Have You Lost Hope in the Church?

 The Lord said to Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The Lord had promised it, and the Lord had power to do it. “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.” He left everything behind, because he had hope to obtain much more from the Lord. As we heard in the Psalm, “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.” Let me reflect on hope. How is our hope? Do we need to purify our hope?

1. Despondent is defined as the person who is “in low spirits from loss of hope or courage.” Some people have lost hope in the Church: they do not see the Church making a difference, they do not think the Church can make a difference, and things just seem to get worse. Now, losing hope, being defeated does not feel good, and so people tend to disguise hopelessness. Sometimes, it becomes sarcasm: “Here is again, another scandal! Ah, the Church of Jesus! Anyway, who cares…” Sarcasm is a way to escape from pain, to hide pain with a superficial laugh… Sarcasm, irony, contempt… Other times, hopelessness becomes resentment against the people from whom we had hope for change. Resentment is like a misguided self-defence: hopelessness feels like being hurt, and we think that by hurting back those responsible for our pain, we will get some reprieve, or at least, we will not have to face our own pain. Bitterness is another sign of hopelessness. Other times, hopelessness is disguised as activism: those who think that the Church has lost the big battle, try to find some consolation in small successes, and so they lose themselves in superficial activities to escape their feeling of failure. Some hide hopelessness with superficial joy and even with superficial optimism: “it’s gonna be ok,” they say, or even “God will provide,” which is certainly true, but they repeat this simply to escape from a deep perplexity: “Where is God in all of this?” or to escape facing their own sense of failure. They say, “God will provide,” as if they had done everything that could be done: now the ball is in God’s court, and they are no longer responsible for the world’s evils. “God will provide, not my problem!” But whoever is hopeless does have a problem, even if that person does not want to face it.

2. Hopelessness is understandable. It is a feeling that arises naturally when we are powerless before evil. And because, on our own, we are actually powerless before certain evils, feeling hopeless is possible. Even when we know that God is with us, because we do not feel His presence, we still feel powerless, and so hopelessness or fear may appear as a consequence. This is a battle which must be fought in each human heart, and a very important battle: the battle between what we know by faith and what we feel. This is a battle that cannot be won by escape in sarcasm, or by superficial activism: this battle is fought by facing our own powerlessness and accepting it. We cannot win, but He can. Thus, when we face our own powerlessness and we own it, when we humbly acknowledge that we need help, then God can work. God wants to fight with those humble soldiers that recognize that without God they can do nothing but also believe that everything is possible with God. St. Paul writes to Timothy, “Join with me in suffering for the Gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.”

3. The protagonist of the Church’s mission is the Holy Spirit, not human beings and certainly not the devil either. God “wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and Jesus promised that He would be with us until the end of the world (cf. Matthew 28:20), assisting us with His grace and His power (cf. Mark 16:20). When God wants something, there is no government, no army, nobody and nothing that can get in His way.  But God does not want to do it alone: He wants us to do our part. We cannot do it alone, but with Him we are omnipotent. The first thing, however, and this is my point today, is facing our powerlessness and stop hiding our hopelessness. When we are hopeless, we may think that God cannot work with us because we have failed but, actually, God can work only with those who realize that they are powerless. Those who humbly recognize their weakness can receive God’s strength and become invincible. God gives his grace to the humble (cf. James 4:6) because, when the humble succeed, they give glory to God, not to themselves; and God, in return, glorifies them before the other people, sometimes even in this life, and always in the next. God can redeem the world, God wants to redeem it, and God certainly wants you to be part of it. As Jesus said to the apostles, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

Have I lost hope in the Church? Have I become despondent, sarcastic, or resentful? Am I lost in activism, because I don’t want to face my pain? How can I embrace my hopelessness, so I can bring it to the Lord to heal? What does God want me to do? What is my mission in the Church, what is my part, the part that only I can play?