.. THE ANCHOR-Diocese of Fall River-Thur. Aug. 14, 197 ~
13
KNOW YOUR FAITH A Lived Expression of Faith By MARY MAHER Now that Watergate has waned we can always tune into "Love of Life" to get our daily fare of the problematic. At this writing ,that morning television program, badly named, features one mayoral graft, two-and-onehalf affairs, one alcoholic problem, one young girl afraid of sex, one young man who hates his parents, a prostitute who likes her profession and an old lady saddened by all of the above. It outdoes anything St. Paul cautioned his Corinthians to avoid. It is an inferno without Dante's guiding hand to distinguish the circles. If the program were not interspersed with ads for drain opener, toaster ovens and angler brooms, the normal viewer would surely have a neurotic world view. I wonder why we watch it. Could it be that we like to see problems rolled out and then melodramatioally solved with media magic? Do' we gain hope by watching others resolve their problems? (Who ever heard of an unresolved morning serial. These questions lead us to the nature of hope. Is hope a virtue of cr,isis management, a gift that comes therapeutically in rough, depressed times? Does hope solve
BY MARIE McINTYRE Is it wrong to say "The future is present" and really mean it? Not if you are a Christi.1ln and understand how the risen Christ is our future. It is as simple as that and as profound as that! The . fact that our future is 'present is the basis of our hope. What is hope? It is the motivating force behind the kinds of things we do bec'ause we have faith. It is the power that pushes' us into actions of trust and courage. In all probability, it is the most necessary virtue of our perplexing time when so many statistics point to despair, the opposite of hope, as. being more in keeping with the way things seem to be heading. What good is Christian hope in a world so bent on evil tha t we vote almost half of our budget for making the means of war while we run around crying peace? What kind of Christian hope can operate in a world where thousands are dying of starvation each day while we get fatter and sit in comfortable pews and say that we don't want our spiritual leaders to tell . us about our Chr,istian social responsibilities from the pulpit? What brand of hope surv,ives as we become more leaderless in good-f-or-all"peop'le government, in meeting new needs in the Church, in -local community problems? Somewhere between the extremes of giving up all hope of achievement and of aggressively
The Dynamic of Our Lives
our problems by eliminating the By WILLIAM E. MAY raw, despairing portions of our Every human being who has experience? How do men find ever existed, including Jesus, hope? Let us look at these queshas experienced disappointment, tions. abandonment, and failure in his Hope is a Gift Hope is, no doubt, a gift that life. We make plans for the fucomes when man needs it. Sure- ture, knticipating in our minds ly it comes then because hope the happiness and joy that will is mediated through man and be ours and that we can share when we declare ourselves needy with our famHies·· and friends the Lord acts with our friends when these plans are realized, and loved ones who reach out and then we work as faithfully to us. Gabriel Marcel expressed and diligently as possible to sehope communally as "I hope in cure them. But all too frequently our plans go up in smoke and 'you for us." But hope also comes from tragedy strikes. .the long-range, lived expression A baby is born and we rejoice. of faith. As such it is an ever- But then it dies or is crippled by present treasure which we hold a terrible accident or disease. in our spirit. It is not the same We eagerly. await the arriva'l of as an optimistic disposition. a loved one and then are sum· Some persons who have had to moned to a hospital to find him struggle with their natural bent lying ,in agony or crippled or for pessimism have developed a dead. And most tragically of all, lively sense of hope. Hope is a we put our trust in another and theological virtue which means, learn that he simply wanted to among other things, that it does use us and then cast us aside depend upon man's image of like a heap of garbage. ExperiGod. If God is experienced as . ences of this kind could be mulFather, a man's hope will be tiplied over and over again; they long-range and steady. If one's are the common lot of a'll men. image of God is that of an indif- Each of us can tell his own tale ferent dictator who, skybound of woe. No one can give us a and aloof, descends-if he wil'ls satisfactory explanation of the --to man's distress, chances are suffering and misery, the sensethat such hope out of that image less stupi9ity of the pain we Turn to Page Fourteen bear. Yet despite the sorrows that afflict us we keep on struggling, hoping in the future. Without hope life would be hell. Hope, it can be said, is the dynamic of confronting the problems of life our lives, the source from which with trust in human powers' we can draw the strength to only, there is room for Christian keep on trying, to pick ourselves hope. up and face the future with Hope Transcends Trust courage. Here again, we go to Christ But what is the basis of our for answer. We see in Him a hope? Many people today really trust relationship with His do not have any hope, and many Father even .when, humanly others place their hope in speaking, hope should be aban- "man," that is, in themselyes. doned. What a hope-filled cry Yet we can wonder whether echoed down the .centuries from "man" is a fitting source for the the cross: "Into thy hands I hope that we need. From expericommend my spirit!" ence we know how frequently Jesus teaches us that our hope we have been betrayed by others -His hope-transcends trust in and, even more' paradoxically, the merely human and goes be- how often we have betrayed yond to tha.t power which en- ourselves. compasses the human. What we Pauline Wisdom 'learn from Christ is that our hope is' hope for that which is For the Christian the source humanly unattainable. And that of life-sustaining hope is God. is precisely the lesson so many "Our hope is in the name of the of us are apt to forget. Thus, Lord'!" We beJ.ieve that the one the despair and the giving up. and only God, the absolutely Of course we can't do it alone. sovereign Lord of life, is our Saving ourselves is impossible. friend. The "wisdom" of the Being saved by Jesus is some- Christian that Paul proclaimed thing eise. Through the trans- and that was regarded by the forming power of faith in Him, Greeks of his day as foolishness and through careful planning and -as is still regarded today by decisive action, we can hope for many as foolishness-is a wisgenuine human living. Hope dom "that Scripture calls the means that we are realistically things that no eye has seen and seeking good and aggressively no ear has heard, things beyond going after it, being very con- the mind of man, all that God scious of our need for God's has prepared for those who love heip. 'Him" (Cor. 2:9). We believe Risen Savior that this' loving God is the one The primary message of Chris- of whom it is written: "Does a tianity is the fact that there is woman forget her baby at the hope because of the resurrection breast, or fail to cherish the son of Christ. Everything that of her womb? Yet even if they doesn't make sense, including forget, I will never forget you. Turn to Page Fourteen See, I have branded you in the
Hope
II
-
II
I
".
"OUR HOPE IS IN THE NAME OF THE LORD": Sleeping in a cardboard box in a weed-strewn parking l?t near downtown Indianapolis, an alcoholic seems to be In a hopeless situation. NC Photo palms of my hands" (Is 49:15-16). Emmanuel: God With Us Our hope in the Lord is center on Jesus, the Son of God who became fully and truly one of us. In Jesus God Himself exper·ienced the loneliness and heartache, the treachery and suffering that we experience. Jesus, true God become true man, teaches us how to be men. Because Jesus is our EmanuelGod with us and for us-we can make Paul's words our own: "For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord" (ROll) 8:38-39). Because of Jesus we can have hope. But when we say that we can ·have hope, what do we mean? By hope we do not m~an an easy-going optimism, a belief that "everything is going to work out all right in the end no matter what." The God of the Christians, the only God, is not some kind of Mighty Mouse who will swoop down to save us in the nick of time no matter what. No, the God in Whom we beHeve and in whom we pin our hopes is a God who is indeed always ready to be with' us in our struggle, but He is a God who can be with us only if we let Him. He does not force Himself on uscould a friend do that? We have to let Him come to live in our hearts and to be with us, and we can do this only if we open our hearts to Him and to all our brothers and sisters who are His images. Yes, He made us in His image-He even shared in our humanity so that we could share His divinity.
come to 'strengthen us in our lives can come to us only. if we are ready to be reconciled with Him and with our brothers and sisters. "If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something' against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go: first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matt 5:23-24).
Our hope' is indeed in the Lord. But our hope is va'in if we are unwilling to be reconciled, if we are unwilling to put our trust in our fellow men and in ourselves. We can ·in this sense, put our trust in men, but we do so only because we know that the ultimate source of that trust is the living, loving God who is' so greatly our fr,iend that He became one of us, became a man like us, and thereby gave us the power to trust in man.
SHAWOMET GARDENS 102 Shawomet Avenue Somerset, Mass. Tel. 674-4881 3Yz room Apartment 4Yz room Apartment
Includes heat. hot water, stove, refrigerator and maintenance service.
'PRINTING SINCE 1898
MAILING SINCE 1941
WEB OFFSET SINCE 1967
Hope and Reconciliation This is why hope is linked to reconciliation. The' Lord who is our hope and who wants to
679-5262