The Risen Lord, Vindicator of those who Hope in God

The King of Glory has conquered death through suffering our hostility to Him to the end, and has won for us a new life, one that death cannot overcome. Confronted with so many challenges and trials on every side, not only for ourselves but also for those who do not share our faith, we sometimes forget that Christ has won this victory. Yet, this Easter Octave invites us to renew our gaze on the Vindicator of those who hope in God. To find Him, we must look to the East, that is to the new day, to a new beginning for humanity. With every rising of the sun in this Octave of Easter we are entrusted with one more new sign that Christ has blazed a trail through the heartbreak of death and alienation, a sign that compels us to share the reason for the hope we have inside. Even as it would seem we were utterly defeated and without hope, in Him, we have hope - and our hope does not disappoint.Put differently, we must open the eyes of our heart to hope because only hope in Christ sees beyond the mystery of death.

Unvanquished, the Risen Lord extends his victory in the lives of anyone who would believe in Him, that is, to anyone who would dare open their eyes to the truth of who He is. To behold Christ in this way is more than an intellectual assent to his existence, It is an openness of heart to all the goodness that the Father blesses us with through Him. Such hope is not a general and vague wish for some future outcome, but, in the power of his resurrection, to already taste the victory of good over evil in the concrete particularity of the challenges of our lives and of the lives of those we love. This is why the Letter to the Hebrews challenges us, "Through Him let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have; God is pleased by sacrifices of this kind" (Hebrews 13:15-16).

This call to live through the Risen Lord, the Conqueror of Death, is an eternal cry to live by hope. The Lamb that was slain but risen again is the divine standard under which all who live by hope are vindicated. Those who hope offer a sacrifice of praise in the face of death itself, and this praise is a confession of the name of Jesus. The passage from Hebrews makes clear that to proclaim that Christ Crucified is risen from the dead is a confession made not only with words but with selfless actions as well.

Such is the decision to live by hope, that is, to live with the courage to believe that death is not that last word about humanity, that even as we die, if we confess Christ's victory by our generosity with others, we have already begun to live a life that this world is too small to contain. Although this world is passing away, the Son of the Father offers those who dare to hope in God a life that anticipates a whole new world, and this world is already broken in on us now.

The challenge of death is one of the great questions that any serious effort to live by hope must confront. The primal experience of Adam and Eve was one with a struggle against death, and in humanity's first trial, we learned that rising to the truth of our existence was completely reliant on the obedient trust we ought to have in God. When our aboriginal hope was called into question, we crumbled into distrust and opened our hearts to hostility to God. Time and again throughout history, we allowed this hostility to block God from giving us the strength of heart that this life and the world in which we live requires of us. Powerless before the forces of the world and our own interior impulses, sin put us on a pathway to personal and social catastrophe. A sense of doom hangs over every effort to do something good, noble and true. This sense of doom produces frustration, interior ache, fear and anxiety.

Many try to distract themselves from this frustrated ache with all sorts of diversions and boorishness. Others attempt to control this uncontrollable pain but not without succumbing to a self-centered pride or a self-satisfied despair. A few courageous people of good will, perhaps more than we suspect, turn and face the doom of death with a mysterious resolve that evil cannot be the last word about humanity. That resolve is, as it were, a vestige of the greatness of humanity, a remnant of its original image and likeness to God. Such resolve compels those who have it to love and sacrifice, to work hard and implicate themselves in the plight of others, even if for no other reason than it is simply the right thing to do, and this even at great personal cost. Such are those who dare to hope in the face of doom. .

Some would attribute this kind of daring to nuns, monks and hermits, and rightly so. I have come to see this same hope in many priests, religious and bishops, especially missionaries sent into the most impossible situations. I have also seen this courage on a lonely deathbed or in the eyes of an abandoned child. It is Christ's own courage we see. Of course, meeting such remarkable witnesses convicts me to a more radical following of the One who goes before me.

Yet, the first glimpse I had of this kind of hope, beyond the witness of my own parents, was among my mostly non-Christian friends. Many of these were cowboys, farmers, and field workers I met as a child. If you asked, they did not quite believe in God, but they did not out right reject him either. They were not without their vices, but everyday they started anew with the same warm greetings and sincere smiles hidden behind weathered skin and cups of coffee. Somehow, they kept alive that sense that life was worth living and people were worth loving even when disaster came their way. They had no idea that whatsoever they did for the least of their brethren they did unto Christ, but at the drop of a hat they would inconvenience themselves and go without to make sure some unfortunate soul would be okay. These souls who dared to hope also gave me a sense that I needed to be a better follower of Christ , this for their for sake. I wanted that somehow through my poor witness they might come to know the One who vindicated their hope, that their hope was not in vain. Their selflessness humbled me, and I found myself praying for them, grateful that they should exist, but puzzled how they could have so much hope but not know why they had it.

While Christ died to save everyone, I am convinced that this particular part of humanity is of special concern for him. Sometimes, even when pushed to the brink of meaninglessness, they attempt to live as beautiful and meaningful a life as they possibly can. That takes courage and a certain humility, and this is possibly why Christ is drawn to them as the special object of his saving mission. To these, the Father offers the resurrection of His Son as a sort of vindication of the hope they have inside. While their lives can be shrouded in all kinds of ambiguity, even complete personal failure, there is reason to believe that their hope moves the heart of God. Poets such as Charles Peguy muse over this mystery:

But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.

Even me.

That is surprising.

That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.

That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning.

That is surprising and it’s by far the greatest marvel of our grace.

And I’m surprised by it myself.

And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.

And must flow freely and like an inexhaustible river.

Since the first time it flowed and since it has forever been flowing.

In my natural and supernatural creation.

In my spiritual and carnal and yet spiritual creation.

In my eternal and temporal and yet eternal creation.

Mortal and immortal.

And that time, oh that time, since that time that it flowed like a river of blood, from the pierced side

of my son.

What must my grace, and the strength of my grace, be so that this little hope, vacillating at the

breath of sin, trembling with every wind, anxious at the slightest breath, be as constant, remain

as faithful, as righteous, as pure; and invincible, and immortal, and impossible to extinguish; as

that little flame in the sanctuary.

That burns eternally, in the faithful lamp.

One trembling flame has endured the weight of worlds.

One vacillating flame has endured the weight of time.

One anxious flame has endured the weight of nights.

Since the first time my grace flowed for the creation of the world.

Since my grace has been flowing forever for the preservation of the world.

Since the time that the blood of my son flowed for the salvation of the world.

A flame impossible to reach, impossible to extinguish with the breath of death.

What surprises me, says God, is hope.

And I can’t get over it.

This little hope who seems like nothing at all.

This little girl hope.

Immortal.

This is why we should never give up on praying for those God has entrusted to us. Instead, we must give thanks for the small flame of hope that He keeps alive in their hearts, and trust that God will not allow it to perish, but has vindicated it with his own blood. God the Father did not wish that anything good, noble or true should perish. He is not put off because these souls suffer from hostility to Him. Instead, He aches that they endure magnitudes of misery, that is, of absences of a love that ought to be but is not there, and He delights that they hope anyways. How He longs for them to be baptized in the fullness of meaning that Christ brings into the world, into His own hope for them. It is in this eternal movement of heart that He counts on our prayers for them, our generosity to them, our hope for them, a hope contained the name of Jesus and expressed with our own kindness - for our own sacrifices of love make hope in the Risen Lord tangible in the world,

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot hold it back. Our hostility to God, to others and to ourselves is a terrible wound, an aching cavity, a spiritual vacuum that if not addressed, in the end, diminishes our existence to extinction. For everyone who has ever attempted to rise to the task of being fully human and fully alive knows this proclivity to self-contradiction. God did not wish that anyone should have to bear this misery alone, but especially these souls who, without knowing Him, somehow live as if they do. He sees their suffering and He wishes to affirm their dignity and to relieve their plight. This is why He sent His Son - to vindicate the hope of those whose hope delights His heart.

*From Charles Péguy, The Portal of the Mystery of Hope, translated by David Louis Schindler, Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 3-10. Available for purchase at Eighth Day Books. Cited from https://www.eighthdayinstitute.org/hope-surprises-god

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