Ratzinger on hope

The following passages are taken from Pope Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991). They may be a hint of what we can expect to find on the morrow.

“I think one can only understand the true nature of Christian hope and can only live it afresh if one sees through for what they are its imitations and distortions [ideological optimism] that are trying to foist themselves on to it. The greatness and the reasonableness of Christian hope come to light again only if we liberate ourselves from the pinchbeck allure of their secular imitations” (p. 44).

“The goal of Christian hope is the kingdom of God, that is the union of the world and man with God through an act of divine power and love” (p. 46).

“[T]he justification of Christian hope is the incarnation of God’s word and love in Jesus Christ” (p. 47).

“The aim of Christian hope, by contrast, is a gift, the gift of love, which is given us beyond all our activity: to vouch for the fact that this thing that we cannot control or compel and that is yet the most important thing of all for human beings does exist, and that we are not clutching at thin air in waiting insatiably for it, we have the interventions of God’s love in history, most powerfully in the figure of Jesus Christ in whom God’s love encounters us in person” (p. 47).

“The hope of faith, on the other hand, reveals to us the true future beyond death, and it is only in this way that the real instances of progress that do exist become a future for us, for me, for every individual” (p. 49).

“Jeremiah the pessimist showed himself to be the true bearer of hope. For the others everything had necessarily to have come to an end with this defeat: for him everything at this moment was beginning anew. God is never defeated, and his promises do not collapse in human defeats: indeed, they become greater, as love grows to the extent that the beloved has need of it” (p. 51-52).

“The theory put forward by many scholars that all great prophets have been prophets of doom is false. But it is correct that their genuinely theological hope did not coincide with superficial optimism and that, as bearers of true hope, these great figures were at the same time relentless critics of current parodies of hope” (p. 52-53).

“The sermon on the mount is a word of hope. In fellowship with Jesus what is impossible becomes possible: the camel goes through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:25). In being one with him we become capable too of fellowship with God and thus of conclusive salvation. To the extent that we belong to Jesus his qualities are realized in us too – the beatitudes, the perfection of the Father” (p. 63-64).

“To hope is to fly, said Bonaventure: hope demands of us a radical commitment…. The supernatural, the great promise, does not push nature to one side. Quite the contrary: it calls forth the commitment of all our energies for the complete opening up of our being, for the unfolding of all its possibilities” (p. 65).

“The concluding formula of liturgical prayers, ‘through Christ our Lord,’ corresponds to the fact that Christ is realized hope, the anchor of our hoping” (p. 66).

“Those who despair do not pray any more because they no longer hope: those who are sure of themselves and their own power do not pray because they rely only on themselves. Those who pray hope in a goodness and in a power that transcend their own capabilities. Prayer is hope in execution” (p. 66-67).

“Learning to pray is learning to hope and thus learning to love” (p. 68).

“Hope is … the certainty that I shall receive that great love that is indestructible and that I am already loved with this love here and now” (p. 70).

“Christian tradition is aware of two attitudes that are fundamentally opposed to hope: despair and presumption” (p. 70).