This month, Pope Francis has published his autobiography Hope, complementing the theme of this 2025 Jubilee ‘Pilgrims of Hope.’ According to Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe, and the Jubilee 2025 designate of the Irish Bishops’ Conference:
“This much-anticipated personal reflection will be a great resource for us all to glean some wisdom from Francis on his understanding of the great virtue of Hope. Hope is the second of the three theological virtues, the others being faith and love. The Holy Father’s book contains a series of excerpts from his homilies and speeches on the theme of hope. He situates the need for hope in the challenging world in which we live, with so much conflict, darkness and sadness the antithesis to hope, a world of what he calls ‘gloomy discouragement and ill-concealed cynicism’.
“The Pontiff writes that hope is both a gift from God and a task that must be cultivated by all Christians. The new publication collects excerpts from his various speeches on the topical theological virtue, a favourite theme of his. Hope he tells us is both a gift and task for every Christian. It is more than what the secular world might wish for, an ideal or a sense of optimism, for example, hoping for fine weather or success in passing an exam. It is very real, concrete and present to us because it has been infused into our soul gifting us the pathway to eternal salvation. He says, “To hope, then, is to welcome this gift that God offers us every day. To hope is to savour the wonder of being loved, sought, desired by a God who has not shut Himself away in His impenetrable heavens but has made Himself flesh and blood, history and days, to share our lot.’ He uses the phrase of the theologian Johann-Baptist Metz that hope demands seeing a ‘mysticism with open eyes… knowing how to discern, everywhere, evidence of hope, the breaking through of the possible into the impossible, of grace where it would seem that sin has eroded all trust.’ Echoes of the remark of Karl Rahner before the turn of the millennium that the modern believer would either be a mystic or nothing at all!”
Bishop Monahan concluded, “As with all his writings, Pope Francis suggests something very doable and practical to put flesh on what he is talking about, the virtue of hope. He encourages everyone at the end of the night, similar to the Ignatian practice of ‘Examen’ to reflect at the end of each day, to see where the evidence of hope has been during the day just past and how I might have contributed or not to that. ‘Let us train ourselves’ … he says ‘to recognise hope. We will then be able to marvel at how much good exists in the world. And our hearts will light up with hope. We will then be able to be beacons of the future for those around us.’
With great anticipation and joyful hope I look forward to this useful and edifying resource which is aptly entitled Hope Is A Light In The Night.
ENDS
Source: Intercom Magazine
