"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you," said St. Augustine. Spe Salvi , the second encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, is a lesson on true Christian hope that is necessary for that journey. lt is also a special message to those who wage the daily battle for the dignity and life of the unborn, the disabled, and the dying.
The encyclical was issued on November 30, 2007. Now, two years later, it is worthwhile to take another look at this treasure trove of spiritual wisdom on the power of hope in our lives.
Early on in the encyclical the pope not surprisingly directs our attention to faith. The importance of faith to humanity is at the heart of this letter on Christian hope because, as he says, “hope is the equivalent of faith.” He refers us to St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians and that community’s faith encounter with Jesus. “Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were ‘without hope and without God in the world’ Eph 2:12.” In short, if we have real faith in the certainty of the constant love of God and His promise of eternal life, then we will have a solid ground for real hope that transcends the transitory material world in which we live, whatever earthly crises may come to us.
Pope Benedict then explains that the Christian message is not only “informative” but “performative.” That means, he says, that “the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known-it is one that makes things happen and is life changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” §2
But sadly the pope must remind us of something else: true faith and real hope seem to have all but disappeared in the modern world. Man’s 
technological advancements have led to a heady and potentially deadly confidence in man’s ability to transform life. “This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation-given to man by God and lost through original sin-would be re-established,” but re-established by science, and not by the power of God. §16
The recovery of what was lost in the Garden of Eden, which comes through redemption expected from faith in Jesus Christ, now, in the modern secular mind, comes from science and technology. Faith is displaced. “It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level-that of purely private and other worldly affairs-and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This “programmatic vision,” this “faith in progress,” he says, has “shaped the present day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope.” §17
As the pope makes clear, this is materialism, and it is false. Further, because it is a misunderstanding of man’s nature, it is impossible. He reminds us that “man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely form the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.” §22 Political and economic structures alone, no matter how good, no matter how much material prosperity they produce, and no matter how much external order they impose, are not sufficient in themselves to bring forth hope, and so they are incapable of bringing lasting peace and happiness. Sadly, as the Holy Father explains in his recent encyclical Caritas In Veritate , it is a lesson that seems to be never learned!
What then to do? We need to get it right. “It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love,” Pope Benedict tells us. “The human being needs unconditional love.” He needs the certainty in his life that arises from such unconditional love and from faith in the One who promises and gives that love. But while God’s love is unconditional we are also meant to respond. “However, even when we are fully aware that Heaven far exceeds what we can merit, it will always be true that our behavior is not indifferent before God and therefore is not indifferent for the unfolding of history.” §35 And our response involves holding fast in the face of suffering and pain in the turmoil of daily life. “It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.” §37 The certainty of conditional love born in faith and nurtured in suffering is, of course, the ground of the enduring, unflinching Christian hope that is essential for creating a culture of life.
Therefore, standing in front of an abortion mill counseling confused and desperate pregnant women, or simply being there in prayer as a witness to the Truth as the abortionists go about their killing rituals, those in the pro life apostolate must be aware of what they are seeing and those with whom they are encountering. The confused mothers and the murderous abortionists have each drifted “into a life of emptiness” where they seek to avoid pain: the mothers by the death and removal of their children as if new life was a disease, and the abortionists with the monetary return of their frenetic killing for hire in the name of “freedom.” But evil does not bring comfort or peace, especially evil that spills the blood of the innocent. Certainly there is no hope since abortion is anti-hope. Rather, as Benedict warns, “the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.” §37
The great message then of Spe Salvi for anyone working to create a society that affirms the dignity of all life is this: If one has real life changing faith in Jesus Christ, then he will have real life sustaining hope too. That hope will support him in his efforts to save innocent victims, and reach out to guilty perpetrators. More importantly, since it is precisely the lack of true hope in the lives of the misguided mothers that allows them to decide to kill their own children, it is precisely that same hope which must fill the deep void in their hearts and satisfy their gnawing pain and hunger for meaning and purpose.
Those engaged in the battle for life must seek ways, however seemingly inadequate in view of the immensity of the evil before them, to renew their faith, and take on Christian hope in their own lives. It is then that the Christian message can be “performative” and not merely “informative” as the pro life missionary offers the message of Christian hope to the abortion seekers and the abortionists, in the life and death dramas that are played out in front of abortion mills every week.
The Holy Father gives us the essence of this message of hope, which is meant both to sustain those working for life and to save those who are drowning in the despair and innocent blood of the culture of death:
If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can give the courage to act and to persevere. §35
This task is seemingly impossible, but we know that we have grace and that even if “outwardly we achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces,” nevertheless “our actions engender hope for us and for others…” We know that “it is the great hope based upon God’s promises that gives us courage and directs our action in good times and bad.” §35 As the Holy Father says, St. Paul’s words must become our words and the belief of each of us: “For I am certain of this: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” Rom 8:38-39. It is from such faith that true, life saving Christian hope arises.
