Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 8

Part II of Prayer for the encyclical is entitled Action and Suffering as Setting for Learning Hope. This is yet another thick section by Pope Benedict. His writing style is to start off with a short rather beautifully simple statement that gets built into an idea that has a sense of beauty but also a burden of complexity, that takes time to ponder. His statement this time is, “all serious and upright human conduct is hope in action (35).” This means that the practical jokes that I participate in are not hope in action. The times that I lead liturgies and preach should be instances of Hope. Pope Benedict gets to the point quickly in that even if we perceive ourselves to be in desperate situations that the love of God allows us to have the “kind of hope [that can] give the courage to act and persevere (#35).” He returns to a point that was made at the very beginning of the letter and that “salvation is not simply a given (#1).” He states, “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).” This makes the point of action in the title of this section. He outlines two reasons that our actions are important. The first is that “our actions engender hope for us and for others (#35).” The second “is the great hope based upon God’s promises that give us courage and directs our action in good times and bad (#35).” The point here is that love of God should inspire us to act out of love with the reassurance that love will redeem us. We should not act out of what we think we deserve or should have because Heaven is not offered to us on our actions. We have access to Heaven because of God’s generous love. Our actions should imitate this; our actions should not be cause and effect, but acting on a self-sacrificing love.

The next part of this section deals with the subject of suffering. Pope Benedict states, “Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow abated today (#36).” Pope Benedict points out that we cannot “shake off our finitude (#36)” or “eliminating the power of evil (#36)” that suffering will always be with us while we are on earth in this life. We can limit suffering, but we will never be able to be rid of it this side of heaven. There is a challenge in this section that we as humanity show ourselves best when we recognize truth, justice and love as “enormously weighty realities (#39)” and “not simply ideals (#39).” Realities that must be safeguarded and adopted and not as ideals which occupy the imagination, but never exist in the world. This means that we have to be self-sacrificing for that which is great than ourselves. This is again a connection to the first paragraph of the letter, in which the Pope states, “the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads toward a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey (#1).”

Pope Benedict is stating in a letter what Pope John Paul II stated with his life. Much of life is mundane, that is tasks that need to be done. Yet, we are created in God’s image and likeness and redeemed by God’s love, so our actions cannot reside simply in this world. We must cooperate with God’s grace and act as He has given us the ability. That action entails a “painful renunciation of [oneself] (#39)” so that love can exist. Our challenge is to cooperate with God and luckily God has given us the ability. It is up to us act.