6th Sunday
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Confirmation
February 16, 2025
Jubilee of Hope
In announcing the current Jubilee of Hope, Pope Francis said this: “Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future will bring.” Of course, an uncertain and unpredictable future can dim our hopes. We can find ourselves, the Pope says, with conflicting feelings. On the one hand, we feel confident, trusting, and serene in our convictions. On the other, we feel apprehension, anxiety, hesitation, and doubt. No doubt, Pope Francis’ words resonate in many hearts, including ours. With that in mind, I invite you to heed his call to be renewed in hope, and not just any hope, but the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus.
This particular Sunday offers us an opportunity to be renewed in hope. For the Word of God proclaimed today helps us to rediscover what genuine Christian hope is and what is the reason for our hope. So let us open our hearts anew to the Word of God just proclaimed . . .
Like a Tree Planted Near Running Water
. . . beginning with today’s reading from Jeremiah. Here the prophet presents the image of a barren bush in the desert and contrasts that image with a tree planted near running water. What is the meaning of the barren bush in the desert? And what does the tree planted near running water mean to us?
The barren bush in the desert is the human person devoid of hope. Without hope, life is bleak. Daily life is drudgery and dread. Our horizon contracts as the world closes in on us. When hope is lacking, so too is faith and love. Those without hope find themselves isolated from God, and isolated from others, often without anyone to call a close friend. Doesn’t this describe what so many are going through today? Many are anxious. Many are lonely, some say at epidemic levels. Without hope, we turn in upon ourselves; we shrivel up emotionally and spiritually.
The tree planted near running water is the person who trusts in God’s love. Such a person taps into the streams of life and love flowing from God upon the world he created and upon the human beings made in his image. When the roots of our humanity are watered with the infinite love of God, then it is that we discover our “infinite dignity” with which God endowed us. Our horizon opens more widely than we could have imagined. The stream of water which we are to tap is found in Baptism and Confirmation. Irrigated by God’s love, we experience a “hope that does not disappoint because the love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
Hope in Christ Raised from the Dead
Leave it to St. Paul to bring home Jeremiah’s message. Paul goes on to warn us not to pin our hopes solely on this world. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” he writes, “then we are the most pitiable people of all” . . . and how true that is! Often Christianity is presented merely as a way of helping us cope with our problems, or merely as an alternative way of creating a better world. Hope does indeed help us cope with misfortune and anxiety; and the Church is indeed obliged to help those in need as if they were Christ, while working to create a world that is more just and compassionate, a world fit for the Kingdom of God already in our midst.
That said, no one should image that our hope is confined to this world: to our politics, strategies, technology, and programs. Our hope rests firmly in Christ who died and rose to save us from our sins, so that we might experience eternal joy in bosom of the Triune God. Our hope is in Christ who bore our sins and burdens, nailed them to the Cross, tasted the bitterness of death, and triumphed over both sin and death. By dying & rising he opened the way for us to exit from a godless, hopeless life, so as to be delivered to that promised land of freedom, by a life of genuine holiness that opens out unto eternal life in heaven. This is the great project of life, the object of our hope in this world: that the biblical drama of redemption will be realized in our lives. That is why we are baptized and confirmed; why we receive Holy Communion; why we go to Confession and read the Bible and pray; this is why we seek to lead lives of integrity & charity, relating to others in love: that the drama of God’s saving love revealed in Christ will become the story of our lives, the great drama in which we play our part to the hilt.
With Hope One Lives Differently
Only now can we grasp what Jesus means in his Sermon on the Plain. Having spent the night in prayer, Jesus comes upon a level stretch of ground where he preaches the Beatitudes, the heart of the Gospel. Here he tells us how to be happy both in this life and in the next. Let me just say that only a person of deep hope can accept Jesus’ formula for human happiness or beatitude, namely: poverty, hunger, weeping, rejection . . . the very things Christ experienced: The Son of Man who emptied himself of glory and had nowhere to lay his head. The Son of God who fasted in the desert forty days and forty nights. Our Savior, who wept in the Garden on account of our sins. The Redeemer of Man who was persecuted, mocked, scourged, and crucified. In the Beatitudes, Christ reveals himself to us so that we might follow him, sharing in his sufferings so as to share in his glory. Heaven isn’t an other-worldly posh resort we hope one day to lounge around in. To be in heaven is to be in Christ, imperfectly here, perfectly hereafter.
As his Sermon on the Plain moves from happiness to woefulness, Jesus is doing us a big favor. He is saving us from the counterfeit happiness of elusive wealth, satisfaction of our carnal appetites, the merriment of the doomed, evanescent human respect . . . the very things that often prevent us from stretching out the roots of our existence to drink in the pure water of God’s love which alone makes us truly flourish. “Those who hope live differently,” Pope Benedict wrote. During this Jubilee Year, may we rediscover the deepest reason for our hope, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” And may God bless us and keep us always in his love!