Pilgrim of Hope (3/4)

Hope is one of the three theological virtues that Pope Francis defines as “the smallest of virtues, but the strongest” because, according to him, it has a face: that of the Risen Lord, who summons us and will not disappoint our expectation. (Angelus of November 15, 2015).

However, the expectations of our world today are great and its cists are multiplying in view of the many evils that undermine it, leading to a loss of meaning. These evils are named: the clash of arms, death, destruction, hatred of neighbor, hunger, “ecological debt”, the decline in the birth rate, migrations, to name but a few. Therefore, appeals in favor of prisoners, the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, migrants are priorities that we are invited to seize as the new areopagus.

In the face of these many places of death that put the experience of faith to the test, hope springs from the hearts of believers that we are to tell the suffering world that God always fulfills his promise. Certainly in his time, but he always accomplishes it. Hence the relevance of the psalmist’s never-surpassed invitation: “Be strong and be of good cheer, you who hope for the Lord”! (Ps 27:14).

For the Christian, therefore, hope is like a driving force that allows us to look at each being and the world with renewed attention in the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As such, hope appears as a way of looking at life and its difficulties not as an evil, but as a promise of life. From then on, we are inhabited by this small voice that assures us that nothing is ever lost to God.

But then, who will speak of this promise of life to this world in pain of childbirth? Who, then, will make himself “the mouth of misfortunates who have no mouth?” Who, then, will make of his voice “the liberty of those who sink into the dungeon of despair?” (To borrow an expression dear to Aimé Césaire!)

In this dynamic of reclaiming the virtue of hope, Pope Francis invites us to take a look at the lives of the saints who have remained persevering in hope. In this, the testimony of our father Saint Dominic remains and is still today one of the most edifying.

In fact, in a vision he had, while praying in the Vatican Basilica, Dominic saw St. Peter hand him the pilgrim’s staff while St. Paul gave him the book of the Gospel and both cried out, “Go and preach, for God has chosen you for this ministry.” It goes without saying that Dominic was consecrated a pilgrim of grace and therefore, a pilgrim of hope to be sown in the heart of every man and woman of his time. This is what he will do throughout his life, earning him the name of the “man with soles in the wind”. This is our heritage and this is also our DNA as sisters of the CRSD. To become pilgrims, always on the way to sow hope in the hearts of our contemporaries.

Obviously, this is what we are already doing. Ad intra: through the care of our communities, of our elderly sisters, attention to the common good, to the congregational body, etc.; ad extra: through our various missions of preaching explicit and implicit in the various Areopagus to which we are already accustomed, constantly going to existential boundaries in view of contact with those who are near and far, the service for justice and peace and our desire to explore new horizons.

However, we must, even more, rekindle the hope that is in us “by daring with more audacity” (Brené Brown) to set out physically, spiritually, morally, as a good pilgrim seeking God... To do this, we need to get out of our comfort zone, our certainties, our well-established projects, our achievements, our fears... and to go into the unknown like Abraham, hoping against all hope. Dominic did this by daring to disperse his brothers when everything around him dissuaded him. He sent them out as pilgrims of hope on the paths of this world, counting on the one who is hope, since hope is not an empty word, it is a person, it is Christ. And Dominic’s Hope was not disappointed since, like Abraham our father in the faith, he obtained grace after grace and a multitude of sons and daughters.

The challenge for us today, as sons and daughters of Saint Dominic, would be, as Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels - by analogy with the Church – says : « to learn to evangelize without conveying intolerance. To learn how the Gospel can be proclaimed in an environment where so many different philosophical convictions, forms of faith and beliefs coexist. To learn... how the legitimate concern not to hurt others’ convictions does not result in plunging ourselves out of embarrassment or fear - into indifference, relativism or laziness. » In other words, that we are “evangelists who are transparent, who know how to bear witness in humility and serenity, who are rewarded with an unfailing harmony between our life and our word, between our being and our appearance”

Without anchoring ourselves in our habits or in our past, we are continually invited to “let ourselves be reconditioned by the grace of God”. Fr. Roberto Pasolini, the new preacher of the pontifical household, will say in his advent 2024 sermon: "There are many ’no’s’ waiting to be pronounced not only against the explicit evil, but also against the subtle evil that is the habit of continuing things without ever having the courage to seriously rethink them and do them together. But to say this “brave no,” you have to believe that God is at work in our history and that “the best is yet to come.” It should be noted here that there are just as many “yes” to pronounce!

Holding fast to our hope, we can dare to say that despite the headwinds that are shaking the world, the Church and the consecrated life today, despite the decrease in vocations, the ageing, sometimes also the loss of credibility and the impression that religious life is going to disappear, and that the hope of the world is drying up as a result; however, it remains undeniable that we are at a crossroad of grace! Everything depends on the turn and the anchoring that our steps as pilgrims will take towards new horizons, physical or not, interior or exterior.

Like the grain of wheat that has fallen into the ground that will bear fruit in its time, whether the farmer sleeps or not, we are invited to concern ourselves with good sowing, the rest belongs to him who makes everything happen in his own time. (African proverb) This is an invitation to Patience, the other side of perseverance which is the cardinal virtue that our world needs most to bring about God’s time.

sr Florence Roko
Parakou, Bénin