deception, and mortal.  The hope that will sustain and save us is faith in the living God, who is All-Just, All-Merciful, All-Powerful, and All-Good.  We cannot achieve peace and happiness by placing our hope anywhere else.

Saint Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans: “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we await for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.  Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it in patience” (8:23-25). 

The ultimate hope of the Christian will be realized in heaven but it sustains us in our life on earth.  Pope Benedict XVI explains the mystery in his encyclical titled Spe Salvi: “Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet’.  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 those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.”  This hope has sustained the Saints in every age of the Church.  Pope Benedict highlights the example of Saint Josephine Bakita.  She was kidnapped at the age of nine and sold into slavery.  She had several different masters who were always cruel, until finally she was sold to the Italian counsel.  He was kind to her and when he had to flee Sudan because of war he took her to Italy with him.  Pope Benedict writes:    

Now she heard that there was a “Paron” [“owner” or “landlord” in the Venetian dialect] who was above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person.  She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her.  She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron” before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants.  She was known and loved and she was awaited.  What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her ‘at the Father's right hand’.  Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God.  She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God…On 9 January 1890 she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters.

“Hope is 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” (Catechism #1817).  Every human being hopes to be happy.  The desire for happiness gives rise to hope in God when we hear his Word.  Therefore, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:23-25).  Our hope is in the Day of the Lord when death and sorrow will be vanquished.  Such hope, sustained by the Holy Spirit and strengthened in the communion of the Church, cannot be overcome.  It shines light into every dark place.