Those who care about the global issues and crises with which Jesuit Missions engages have at present few obvious grounds for optimism.
Geopolitics seems dominated by the lust for power, not by the search for justice, and we remain conscious of victims — Palestinians, Ukrainians, climate refugees, and a multitude of others.
Optimism, though, is primarily an opinion — that the future will, in some relevant way, be better for us and for those we care for. Optimism can imbue our lives with a certain buoyancy, but is mood-dependent, easily punctured, readily redirected to other desirable outcomes.
Pope Francis’s Jubilee Year message calls us to the far deeper challenge of hope. Hope is a quality of spirit: both a virtue (that is, a strength) and a foundational gift of God’s Spirit. It enables not passing desires but faithful and persevering commitment.
Francis insists that ‘Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love’. Hope does not expect instant resolutions.
Rather it entails patience, and a keen awareness of human goodness and dedication. ‘Patient hope’ knows that the future is not merely the logical consequence of our present acts and policies.
It comes to us from God, and God’s future has a double dimension. We hope: that the ‘kingdom of God’ will fulfil all desires and ‘wipe away every tear’; and that the earthly future, which must always fall precariously short of that finality, nevertheless anticipates it — and serves it.
The Lord teaches us pray that God’s divine saving will is done on earth as in heaven (since there is no need to pray that God’s will be done in heaven!). Our prayerful hope is that God’s will can be done through us and in us, as we and others open our hearts to the gifts of the God who can do more than we can ask or imagine.
Meditate on the deepest and hope-filled belief of St Paul, anything but facile after suffering far more than most in his dramatic life.
“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).
And dwell on the simple but heartfelt appeal of the Psalmist (Ps 32/33: 22)
‘May your love be upon us, Lord, as we place all our hope in you’.