Let us go forward in hope

In a world wracked with so many problems of terrorism, war, financial collapse and disasters of various kinds, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the papal preacher, encourages us to look to eternal values for peace and courage to face the future whatever it might bring.

The conclusion of the Apostolic Letter of the Pope with its motto "Put out into deep water" reads: "Let us go forward in hope! A new millennium is opening before the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ. The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today: we need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become the instruments of his work".

I wonder if the Pope would have written these same words if he was writing his letter at the end, instead of the beginning, of the year 2001. Didn't the very first year of the new millennium destroy every hope for a better future? Do we still have "reasons for hope" after what happened on 11th September and afterwards?

Do we still have reasons for hope after September 11th?

After the events of 11th September, people were all of one mind in the conviction that "Nothing will ever be the same again". The end of the cold war left us believing that the world, as we now assumed it to be, would last indefinitely. Without warning, this assumption vanished into thin air, and all the old problems, including even the traditional ideas of war and peace, came back into discussion.

What will those who believe in Christ do, what will the Church do, in circumstances like this? The church cannot simply unite her voice with what Psalm 31:20 calls "the strife of tongues". She needs to be able to speak a word that, like the words of Jesus on the events of his day, will carry the resonance of truth and of eternity.

Many centuries ago, the Church found herself in a situation that in many respects matches the present one. On August 28th in the year 410, the hordes of Alaric, king of the Goths, stormed the city of Rome, put it to the sword and burned it down. In the world of that time Rome was all that New York is today, and something more besides. It was not only the capital of culture and commerce, but also the centre of a world political power. The emotional impact, even on Christians, was enormous. Many had believed that the Roman Empire had been the power that was restraining "the mystery of lawlessness" until the time had come for it to be revealed (See Thessalonians 2,6-8). If that was so, it is easy to see how readily they would have come to believe , confronted with the sack of Rome, that the end of the world had come. The world was shaken to its very foundations.

Pagans of the time had their own explanation for the events. The catastrophe was clearly the result of having abandoned the traditional religion and the gods of Rome, and the fault clearly lay with the Christians. The Christians, from the time of Constantine, had been saying that the freedom given to the Christian religion had proved a greater support and protection to the Empire than the pagan gods had ever been.

For in fact it is not so much in God that they believer as in something they have looked upon only as a means to enable them to enjoy undisturbed the goods and pleasures of this world

In this sad state of affairs, everyone was looking for an answer. And Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, did have the answer: If so many Christians find themselves demoralised by the new situation and begin to murmur against God, saying that he should not have allowed such a thing to happen, it is because they have not yet grasped the real meaning of their faith. For in fact it is not so much in God that they believe as in something they have looked upon only as a means to enable them to enjoy undisturbed the goods and pleasures of this world. The moment some material disaster overtakes them, they cry out against him. God cannot be reduced simply to a guarantor of earthly wellbeing, a wellbeing which was not for everyone but only for a select group of people.

Augustine, in his great work, "The City of God" writes: "God," they say "ought not in cases like this to allow the good and the bad to suffer the same fate." I reply, "God's patience invites the bad to look again at what they do, just as the scourge which God allows, teaches the good to be patient…"

Evil exists, either so that it may be put right, or so that good may exercise patience. "For though patience will not be needed in eternity, eternity is nevertheless the prize to which patience leads." Eternity is the key word. Augustine's aim was to help believers see everything in the light or in the perspective of eternity.

Eternity is the key word. Augustine's aim was to help believers see everything n the light of the perspective of eternity

What is there, then, in circumstances like these, that the good suffer that cannot turn to their advantage? The loss of wealth or of security? But is it not an even greater evil to be attached to these things to the point of forgetting how transient they are? Has disaster ever been able to deprive Christians of their faith or their devotion or of a clear conscience?

Towards the end of his book Augustine returns once more to this argument. It is as though he wants to make quite certain that his view in this matter will not be misinterpreted or in any way watered down. Faith, he says, and nothing whatever but faith, is the power that alone will triumph in the face of no matter what enigma life may bring.

As with certain paintings, we need to find the right point from which to view them as a whole if we want to discover the sense of them. The point from which o view our situation is the one that Qoheleth shows us: God's final judgement. Though he too knew what it was to be scandalised by the apparent disorder of the world he says, "Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. And I said to myself, God will judge the righteous and the wicken, for he has appointed a time for every matter and for every work (Eccesiastes 3 :16-17)

As you move about the piazza of St Peter's Basilica, the colonnades seem like a forest of stone pillars in no particular order. Find the point marked on the pavement by a brownish round stone (there is one on each side). Stand on that stone and suddenly the view is completely changed; the columns on that side line up in perfect symmetry as though by magic and the four rows become one. Faith is the marker-stone to stand on if we want to judge the events of our history.

We cannot see into God's secret plans in our history. We need only to know that what really counts, deep down, is not the difference between what we call happiness and unhappiness in this world, but what will make the difference in eternity. It is not important that God's justice, here below, often remains incomprehensible to us. For those who believe in Christ, the fact that God is just and in his justice determines all things is sure and certain and up to now has always been so, and that ought to be enough.

God permits evil and draws good from it

There is something else that we know with certainty: God permits evil in this world because he knows how he is able to draw good from it. "We know that in everything God works for the good with those who love him"(Romans 8:28), even in seemingly irreparable calamities, even sin, as Augustine had the courage to add.

The Bible itself gives us another grand example: the destruction of Jerusalem by Nabuchadnezzar in 587. It is interesting to note what the prophets of Israel did in the circumstances. They did not launch out with invective and threats against Nabuchadnezzar, rather they sought to help the people of Israel to understand why God had permitted what had happened.

"You waxed fat, you grew thick, you became sleek (and you) forsook God", as the author of Deuteronomy said, who was writing after that event (Deuteronomy 32.15). In other words: your welfare and your prosperity went to your heads and you believed you no longer had need of God. The most obvious sign of this blindness brought about by wellbeing was, for the prophets of Israel too, the people's dissolute lifestyle and their absolute disregard of the poor. The palaces you build for yourselves are more and more splendid but the poor, as Amos said, are bought "for a pair of sandals" (Amos 8.6).

God certainly did not approve what had been done by Nabuchadnezzar, whose fearsome punishment he in fact foretold (just as God certainly does not approve the terrorism of our day that claims to draw strength from his name). He used it, nevertheless, to bring about a change in a situation that had become intolerable in his eyes. How great the good was, in fact that God knew how to draw for his people from this sad experience. The most enduring of religious insights, the most beautiful pages of the Old Testament, like the canticles of the Servant of Yahweh and the psalms, were written during the time of the Exile and later. "I shall leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord" (Zephaniah 3.12) and that is what came about. The people were spiritually revived as a people through their trials.

The people were spiritually revived as a people through their trials

The same hope ought to be lively in us, after the tragic events of 11th September and those that followed. So that that hope may be fulfilled God asks us to hold firmly to our faith. From the outset we need to take account of one thing; not everything was for the good in the way things were there were things that needed to change. Over time we had become accustomed to a situation that was, and still is, intolerable, not only in the eyes of God, but also of all who have the least little sense of humanity and of justice; a small fraction of humankind lives to squander in luxury while the rest is dying of hunger and disease.

There are already little signs that some heart searching is happening, though we do not know whether it will last. In June of last year I was on a preaching mission to the United States that took me to Houston, Dallas, new Orleans and Atlanta. As one passed between the rows of skyscrapers in the city centres or walked through the airports just looking on a the life around in its various expressions, one had the same impression wherever one went; perfect organisation, tranquilly secure. The motto on the coins was, "In God we trust", but the message on the faces of the people was, "It is in ourselves that we believe and in the stability of the society we have built" (Not that Americans were any more proud or self-assured than the people of many other nations, including my own Italy, though they may have more reason than we have to be so!)

God is tacitly reduced to no more than a guarantor of earthly wellbeing

In this kind of situation, even though he may not be totally excluded, God is however tacitly reduced to no more than a guarantor of earthly wellbeing. That is precisely what Augustine was telling the Christians of his time that they must not do with God. Eternity had been for some time nothing more than a meaningless word.

And then what happened, happened, and we began to see another reality emerging: a society, shaken to its very roots, discovering an acute sense of its own vulnerability, a society that was rediscovering prayer. At the moment when all seemed to come crashing down, the word most often heard on the lips of those who fled the flames or found themselves on board those aircraft sent crashing into buildings as everyone noticed, was "God, God, oh God!" God became once again the one to whom every cry was directed, the one to whom every eye was tuned. People began to take a little more notice of the fact that the poverty and injustice in the world were among the causes of terrorism, as was also the situation in the Middle East, and these problems began to be tackled with a little more urgency.

Collapse of that ingenuous sense of omnipotence

The West woke from its stupor and, like the Emperor in the fable, discovered that it was naked. Something more than the Twin Towers came crashing down in New York on 11th September. That day also saw the collapse of that ingenuous sense of omnipotence that was busy taking control of our technological civilisation.

The fact that this false sense of security has been put to the test is a good thing, and not something bad. It has always taken peoples and kingdoms to their ruin. Sometimes God causes our plans and our quiet assurance to collapse in confusion, only to save us from an abyss we do not see.

Augustine arrived at the same conclusion as Habakkuk had done many centuries earlier. In an equally dramatic situation, among one of history's violent upheavals, the prophet turned to God with words wholly to the point: "Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? Or cry to you, "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongs and look upon trouble?" (Habakkuk 1.21)

All the response the Lord made to him was to foretell yet graver calamities and upheavals that the Chaldeans would very soon visit upon the city. The prophet, disconcerted, could no longer understand what God was doing and gave vent to a cry that who knows how many people since have made their very own: "You who are of purer eyes than to behold evil and can not look on wrong, why do you look on faithless men, and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?" (Habakkuk 1.13)

The prophet has a premonition that this time there will be an answer from God and he prepares to receive it with all his heart. He stands up on the battlements alone, to listen to what God would say in reply to his laments. The moment is one of the most solemn, and its telling is among the most perfect of literary constructions in all the Bible. The answer comes, and it will be one that continues to resound through all ages to come, because the Apostle Paul made of it one of the strong points of his thought. "And the Lord answered me; "Write the vision down; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end - it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it. For it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, he who soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith."

History is guided by God

If God is able to give his prophet forewarning of the calamities to come, it is because he not only knows but also consents that they should come. History is guided, not by the Chaldeans and the other great powers that would come after them, but by God who makes it serve his own mysterious purposes. Events do not take God by surprise. That is why our trust in him needs to be blind and utterly unshakeable, even in the midst of the collapse of the world order and of the resultant chaos. And in fact the prophet feels satisfied with the response, even though it does not give him the "explanations" that he has been asking for. He said to himself. "God is in his holy Temple: let the whole earth be silent before him." (Habakkuk 2.20)

For the past two years, the readings from the prophecies of Daniel during the last few weeks of the liturgical year have come as an occasion of special grace for me. Last year it was the prophecy of the statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay, that we heard on Tuesday of the thirty third week, that spoke to me with extraordinary strength (Daniel 2.31-45). I saw, all of a sudden, the line that links Habakkuk, Daniel, the Apocalypse and Augustine together in one tremendous theology of history. It came to me like an enlightenment.

Daniel's prophecy, however, introduces an element that is fundamental. Kingdoms and empires will not continue to arise one after another, as always in a line that would not end until the end of time. A rock would one day break loose from the mountain; it would strike the statue and shatter it, and itself become a kingdom that "will not pass into the hands of another… it will…. Last forever". It would grow "into a great mountain, filling the whole earth." (see Daniel 2.31-45)

Our faith is anchored on a new and decisive fact: Jesus Christ. The New Testament sees him as the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy. He, it says, is the stone rejected - that rock - that has become the keystone, the cornerstone, the rock that would "crush" those on whom it falls (Matthew 21:42) he is the one who is the little mustard seed that would grow into a great tree in which the birds of the air can nest (see Luke 13.19); the Angel, speaking to Mary and quoting the actual words of Daniel, said of him "and his kingdom will have no end" (Luke 1.33). This is how the liturgy itself sees Jesus Christ as it puts the reading of these Messianic prophecies before us each year.

When will we open our eyes?

We who live at the beginning of the third millennium are responsible for this prophecy. It will be what judges us. The people of Daniel's day could do no more than hope for the coming of this incredible kingdom; they could not see it already realised. The people of the first few generations of Christians, like the author of the Apocalypse, believed that it had come about, but they had nothing whatever to show that it would last forever and would in fact see the downfall of the empire that was persecuting them and of all the other kingdoms round about. We have had two thousand years of confirmation: when will we open our eyes?

Saint Paul says that whatever was written, "was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." (See Romans 15.4) If we are firmly rooted in the Scriptures and in the faith of the Church we will be able to hear the invitation that the Pope holds out to us at the end of his letter and respond to it with the same conviction: "Let us go forward in hope!"

This is an abridged transcription of one of the Lenten reflections given during a retreat for the bishops of Ireland 3rd-8th February 2002. First appeared in the newsletter of the CCR in South Africa in March 2002 and reprinted with permission.