Pope John Paul I had this to say about hope in his General Audience on September 20, 1978:
“I said that hope is obligatory: that does not mean that hope is ugly or hard. On the contrary, anyone who lives it travels in an atmosphere of trust and abandonment, saying with the psalmist: ‘Lord, you are my rock, my shield, my fortress, my refuge, my lamp, my shepherd, my salvation. Even if an army encamp around against me, my heart will not fear; and if the battle rises against me, even then I am confident.’ You will say: is not this psalmist exaggeratedly enthusiastic? Is it possible that things always went right for him? No, they did not always go right. He, too, knows, and says so, that the bad are often fortunate and the good oppressed……. Some one will say: what if I am a poor sinner? I reply to him as I replied to an unknown lady, who had confessed to me many years ago. She was discouraged because, she said, she had a stormy life morally. ‘May I ask you’, I said, ‘how old you are?’ ‘Thirty-five’. ‘ Thirty-five! But you can live for another forty or fifty and do a great deal of good. So repentant as you are, instead of thinking of the past, project yourself into the future and renew your life with God’s help.”
The good pope reminds us to live in hope. This means we live with an awareness of the injustices that afflict us; we don’t see everything through rose colored glasses. We do live though with trust and “abandonment” knowing of God’s love for us. We live always with an eye to the future and the goodness to be found there, the good that we are called to accomplish in his name.
It is not all about sin; it is about God’s love and mercy, and the inescapable truth that we are called to be sons and daughters of the Lord.
