Christian Hope as Antidote to Modern Despair

In his recently published La esperanza no defrauda nunca (“Hope Never Disappoints”), Pope Francis recalls how, during his walks in Buenos Aires, he occasionally came across psychics who would set up their tables in the city parks. People waited in long lines to hear some version of the same story: “there’s a woman in your life, a shadow cast over you, but everything will be all right.” The young priest marveled at how easily customers were satisfied with such platitudes, happy to pay their fee and go on their way. “This,” he warns, “is an idol, and when we give into idolatry, we buy false hopes.”

Francis adds to this the sad reality that, although Jesus Christ charged us nothing for the hope He brought by giving up His life for us on the cross, we too easily throw it away or treat it as if it meant nothing to us. It’s hard, the Holy Father laments, for there to be any hope among the People of God when it is we ourselves who conspire to prevent the yeast from doing its work on the dough. Through our sins, we have denied the seed the fertile soil it needs to produce a rich harvest that will open a new horizon for our brothers and sisters. He goes on to beg forgiveness for sins committed against indigenous peoples, the poor, the vulnerable, the persecuted, and those abused by members of the clergy.

It’s a heart-wrenching plea for pardon, yet it is not unprecedented. Indeed, imploring forgiveness for sins committed by the Church was a hallmark of the Ordinary Jubilees presided over by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. In the Old Testament, the Jubilee was celebrated as a time of grace during which the People of God experienced God’s mercy and received His gift of peace in an extraordinary way. It was a time to forgive sins, seek reconciliation, and allow the land to lie fallow.

As the Church approaches twenty-five years since the Great Jubilee of 2000, Francis proposes that, to gain a deeper appreciation of the virtue of hope, we consider it in contradistinction to its opposite: despair. Despair, he believes, is particularly acute during this era of indifference and egoism. “We are living in a changing of epochs rather than an epoch of changes, and we must not allow ourselves to be overcome by despair.” Francis therefore exhorts us not to consider the Jubilee Year merely as an opportunity for individual gain, but to pay close attention to its communal ethos, since despair is closely connected to the turn to individualism.

Francis reflects on the insights of contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han and his conviction that the “cult of positivity” isolates people, makes them egocentric, and suppresses their empathy insofar as it makes them disinterested in the suffering of others. Modern man is concerned only with himself, his own happiness, his own well-being. The Gospel is the antidote to this renunciation of solidarity since Christian hope, unlike the “cult of positivity,” does not turn its back on the negative aspects of life but faces them head-on as truly present for our sanctification. The Christian subject of hope is always a “we” and never an “I.”

For this reason, hope, writes Francis, is both the anchor of the Christian ship and its sail. While holding the Church firm to her mooring in Christ, hope drives her to go outward, away from her shores of comfort and predictability toward the furthest peripheries of human existence (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 20), bringing the light of the Gospel to every island of despair. Abraham and Moses are examples. The former accepted the call to leave his home for a new land (Gen. 3:10-17), and the latter heeded God’s request to lead his people from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land (Ex. 3:10-17).

Francis stresses that we in the Church are not immune from the risks and temptations of the “cult of positivity.” Hope urges us to resist allowing ourselves to be seduced by the ephemeral and the volatile, by empty hedonism and the promises of immediate pleasure which are self-seeking and egotistical. Francis proposes hope as the virtue that gives us the strength to pull ourselves out of “spiritual mundaneness,” which, unlike other temptations, can be difficult to unmask since it is often covered by things that normally reassure us, such as the liturgy, piety, and even doctrine. To combat this “spiritual mundaneness,” the pope appeals to humility, which he defines as “the capacity to know how to live our humanity without despair and with realism, joy, and hope; a humanity loved and blessed by the Lord,” and the grace “to understand that we do not have to be ashamed of our fragility.” Two signs that we are not living this hope and humility are a refusal to learn from our sins and a refusal to ask for and grant forgiveness.  

Pope Francis suggests that the surest aid to help us acknowledge our sins, ask for forgiveness, and readily forgive is to cultivate a hope that is ever missionary, ever communal. Quoting his predecessor, Francis reminds us that “our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too. As Christians, we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them, too, the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 48).

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