In our society and world today there is a great need for true hope. There is a need for the hope that comes from looking at this world through the eyes of faith. This outlook on life realizes that man is fallen but redeemed by a loving God and that because of His love for us we will be able to one day be with Him in His Kingdom.
As we go through life we need to have this outlook of faith. There are many different false hopes in this world. People grasp at whatever they can in order to try to maintain some hope if they don’t have true hope that comes with faith in Jesus Christ. I have heard the slogan “In science lives hope” and all the time I hear people talking saying things like “if only we had this politician or this political policy this would fix our problems.” Another false hope that comes to mind are hopes in making a perfect world through our own industriousness and in our ability to make advancements in technology, medicine, and industry. All of these strive to make the world we live in a better place. However, because man is fallen, because man is limited because man is imperfect we can never hope, in this life, for a utopia, a perfect world. Knowing that this world will never be perfect we look forward to heaven. We place our hope in that one true hope, eternal salvation. We place our hope in the reality that we are beloved sons and daughters of Our Lord who died on the cross out of love for us. Knowing our true hope changes the whole aim and motivation of our lives and we will begin to live in a way that is different from others who seek always to make this world their paradise. We will begin to live this life motivated and driven forward by the love of God and because we are motivated by His love and true hope we ourselves will become lights of God’s hope in this world.
“Let us say once again: 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, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is ‘truly’ life.” Pope Benedict XVI, Spes Salvi
-Fr. Jacquemin
