The Bull with which Pope Francis proclaimed the Jubilee Year 2025 is dedicated to the theme of hope.[1] Addressed to all people, particularly where life is threatened, the pope recalls the perennial value of this indispensable virtue, important for everyone whatever their circumstances. At the same time it is also a source of uncertainty and suffering, because it is linked to what we cannot manage: “Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring. Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt. Often we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness” (SNC 1).
For the pope the Jubilee is an invitation to renew hope, especially in times of trial. We are to make our own the sentence from St. Paul that gives the document its title, “hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5). The reminder of this fundamental dimension of Christian life is also a message to today’s cultural climate, marked by an ongoing and worrying absence of hope.
An Uncomfortable Virtue
“The faith I prefer, God says, is hope. Faith does not amaze me. It is not astounding. I shine so brightly in my creation. In the sun and moon and stars. In all my creatures […] Charity unfortunately goes without saying. To love one’s neighbor one only needs to let go, one only needs to look at such desolation. […] But hope, says God, that’s what amazes me. Myself. This is amazing. That those poor children see how things are going today and believe that it will be better in the morning. This is amazing and it is the greatest wonder of our grace. And I myself am amazed.”[2] So wrote Charles Péguy on October 22, 1911, in a famous passage from The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue.
In these intimate lines he expresses all the greatness and difficulty of this virtue, so much so that God himself seems to be filled with awe at its existence. Indeed, hope speaks to us of what is not there, but at the same time is intimately present at the heart of every project and activity: it claims its fulfillment, it underlies the possibility of changing things and fighting for what is dear to one’s heart. It does not simply proffer what is lacking, it also gives the strength to face difficulties.[3]
Péguy knew this very well. The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue was composed in one of the most arduous and painful moments of his life. The book was commercially a failure, as was the journal he had founded (Cahiers de la Quinzaine), and a similar fate had also befallen his earlier attempt to run the Bellais bookstore. Even the work dedicated to Joan of Arc – The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, a true masterpiece of the twentieth century – sold only one copy upon its release. However, the problems were not only economic. Péguy was opposed by socialists because of his conversion to Catholicism, and by Catholics because of his decision not to baptize his children, trying to comply with his wife’s wishes. For all that, he was able to speak of hope in such a true and touching way. Having experienced despair, he knew what being deprived of hope meant.
Hope is a difficult virtue because it “has to do with the arduous good” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 23, a. 2), what is not immediately at hand, yet indispensable for a life worth living. It holds within it various “provisions” that are needed to embark on the adventure of living: courage, desire, expectation, patience, above all the confidence that it can be achieved when everything seems to work against it, what St. Paul calls “hope against hope” (Rom 4:18).
For these reasons, Péguy noted, hope is like a little girl (containing a future) who must be accompanied by her two big sisters: faith in the One who alone can offer the good we need, and charity, love, which in some way already foreshadows it and impels us to continue on the right path. Without these two sisters, little hope seems truly unable to proceed. Yet, the moment one takes them into consideration, one notices how this little girl has in her retinue numerous relatives who in turn support the path of the two big sisters. Hope in fact opens up multiple perspectives, based on different and not always mutually harmonizable spheres of knowledge, such as sociology, politics, philosophy, literature, spirituality and psychology. Each of them seems to be more comfortable dealing with one aspect rather than others. This is the case, for example, with aggression, an attitude that is always inimical in the spiritual realm; or trust, which undermines a merely scientific and routine approach to existence. Nevertheless, they are all essential to understanding the distinctive characteristics of hope.
Hope, an orphan child?
Already one can see how hope is a paradoxical virtue, elusive, yet to be taken seriously, difficult to think about, even more so in our time, which has made control and planning its watchwords. This is perhaps why this “child” remains the great orphan in today’s thinking. Even a quick glance at publications in the humanities on the subject turns out to be significant. Not to be found in the dictionaries of psychology, hope does not even figure in the series on major psychological topics in Mind magazine (24 volumes from 2018 to 2020). Nor does it appear among the 50 booklets of Daily Meditations, which came out in the year 2023 in Corriere della Sera, where its “big sisters” (albeit with more secular names, such as trust and love) appeared.
Little hope has unfortunately become the Cinderella not only of involvement in the humanities, but also in Christian culture. Not even theology seems to be much interested in it. If one goes in search of publications on the subject, one is often disappointed. The best-known work, Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, published in 1964 and still considered a classic, originated as a response to Ernst Bloch’s provocative text, The Principle of Hope, an attempt to delineate its possible realization within a humanist perspective. La Civiltà Cattolica seemingly has not devoted much space to it. If one researches the indices of the past 50 years, one finds only four articles, one of which, as was obligatory, was a commentary on Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi.
If it is any consolation, or cause for further concern, the situation does not appear any better in the distant past. Antiquity and the Middle Ages follow a similar pattern. Out of the 122 chapters that make up St. Augustine’s treatise Enchiridion de fide, spe et charitate, only two are devoted to hope, and those are of extreme brevity (114 and 115). Peter Lombard’s Sentences (12th century), a classic text for every theology teacher until the 16th century, reserves only one “distinction” for the topic (cf. In 3 Sent., d. 26).
The exception, as always, is St. Thomas, “the theologian who has been most concerned with hope.”[4] Indeed, he restored its dignity and value even in its psychological aspect. After him, with a few praiseworthy exceptions (Alfaro, Durand, Mendoza-Álvarez, Appel, Theobald), most use the term indirectly, in reference to other issues. This is the case, for example, with Hans Urs von Balthasar’s well-known book, Dare We Hope, devoted to a particular question concerning the real possibility of eternal damnation. An online catalogue of Italian books mentions four titles explicitly dedicated to the theology of hope published in the last five years, none of which, however, treats it from an interdisciplinary perspective, giving reason for its complex dimensions. It seems that hope is a really difficult child to raise, even in the ecclesial setting.
To what might such a situation be due? A few hypotheses can be put forward. One is that Christianity, especially in the West, has mostly become secularized and no longer has anything meaningful to say to us today. This was already noted in her day by a great saint like Teresa of Avila: “The preachers themselves try to compose their speeches in such a way as to displease no one. The intention is certainly good, and it will also be good to do so, but meanwhile the fruits are few. Why do few turn away from public vices because of the sermons they hear? Do you know what I think? Because preachers have too much human prudence, because they do not burn with that great fire of the love of God with which the apostles burned: therefore their flame warms only a little” (Book of My Life, c. 16, 7).
Preaching, too, seems to disdain this theme in order to concentrate on “politically correct” topics: ecology, pollution, material aid, issues that are certainly important but which are already being dealt with, perhaps even more competently and effectively. While dealing with important aspects of common living, the impression remains, noted by Teresa of Avila, of people chasing after consensus at all costs, neglecting the fire of the Spirit and, consequently, the ability to rekindle hope, to speak of eternal life, of bliss, of the relationship with dead loved ones, of the possibility of realizing a justice capable of withstanding the constant denials that ordinary life presents. In other words, of conveying the message of prophecy and that assertion of truth proper to Christianity.
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, speaking at the Rimini Meeting on August 29, 1991, took up, making them his own, the words of Vladimir Soloviev’s The Antichrist : “‘The days will come,’ says Soloviev, and indeed they have already come, we say, ‘that Christianity will be reduced to pure humanitarian action, in the various fields of assistance, solidarity, philanthropy and culture. The Gospel message is thus identified in the commitment to dialogue between peoples and religions, in the pursuit of welfare and progress, in the exhortation to respect nature.’ But if we Christians, for the sake of openness to the world and good neighborliness to all, almost without realizing it, substantially dilute the Gospel in the pursuit of these secondary goals, we then exclude ourselves from a personal connection with the Son of God, crucified and risen, gradually commit the sin of apostasy and find ourselves, in the end, on the side of the Antichrist.”[5] Thus the proper themes of hope, which characterize the Christian focus and which also make life worth living, are missing. If the Church does not speak about it, who will be able to?
This disaffection can also be shown by the loss of meaning of the liturgical season related to hope, Advent. What does it mean to wait? What does one wait for? Someone who has already come and thus renders prophecies useless? How is the meaning of Christian expectation communicated ? The difficulty of talking about, even before living out waiting – and the two are undoubtedly linked – tells how closely the two positions in ordinary life – of those who have given up waiting and those who feel no need for it in their daily difficulties – are very close to each other. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952) renders well the idea of this pointless, empty waiting, a seeming waste of time in regard to something or someone whose reality in the present strains belief.[6]
Does hope keep its promises?
This aspect of “not here, not yet” is perhaps at the root of most objections to hope. In a Chassidic story, a disciple asks the teacher whether the Messiah has not in fact already arrived. The master reads him a passage from the prophet Isaiah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt nor destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”(Isa 11:6-9). Then he peels back the curtain and looks outside. He sees a poor ragged old woman begging for alms, a gentleman walking along in a fine suit, and going further, people being clubbed, others sleeping on the road. He closes the curtain and replies, “No, the Messiah has not yet come. How can the Messiah have come in such a world!”[7] Sergius Quintius is of the same view: “After two thousand years of the gospel it is not difficult to realize that the promises have not been fulfilled, that the meek do not possess the earth, that God has not rendered to his faithful ‘ready justice’.”[8]
Another motivation behind the rejection of hope is that it has not infrequently been misunderstood and pitted against present reality, a kind of “opium for the people,” as Marx put it, to justify disengagement, dull the conscience and the failure to address present misery. Nietzsche, in his usual caustic way, considers hope “the worst of evils, because it prolongs human sufferings” (Human, All Too Human, no. 71).
In this sense, many of the criticisms of the “masters of suspicion” (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) undoubtedly hit the mark, but they misunderstand the authentic meaning of hope. It has nothing to do with illusion or surrender in the face of the harshness of life. In fact, hope, before being a virtue, is an aggressive passion, and it stands or falls with it. Aggression in turn, in order not to yield to evil and injustice, needs hope.[9]
Moltmann stigmatizes this dangerous deformation of Christian hope, which cannot lose its obligation to contest the present: “The hopeful words of promise must be in contradiction to the present empirical reality […]. Therefore eschatology cannot wander in the clouds, but must formulate its statements of hope in contradiction to the present experience of suffering, evil and death […]. He who has this hope can never adapt himself to the ineluctable laws and fatalities of this earth. In the Christian life the priority belongs to faith, but the primacy belongs to hope. Without the knowledge of Christ that one has by faith, hope would become a utopia suspended in the air. But, without hope, faith decays by becoming lukewarm and then dead. Through faith man finds the path of true life, but only hope keeps him there.”[10]
The Assumptions of Hope
Hope finds much resistance to being accepted in today’s cultural context because it refers to what is not within one’s power to manage. As noted, it is essentially connected to faith in God, in the sense of the letter to the Hebrews: faith is a way of possessing what one hopes for, a way of knowing realities that one does not see (cf. Heb 11:1). Consequently, the crisis of the life of faith also brings with it the crisis of hope, with heavy repercussions at the existential level. Its absence highlights even more strongly the necessity of its presence to continue living, because it shows a meaning worth expending effort for: “Faith is a cathedral rooted in the soil of a country. Charity is a hospital that collects all the miseries of the world. But without Hope, all this would be but a cemetery.”[11] It is imperative to restore the authentic meaning of Christian Hope, transmitting its beauty to the men and women of our time is a matter of life and death.
Pope Francis, in the Bull of Proclamation of the Jubilee, invites us to rediscover the inalienable foundation of hope, enshrined in baptism: the entrance into the life that has no end. He mentions an artistic detail that also shows in a visible way its connection with eternal life: “An example would be the tradition of building baptismal fonts in the shape of an octagon, as seen in many ancient baptisteries, like that of Saint John Lateran in Rome. This was intended to symbolize that Baptism is the dawn of the ‘eighth day,’ the day of the resurrection, a day that transcends the normal, weekly passage of time, opening it to the dimension of eternity and to life everlasting: the goal to which we tend on our earthly pilgrimage (cf. Rom 6:22)” (SNC 20). It is the goal where that desire for fullness present in every man and woman that has loved can finally find fulfillment.
Reproduced with permission from La Croix International.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32009/22072446.0125.14
[1]. Francis, “Spes Non Confundit”. Bull of Proclamation of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025. The Bull is referred to in the article as SNC.
[2]. C. Péguy, I misteri, Milan, Jaca Book, 1997, 161; 167; 164.
[3]. Cf. G. Cucci, La speranza. “La forza per affrontare le cose difficili”, Milan, Àncora, 2024.
[4]. C. A. Bernard, Théologie de l’espérance selon saint Thomas d’Aquin, Paris, Vrin, 1961, 7.
[5]. www.comunitasanluigiguanella.it/ammonimento-del-cardinal-biffi-sullanticristo
[6]. See, for example, the following lines: “Estragon: He should be here. Vladimir: He didn’t say for sure he’d come. Estragon: And if he doesn’t come? Vladimir: We’ll come back tomorrow. And then the day after tomorrow. Possibly. And so on. The point is. Until he comes. You’re merciless. We came here yesterday” (S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Act I, 29-30).
[7]. M. Buber, I racconti dei Chassidim, Milan, Garzanti, 1979, 513.
[8]. S. Quinzio, La sconfitta di Dio, Milan, Adelphi, 1992, 37.
[9]. Cf. G. Cucci, La speranza…, op. cit., cap. 1.
[10]. J. Moltmann, Teologia della speranza, Brescia, Queriniana, 1970, 11-14.
[11]. G. Ravasi, “La speranza”, in Avvenire, November 4, 2005.
