Among the many questions that humankind has asked throughout history, one above all has always found an uncertain answer, but one that can allow us to confront the event from which the primordial question arises: life beyond death. What will become of humankind after death? What will become of me? We are all aware that no one escapes the mystery of death and that the many questions that arise from this event cannot fail to involve that virtue that, more than any other, allows every man and woman to look beyond the human limit: hope! Because to hope is life, to live, to give meaning to the journey, to find the reasons to go forward, motivating the meaning of our existence, of our present, of our being here, now. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes how the theological virtue of hope finds its foundation in the words of Jesus, stating that:

Hope is the theological virtue by which we aspire to the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in the promises of Christ and relying not on our strength but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (1). Furthermore, it corresponds to the longing for happiness placed by God in the heart of every person; it embraces the hopes that inspire human activities; it purifies them to align them with the Kingdom of Heaven; it protects us from discouragement; It sustains us in all our weakness; it expands our hearts in the expectation of eternal blessedness (2).

Hope gives human life a window into the Eternal. We are well aware, however, that the answer to the question about the goal of the Christian journey can be negative, due to the many erroneous influences that come from the world; moreover, in the face of the fear of thinking that there is no afterlife at the end of the journey, humanity can fall into despair. If the virtue of hope is lacking, the other virtues that rely on it also collapse. Today, this pillar of the life of faith is often ridiculed, and so misguided that the popular saying “he who lives by hope, dies in despair” dominates the subject. There is an increasingly lurking risk of thinking that hope is:

A kind of storage room for unfulfilled desires […]. We must make it clear, however, that hope is a close relative of realism. It is the tension of someone who, setting out on a street, has already covered a stretch and directs his steps, with love and trepidation, toward the goal not yet reached. It is a robust commitment, in short, that has nothing to do with running away (3).

Likewise, it is necessary to keep in mind, however, that hope is not a gift obtained solely through human merit, but rather a grace born of the innate desire to be happy. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, such grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is inserted into the heart of every man and woman: “this desire is of divine origin”; God has placed it in the heart of man in order to draw him to Him, the only One who can satisfy it (4). I write in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee of 2025:

All hope. In the heart of every person, hope dwells as a desire and expectation of good, even if they do not know what tomorrow will bring. However, the unpredictability of the future often gives rise to conflicting feelings: from confidence to fear, from serenity to discouragement, from certainty to doubt. We often find people who are discouraged, who look to the future with skepticism and pessimism, as if nothing could offer them happiness (5).

Taking as a starting point, the thought of Fr. Tonino Bello and my words and catechesis on the virtue of hope, Fr. Tommaso Giannuzzi has attempted to reinterpret some aspects of it, which, through our words, become an invitation for the reader to be surprised by this power that finds its beginning and culmination in the Risen Lord. Through the analysis of some of Monsignor Bello’s writings and primarily through the catecheses on this topic that I gave during the Wednesday audiences in 2017, the author of this text will attempt to give a face to this source that springs up in the heart of humanity. This invitation, then, becomes a commitment to foster within us this “little girl,” as Monsignor Bello also used to define this great virtue, appropriating the words and thoughts of the great poet and writer Charles Péguy:

What grace and the strength of my grace must it take for this little hope, wavering before the breath of sin, trembling before the winds, dying at the slightest breath, to remain alive, to remain so faithful, so upright, so invincible, pure, immortal, and impossible to extinguish […]. What amazes me, says God, is hope, and I cannot stop being amazed. This little hope that seems like a small thing, this little girl hope, immortal. (6)

Notes

(1) Catechism of the Catholic Church, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 1992, no. 1817 (hereafter: CCC).

(2) Ib, no. 1818

(3) A. Bello, Squilli di trombe e rintocchi di bellane, in Ecrits 3, Ed. La Nuova Mezzina, Molfetta (BA) 2014, p. 231. Bishop Bello’s works are collected in the six volumes published by La Nuova Mezzina. We will cite the works throughout the text, referring to the volume in which they are contained, under the heading Ecrits 1, 2, etc. [Author’s note].

(5) Francis, Spes non confundit, Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, May 9, 2024, no. 1.

(6) C. Péguy, The Mysteries, Jaka Book, Milan, 1997, pp. 164-165.