I continue to dig on this idea of hope with Pope Benedict XXI as my guide. The pontiff wrote Spe Salvi in 2007. It is a letter to the world on hope. Today’s thought is that the Spirit of God is our guarantee!

Paul writes his first letter to the people of Corinth:

But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee (1:22).

He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (5:5).

The Spirit is our guarantee in Christian hope. In this same hope, we meet Jesus. He gives brings the living God to us. The Holy Father said,

Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within (4).

The early Christians understood hope in their persecution. They experienced suffering, yet clung to their conviction on personally knowing Jesus risen from the dead. The Christians drew this image of Christ in early sarcophagi as the philosopher and the shepherd.

The philosopher was the one who taught others how to be authentically human. The shepherd, in the Christian mode, is the one who leads us through the valley of death. He is the only one who can lead us because he has gone ahead of us from death to life. He leads us through that valley of shadows. He is determined to bring us into life. This is hope that is aroused in the believer.

The pope points the reader to Hebrews where we read:

Faith is the hypostasis of things hope for; the proof of the things unseen.

Other translations follow Martin Luther’s thought that faith is standing firm in what one hopes. This misses the mark on hypostasis. Hypostasis is the Greek word and the Fathers of the Church translate this to substantia in Latin. Aquinas will come along and tell us that faith is habitus.

What do we make of all this? Through faith there is a substance already present. A seed that has not sprouted within us. That is hope. Faith and hope pulls our future into the now for hope is the abiding presence of Christ throughout all time. This is the hope we live in.

In this Jubilee Year, do I recognize the Spirit that has been guaranteed to me in faith? This Spirit is given to us in Baptism and sealed in Confirmation.

He is the substance deep in my soul groaning for the springtime. Jesus is the true philosopher who teaches me the art of living in his presence. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will take me on the ultimate journey of death into life. As the hymn below states: The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.