In today’s reading of Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI introduced me to a great man of hope: Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan. He was the former Archbishop of Saigon. The communist forces imprisoned him for thirteen years, nine of which was in solitary confinement. Cancer claimed his life at the age of 74. Pope Francis declared the cardinal venerable in 2017.

While in prison, his family secretly sent him wine in a medicine bottle. They also sent him hosts hidden in a flash light.

During his years in prison, the Cardinal celebrated Mass by placing particles of the host in his hand with three drops of a wine and and a drop of water. His hand became the altar, his cell the cathedral. He prayed the Mass from memory.

When he transferred prisons, he was able to distribute communion surreptitiously to Catholics. The Eucharist was the secret of his steadfast joy all those years in prison. It was a hope rooted in the Eucharist.

He spent his years writing down little truths about his Eucharistic faith onto scrap paper and handed them off to a Catholic who wrote them all down. These 1000 sayings became his book entitled The Road to Hope: A Gospel From Prison. In this collection he said, “The Eucharist shapes every Christian.” His love for Jesus in the Eucharist is the autobiographical testimony of his heroism!

In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI teaches us that we need settings for learning and practicing hope. One setting is prayer.

The great Saint Augustine describes prayer as an exercise of desire. He once said, “By delaying [his gift], God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him].”

Augustine gives this image of honey and vinegar in the heart. If our heart is filled with vinegar, we cannot fill it with honey, a symbol of God’s tenderness. Our hearts need to be enlarged and cleaned from all traces of vinegar. This takes sacrifice and work, a purification process.

For prayer to teach us hope it needs to be very personal and intimate. We have to place ourselves before God in utter frankness and honesty. At the same time, we need the Church to teach us to pray properly with scripture, the saints, and the liturgy. Having a prayer life that blends both these aspects shapes our Christian hope.

True hope enlarges our hearts to receive God and to give God to others. We become missionaries of hope. True hope is an active hope that is always moving toward God. Christian hope is truly human hope and our desire to be with God.