Spe Salvi as a discernment tool

If you have not read Spe Salvi, the latest encyclical, from Pope Benedict, then it would be good Lenten undertaking. Pope Benedict has a very readable style, though it might take several attempts in each section. Don’t be afraid of the struggle, it will make you work your prayer muscles. I intend to summarize the 11 sections of the encyclical with a bias towards discernment.

Pope Benedict starts the encyclical with the idea that salvation is not “a given.” We have to understand Heaven as a goal that we need to aspire. God has given us a challenge. And it is not an easy challenge; it requires labor and probably some suffering. But the end result is the Beatific Vision, which is a lofty goal that easily justifies the effort.

Pope Benedict next shows that words faith and hope are almost interchangeable for the early Christians. He sites as examples Hebrews 10:22 & 10:23 and 1 Peter 3:15. The early Christians were aware of the fact “trustworthy hope” was a gift that had received from Jesus. Benedict sites scripture to prove this point, they are Ephesians 2:12 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13. The Christians began to realize that they had a future and it was not death. Since they knew their future they were able to live fully in the present.

The Christian message is one of Good News. Pope Benedict points out that the news is both informative and performative. Meaning that the news makes Christ known and that the news “makes things happen and is life-changing (#2).” The Message is dynamic; the message is God at work. Grace takes hold of us and motivates us. This motivation allows us to live selflessly instead of selfishly, this but one example. We no longer have to be concerned about ourselves and we have the ability to be concerned about others. This allowed the early Christians to live differently. We can see it in the martyrdom of many early Christians. While they may have felt fear for how death was coming they were comforted by the fact that death was not their end.

A more modern example is St. Josephine Bakhita, whom Pope Benedict sites. She was an African woman taken into slavery. Her hope early in life was to be with a less abusive master. She was finally sold to someone who introduced her to Christianity. She found “the great hope: ‘I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me – I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.’” She later enters the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters. She wants everyone to know about this hope.

Pope Benedict wants to know this great hope that we have. He also wants us to know that the challenge of God is a lofty goal. Sometimes I think we set goals that we know that we can reach and take joy in an empty accomplishment. We might think about priesthood, but be discouraged by apparent lack of skills or perceived short coming in needed qualities, so we look to skills and qualities that we demonstrate rather easily and ask ourselves what can I accomplish in life with these. This cheats us from an experience that God really wants us to have. Don’t be satisfied with mundane goals, we need to cooperate with God and seek after divine goals.