MYSTERY
OF HOPE
To believe in the Resurrected One is to resist accepting our life as only a small parenthesis between two immense vacuums. Being supported in the Jesus raised by God, we sense, we desire and we believe that God is leading to its true fullness the yearning of life, justice, and peace that is bound up in the heart of humanity and of all creation.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to rebel with our whole might against the fact that the immense majority of men, women, and children who have only known a life of misery, humiliation and suffering, are left forgotten forever.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to trust in a life where there is no longer poverty or pain, no one is sad, no one has to mourn. We can finally see those who come in boats reach their true homeland.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to come close with hope to so many people without health, the chronically sick, the physically and mentally handicapped, the people dragged down by depression, tired of living and struggling. One day they will know what it is to live with peace and complete health. They will hear the words of the Father: «Enter forever into the joy of your Master».
To believe in the Resurrected One is to not resign ourselves to a God who is always a «hidden God», of whom we can’t know the glance, kindness, and embrace that is offered to us. We will meet that God gloriously incarnate forever in Jesus.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to trust that our efforts for a more human and happy world aren’t lost in the vacuum. One happy day, the last will be the first and the prostitutes will go before us into the kingdom.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to know that all which has been left half done, all that hasn’t been able to begin, all that we have damaged with our stupidity or our sin – all this will reach its fullness in God. Nothing will be lost of what we’ve lived with love or what we have given up because of love.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to hope that the joyful hours and the good experiences, the «footsteps» that we’ve left in people and things, what we built or enjoyed generously, will remain transfigured. We’ll no longer know a friendship that ends, a celebration that stops, or a parting that saddens. God will be all in all.
To believe in the Resurrected One is to believe that one day we will hear these incredible words that the book of Revelation puts in God’s mouth: «I am the beginning and the end of everything. To you who have thirst I will give freely of the spring of living water. There will no longer be death or weeping, no more cries or fatigue, because all that has passed».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
