Pieper on Hope

Portal of Hope, Nativity Façade, Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22387413@N00/9673323879/in/photostream/, all rights reserved by owner.

Josef Pieper introduced Karol Wojtyla to Josef Ratzinger. His volume Faith Hope Love is just about perfect. His essay On Hope begins challengingly with Job’s words: “Although he should slay me, I will trust in him” (Job 13:15).”

“This whole book about hope revolves around this sentence because I believe it is vitally important for an age from whose despair there seems to issue a forced and superficial cult of youthfulness to have a glimpse of the highest pinnacle to which the hope-filled youthfulness of those who entrust themselves to God can soar. …

Job’s words cut the foundation, moreover, from under a catastrophic misapprehension that can, in fact, be critical in a catastrophic age, namely, the mistaken assumption that the substance of natural hope can be encompassed by supernatural hope even from below (instead of from above); in other words, that the fulfillment of supernatural hope must occur through the fulfillment of natural hope. It might be well, at a time when temptations to despair abound, for a Christianity that labors hard to hold tight the banner of hope in eternal life to help its ‘younger generation’ to read and, above all, to understand Job’s words at an early age” (pg. 112, emphases added).