Trust and assurance of Victory, as the culmination of the earthly existence of the disciple of Christ, is an issue of such vital importance as to make it the only really transcendental one. Such trust is more necessary today than ever before for those who attempt to follow Christ; followers who, precisely for that reason, find themselves relentlessly pursued in a thousand different ways by the Modern World, not having any way out other than seeking their refuge in hope.

Fortunately, the concept of Christian hope does not coincide with the concept of human hope. The latter refers to hope for something that could come about … but that also might never be real; for that something often exceeds the possibilities of the one who is hoping. Christian hope, on the contrary, enjoys the certainty of achieving what it is waiting for, in so far as it is accompanied by the fidelity that promises demand (Rom 5:5)[1].

Truly speaking, Christian hope goes beyond that which man could ever hope for or imagine. When all one can decry is one’s failures,  and one perceives only darkness surrounding everything, hope provides the strength to stand firm in spite of any obstacle that may try to block it: like Abraham, who believed against all hope[2]. When the whole series of setbacks and sufferings that mark out the daily life of any human being makes its presence felt: pain in all its forms, illnesses, diverse and manifold failures, lack of understanding from both sides of the aisle, family problems, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of emptiness and the futility of one’s own life … And to all of the above, we must add those sufferings proper to and specific to Christian life, that is, the Night of the Spirit, with its interior and external trials, where the apparent absence of God could become the most trying; all manner of temptations; lack of understanding – and sometimes persecution – on the part of friends and foes; our own doubts of Faith; the subtle and diverse assaults by the World; the acute feeling of not having responded to the Love of God, and, along with that, our own sins … When all these happen, the hour for Christian Hope has come.

The attitude of hoping against all hope makes reference, above all, to the corresponding supernatural virtue, which has little to do with purely human hope. When the latter fails, nothing is to be done, other than adopting an attitude of conformity and resignation. Contrariwise, when there is no room for anything else … not even for supernatural hope; when the impenetrable darkness that sometimes hangs upon the Night of Christian existence makes itself felt; when all seems to indicate that God has disappeared and has abandoned His creature (Ps 22:2; Mt 27:46), then is the hour of fighting against what is impossible: the hour of maintaining our firm trust in God and hoping against all hope. We do say against all hope. That means beyond the supernatural virtue, which also sometimes could seem to have vanished from the horizon of our own existence. We are referring here to the very situation that was lived, in an exceptionally intense manner, by Jesus Christ on the Night of the Garden of Gethsemane and by the Virgin Mary at the Foot of the Cross.

[Translated from the book “Siete Cartas a Siete Obispos” vol I (pags. 436 – 438), (no yet published)]