I suspect that my readers at The Just Word and I both especially need faith to be the wellspring of hope right now. As I write this, Donald Trump has just been inaugurated for his second term as president and has proceeded to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, ratcheted up state malrecognition of trans people, attempted to end birthright citizenship, and suspended the US’ refugee program. By the time you read this, more cruelties than these will have been perpetrated.  

In many ways, our readings this Sunday speak directly to our need for hope. The First Reading from Jeremiah speaks with YHWH’s voice and tells us that those who trust in G-d will be blessed and that those who cling to “deceitful” and contradictory “human ways” will be cursed. Similarly, Psalm 1 reminds us that real happiness lies in G-d and G-d’s righteousness, whereas the ungodly are condemned to ruin and transience. More emphatically still, Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount juxtaposes the virtuous sufferers in this life with the rich and powerful, promising that each group’s deserts will be made just in time to come. The first note I hear in this liturgy is consolation: G-d is preparing a punishment for the bad people and a reward for the good people, and the good people’s comfort, this side of paradise, is that we know this future, while the bad people persist in self-satisfied self-deception. There is something mean-spirited, something like ressentiment, in a consoling hope framed this way. Let us, then, listen closer for a Christian hope suited to love, or caritas.

If we approach these other readings with Paul’s guidance in 1 Corinthians, we can discern a different concept and pathos of hope. In the epistle, Paul argues with some misguided community members that one cannot claim that Christ was raised from the dead while claiming that there is no resurrection of the dead for the rest of us. Christ’s resurrection implies that death has been transcended; thus, denying the general resurrection is tantamount to denying Christ’s resurrection. I take Paul’s reasoning here to be that if Christ is who Christians believe he is – 1) fully human and fully divine; and 2) the Way and the Life – then it follows that his resurrection entails the general resurrection. Were this not so, Christ’s being raised from the dead would be a unique historical event, but it would not be the messiah’s intervention in the world. Moreover, Christians, in remembering Christ’s resurrection, would no longer worship G-d in the person of Jesus but would rather honor the idol of a man in whose hero’s journey we did not, and do not, participate. Specifically Christian faith would be an illusion and so, too, Christian hope. 

Paul goes further still: Christians would be the “deadest of the dead” and the “most pitiable of the human race.” Why so? Why would the falsity of their religion make Christians deader and more pitiful than, for example, pagan communities? Paul is arguing, I think, that the point and justification of the Christian life depend on the truth of the general resurrection. Other ways of life could, in this view, be justified even if their religious commitments prove to be false. Perhaps appreciating myths about Jupiter or Athena is psychologically beneficial for the development of human excellence regardless of the myths’ truth. But this is not so for the Christian life: if our faith is false, then our ideas about how to live – like the emphasis on the virtues of agape, self-sacrifice, and humility – are completely wrong. Apostles like Paul would have been encouraging pathological misdevelopments that prevent people from achieving their potential and living their best; Nietzsche would be shown right that Christianity introduced a sickness against life.

Notice how 1 Corinthians accentuates the stakes of Christian belief: if we hazard faith and we’re wrong, we sacrifice the possibility of a good life. Paul makes it apparent how short a step there is between despair and Christian hope. In those moments where our hope in the resurrection is challenged by the world’s evils and our negative responses to them, we can identify (and fear) what we’ve staked as Christians. We anxiously ask ourselves: “What if I’m mistaken?”

The risk of hope that Paul underscores – hope’s exposure to threatening feelings of insecurity, fear, naivete, and vulnerability – allows us to see our other readings this week in a less triumphalist and vindictive light. They tell us to take courage, and their dire warnings to the unrighteous serve as reminders that we have ourselves walked after “the advice of the wicked” and stood “in the path of sinners;” we ourselves have experienced our heart as “deceitful,” “desperately sick,” and incomprehensible; we ourselves have turned our hearts “away from YHWH.” These are roads that all of us have gone down, and the scriptures ask us to reflect on our lives and ask whether there is anything to be hoped for going down those paths again. That our lives could be led without trust in G-d: this is a thought that our memories show to be despairing, too.

When we feel the temptation of despair, we do well to remember that this is an experience profoundly connected to Christian hope. To believe in the resurrection is not to be impervious to the temptation of despair; it is to affirm, in the face of that temptation, that this experience participates in Christ’s passion.

These are the lyrics of an African-American spiritual called “Nobody Knows,” which was frequently sung by enslaved people and oppressed black Americans during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. The lyrics attest to a hope that springs from encountering Christ in the experience of intense isolation and suffering. I found these in a compelling reflection by Nancy Sylvester in the Global Sisters Report. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
Glory hallelujah!

Reflecting on difficult times in your life, where did you find hope to persevere?

Think about historical examples of individuals or groups who hoped in seemingly hopeless situations, such as African Americans in the bondage of slavery. What practices and attitudes did they cultivate to remain hopeful? How can we learn from the history of voices crying out in the wilderness?

Though there are good reasons to maintain a critical stance toward the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), their sponsorship of the Justice for Immigrants program is worth supporting. The immigration policies of current and former presidential administrations violate Catholic Social Teaching. American Catholics, regardless of their differences, should work together on issues where the Church’s institutional power can make an impact.