Catholic Exchange

Ultimate Sign of Hope

Written by

Fr. Paul Grankauskas

in

I guess I never really appreciated how much of a gift faith really is until I read something about an atheist who said he would be willing to believe in God only if he could see just one single piece of evidence that there is a God out there who really cares for us.

Faith is the conviction that God has already given us that sign: “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son so that every one who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

That is not a scientific proof to be sure, and would never satisfy an atheist. Nevertheless, it is a truth that has won many a heart and soul seeking peace and truth, and it gives credence to Our Lord’s words: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”

What does “lifted up” mean except that first He would be lifted up on the cross and then lifted up in glory at the resurrection and ascension? For this reason, the cross has always been the sign and symbol of the Christian Faith, the sign of God’s deep love and desire to win back the hearts and souls of sinners.

In his encyclical on hope, Pope Benedict XVI speaks briefly about St. Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese girl who was abducted and sold into slavery. For years she suffered terribly at the hands of brutal masters. The abuses she suffered scarred her body for life but, in the end, could not kill her soul. When she gained her freedom, she joined a religious order in Italy. In her local community, she was known as “our little brown mother” because of her cheerfulness and gentleness.

In the words of the Holy Father, Josphine put her trust in a master who had “accepted the destiny of being flogged and … now 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.’” (“Spe Salvi,” No. 3)

If ever there was evidence that faith, hope and love are truly supernatural gifts, this is it. Here is a soul that had every reason to be bitter and hateful, but it learned to love because it knew it was loved. This conviction did not come simply from reason and science. This was a gift from the very one who created her and formed her in the womb, proclaimed and made known to her through the preaching of the Gospel.

The cross will always be held up before all to see. To some, it may be just another senseless act of violence in a world already full of it. To some, it will always be a scandal or even absurd to think that God suffered on that cross. To some, the cross will, indeed, be judgment because it means sacrifice and death to self. Our Lord said, “The light came into the darkness, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.” As long as there is love for sin, there will be a hatred for the cross that condemns it, a fear to even look upon it, a desire to tear it down.

As St. Paul said, the cross is an absurdity and a stumbling block for many. But, if we, too, were to ask for it, perhaps God would give us the faith to see it — as Josephine Bakhita did — as the ultimate sign of life, hope and the power of God’s redeeming love.

Comments

3 responses to “Ultimate Sign of Hope”

  1. Warren Jewell Avatar
    Warren Jewell

    Every Mass in the great banquet of heaven must have a hymn to hope: in thanksgiving for the hope that got them Home, and they no longer require; and for gracious hope for those still in the journey, who need the prayers of all heaven for support.

    Saint Josephine Bakhita, named for the humbly unassuming, gentle, yet powerful foster father of our Lord, pray for us that we may have joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

  2. Narwen Avatar
    Narwen

    This reminds me of Emile Zola. This famous French novelist and skeptic went to Lourdes with much fanfare, claiming that if he saw so much as a cut finger healed, he would believe. While there, he saw a woman with terminal TB completely, instantly healed . ( I believe that this is one of the miracles of Lourdes that met the Holy See’s tough criteria for certification. Out of the thousands reported, there are less than 100 that have met those criteria. )
    He not only did not ‘believe’ – he promptly went home and wrote a novel in which a woman’s supposed cure at Lourdes turns out to be a temporary relapse, and she dies at the end of the book. When it was pointed out to him that , in the real world, the cured woman went on to live a long, healthy life, he defensively snapped, “It’s my novel – I can make it turn out however I want !”
    Sometimes God can hit one with a 2X4, and one’s skull is so thick one manages to ignore it.

  3. Warren Jewell Avatar
    Warren Jewell

    Though we are in a period in which our narcissism is brazen, narcissism is just another way to note that all sins are ‘all about me’. This is part of the great reasoning God gives for Christocentricity in our faith, in our hope. If Christ comes first for me, as the First Commandment urges me to see, exhorts me to hear, reminds me of love and to love, assures me to hope, etc., as much as commands, then Satan cannot have my ear alone. Christ is forever in the background, with soft words of love. He is very difficult to hear when I fall into sin because I have shoved Him away, not because He leaves me. When ‘it’s all about me’, I choose not to have me, my life, my time, my actions, etc., about Jesus. And, diminishing my faith instead of my sinful ways, I diminish hope, too.

    And, that’s to play it cheap with my very self. I cannot have the highest values that are His graces when I have pushed the Source of grace aside. He still calls out in love to me, but can I hear Him if I listen to myself, and still cannot be rid of Satan in that dastard’s approval of my sins? And, there is nothing about me, about all of humanity, and with Satan, that can replace the graces no longer flowing to me. As Saint Paul notes in Romans chapter 7, sin leads to sin and inexorably to death, as only Jesus Christ with all grace can lead to grace. I am so weak that even not wanting to sin, I will sin to cover my past sins!

    In that, not anyone, even Emile Zola, is any more pathetic than I am. I am sinner, miserable lord of my life, which is ‘all about me’. Only Jesus Christ can make me the Lord’s forever-child. Only in repenting in my sinfulness, praying with the tax collector that “Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13) can the graces of Jesus Christ give me justice of mercy. And only in dying to myself in my humility, down at the end of the banquet table, can my Beloved, my Christ, personally escort me up, exalt me, to sit with Him and our Father.

    And through Christ, and with Him and in Him, I hope as I pray and praise.

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