The Faith I Love Most is Hope

Julián Carrón - Leading an Advent retreat in Milan (IT) Julián explores the themes of hope, waiting, and the unexpected encounter with Christ. Drawing on Péguy, scripture, and contemporary culture, Carrón invites us to embrace the transformative power of hope in this season of Advent.

Father John — I am happy and pleased to welcome Julian Carrón today, and I greet all the parishioners and friends present. This Advent retreat is a gift born out of the friendship that Father Andrea and some parishioners have with Father Julián. I can only say: “This is a truly beautiful experience, an experience of communion, of the Church, of friendship, of fraternity, of the desire to walk together in the grace of this Advent”.

Thank you for accepting the title and the theme as it was born…. I would like to give you a small testimony because it came from simple things. The soundtrack of the things of God is often just simplicity. You must know that every year since my first theology, I had discovered Péguy in the seminary. And so, every year, as a poor pastor, I go and find some of Péguy's texts, reread them, and meditate on them again. While I was preparing for the feast of All Saints, I was looking for texts on holiness that Péguy had written. Then I came across this text from The Porch of the Mystery of the Second Virtue, a text written in 1911 in a moment of darkness when there was much night in his heart. But out of that darkness came a hymn of hope.

The phrase that struck me, which I then shared with Fr. Andrew, for this theme, is precisely today's theme: “The faith I love most, God says, is hope.” I said to myself, “Well, Fr. Julian will help us this Advent to become pilgrims of hope, in the grace of the Jubilee and in our Christian life”. Thank you again for being here with us.

Julián Carrón — I sincerely thank Father John for this welcome because I am even happier to see him so happy. It is a beautiful opportunity to see how we can work together, each one with the grace he has received, for the good of all. “The faith I love, says God, is hope. Advent returns every year. Faced with this inevitable event, each of us can ask ourselves: What is going on inside us? Is it a mere ritual from which we expect nothing more significant than an annual repetition? Or does this event manage to stir something in the depths of our being?

The fact that the Church proposes it to us every year is a provocation in front of which each one of us must decide whether to consider it or to leave it alone. The fact that we are here is already a first response, a sign that we want to take this time of Advent seriously. Advent is an opportunity to be ourselves. This retreat is an attempt to help us not to waste this opportunity, and to offer some reflections that may provoke a deep awakening in us.

Awaiting

Advent calls us to wait. Waiting is constitutive for each one of us, it is part of our nature. Who does not remember Pavese's text? “Has anyone ever promised us anything? So why do we wait?” Why do we discover this waiting in ourselves? At the same time, this waiting, though constitutive, is subjected to the burdens of time and history. It is challenged by a thousand distractions that try to take us away from it, that try to take us away from ourselves and from the deepest truth of ourselves.

Therefore, the simplest question we can ask ourselves at the beginning of this Advent is precisely this: “I, what am I waiting for? What have I caught myself waiting for?” This will enable us to grasp not only the general waiting that we all have by nature, but also the concrete and historical waiting that most presses upon us.

That is why every year is different, and Advent becomes like a thermometer that measures the degree of our waiting. Actually, there is no need to wait for Advent: every morning is a time of waiting. The morning is a particularly important time because it finds us defenseless, unarmed, without having had time to put on any armor to defend ourselves against what invades our minds. Therefore, this moment becomes a precious opportunity to understand what takes over when we wake up, when we take back our lives and look at ourselves and reality.

Advent gives us the opportunity every year to ask ourselves what we are really waiting for. Not what we are waiting for in general, but what we are waiting for here and now. This allows us to discover how our waiting, which makes us who we are, often results in many partial expectations, in images that take the place of the real waiting. Typically, in our mornings, waiting is reduced to the desire to solve our inconveniences, our problems. But when we manage to solve them, we find that these solutions never fully respond to the deep expectation that dwells within us. For the waiting that makes us who, we cannot be manipulated by our attempts and constantly exposes our small or large strategies.

After all, what are we really waiting for? When our strategies fail, waiting can become a nightmare, a lament to ourselves, to work, to the relationships that crowd our minds from the moment we wake up. In the end, we typically settle for a life without much ambition or enthusiasm. This expectation that constitutes us often seems to be lost. We are reminded of this in the Gospel: just as in the days of Noah, “they ate, they drank, they took wives and husbands,” so it was in the days of Lot. They ate, drank, bought, sold, planted and built without thinking of anything else. Jesus describes this reality as a sign of a life reduced to mere survival.

This description is not only from the past, but also concerns us today. Pirandello expresses it well in one of his texts that has always struck me: “I, too, know the external, mechanical apparatus of life that hurries us along like thunder: today this, tomorrow that, always rushing, always with a thousand things to do…”. No one has time to pause and consider if what we are doing is really for us, if it can give us that true certainty in which we can find rest.

Advent is an opportunity to stop and ask ourselves: is what I am doing, what I am experiencing, really me? Because so often, as a young man said years ago, “I lived the days hoping that they would pass quickly, without the slightest awareness of what was happening around me, but especially within me. Pascal explains it this way: “People who are unable to cure death, misery, and ignorance to be happy to have found a way of not thinking about them. Nothing is more unbearable for man than to be in complete silence, without leisure or occupation. At that moment he feels his nothingness, his inadequacy, his emptiness, and sadness, sorrow, and despair follow. So life becomes unbearable. But does it suit us to live like this? Why do these attempts to escape lead us to this situation?

Tarkovsky says that one cannot escape from oneself because wherever we go, we always take our self with us. I was struck by a quote from Amy Winehouse that describes the terror of stopping. She said, “The second I stop, the pain comes back, and I cannot escape it. This terror drives us to fill every moment with our lives because the moment we stop, all the shadows and pain that frenzy keeps at bay emerge. As Cormac McCarthy says, “You can run from anything but yourself.

Therefore, it is essential to rediscover the waiting that makes us who we are. When life becomes unbearable, as it did for the prodigal son, it awakens in him the desire to return home. It is there, in the heart of our experience, that we discover the irreducibility of our self, which no distraction or escape can fill. I fill time, but I do not fill emptiness. It is the perfect summary of many of our days. Even a rapper like Marracash says it: “It's not enough to fill the time, to fill the emptiness.”

That is why the father in the parable of the prodigal son must wait for his son to discover in himself, through the examination of his attempt, what his heart is really waiting for. If the father had anticipated this discovery, the son's response would have been unheard, as is often the case with us. The father did all he could, but only when the son fully felt the dissatisfaction of his life did he open his eyes to what he truly wanted.

Therefore, we do not have to wait until we reach the end of the prodigal son to awaken. We can use this time, as Eliot says, “Do not be afraid of the thirst of the heart. Be not afraid when your things are never enough. Fear not the longing for what you lack. Do not be afraid of the cry of the heart that waits for the impossible. Do not be afraid to want to change. For this thirst, this hunger for abundance, is not something to be feared, but the sign of our deepest humanity.

Christianity tells us, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. We so often fail to recognize who Christ is and what He came to do because only those who hunger and thirst for a fullness that only He can answer can discover it. Hunger and thirst are the criteria for catching the answer, and they push us beyond our vain attempts to fix things in our strength.

An unforeseen event is the only hope.

I was struck by the story of the blind Bartimaeus that the liturgy offered us a few Sundays ago. Bartimaeus, a blind man who sat on the street begging, lived his daily life with the prospect of begging. For him, a contingency was the only hope. Montale said, “A contingency is the only hope.” Although Bartimaeus did not expect it, no one could prevent the unexpected from happening.

This is also our experience. Even in the monotony of our daily routine, something unexpected can happen. Bartimaeus is suddenly faced with a unique opportunity: he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. That name awakens all his humanity, which until that moment had been satisfied with begging for alms. But as soon as he heard about Jesus, all his desire to see was awakened. Therefore, he begins to cry out, “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me!

His realization that he could not satisfy his need to see alone led him to cry out even louder, even though the others tried to silence him. This is the drama we face: to listen to the cry that comes from within, or to allow ourselves to be silenced by the voices that tell us to stop.

Bartimaeus, however, does not give up and cries even louder. Finally, Jesus stops and calls him. When Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”, Bartimaeus replies, “Rabbi, so that I may see again. Jesus does not enter his life by force, but answers his cry, saying, “Go, your faith has saved you. Immediately, Bartimaeus regained his sight. But what is most striking is that Bartimaeus is not satisfied with seeing. Instead of going home to enjoy his new life, he chooses to follow Jesus on the road. Why does he do this? Because he realized that the sight was only the beginning of a greater fullness that this presence had given him a glimpse of.

Bartimaeus, like so many others, is not satisfied. Consider the ten healed lepers: only one goes back to thank Jesus. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, does not want to miss the best of what he has discovered: a presence that not only restores his sight, but also awakens in him a longing for greater wholeness.

This dynamic of the unexpected is what transforms life. Without the unexpected, emptiness reigns and life becomes unbearable. When it happens, however, we recognize it because it changes something. As the Gospel says: “The whole crowd wanted to touch him because out of him came a power that healed everyone. It does not take much reasoning: if you touch him, you will be healed. But we often think we are out of luck because we do not have Jesus physically in front of us. But this reasoning betrays an error: Jesus is not as present to us as he was to them, but we recognize him by the fact that he works, that he heals, that he awakens in us all our desires.

A hope that surprises.

The dynamic of expectation and the unexpected leads us to understand the unique value of hope, that virtue which, as Péguy says, surprises even God. Péguy writes: “The faith I love most, says God, is hope. Faith does not surprise God because it shines everywhere in creation: in the sun, the moon, the stars, in animals, in human beings, and even in the most humble creatures, such as ants. Faith is so evident in creation that one would have to be blind not to see it. Charity, too, does not surprise God, for when one sees the suffering of one's neighbor, it is natural for everyone to feel compassion, unless one has a heart of stone. But hope, God says, “yet, it surprises me”.

Why does hope surprise God? Because it is the virtue that looks beyond the obvious, beyond the present. It is the virtue of those who, despite everything, continue to believe that tomorrow will be better, even when everything seems to indicate otherwise. Péguy says that hope is like an insignificant child, small and fragile, standing between its two older sisters, faith and charity, without attracting much attention. Yet, it is this little child that crosses worlds, that keeps humanity alive.

Hope is a difficult virtue. “Faith is natural,” says Péguy, “because it is so evident in creation that you only have to open your eyes to see it. Charity is natural, it is the first movement of the heart. But hope is not. Hope is difficult. To hope requires great grace because what is most instinctive is to despair. The temptation to despair is always there because it is easier to give up in the face of difficulties than to continue to believe and hope.

Hope as a sign of grace.

Hope, God says, is the virtue that flows from grace. It is a small flame, fragile and trembling, but it withstands all winds. It is like the flame in the sanctuary, which, despite everything, is never extinguished. Hope is surprising precisely because it cannot be explained by our strength alone: it is a gift, a sign that God's grace is at work in us.

But this hope is not an illusion. It is rooted in reality, born of the encounter with a presence that touches and transforms our lives. As with Bartimaeus, it is the encounter with Christ that awakens hope in us and transforms our desire from the partial to the full, from the human to the divine. Hope leads us to desire not only to see, but to live fully in the presence of Christ.

In conclusion, an invitation to live Advent.

This season of Advent is an opportunity to rediscover our expectation, to make room for the unexpected, and to welcome hope as a grace that surprises and transforms us. As Eliot says, “Do not be afraid of the thirst of the heart. Do not be afraid to recognize that things are not enough for you, that you need something greater. Do not be afraid of the desire that drives you to seek wholeness. It is this desire that opens the way to an encounter with Christ, the only one who can truly respond to our expectation.

Advent invites us to live in wonder, recognizing that what we are waiting for is not an idea, but a living and real presence that manifests itself in our lives as a gift. As Péguy says, “Hope is a child who traverses the worlds, who leads us to see what is not yet and what will be”. It is this hope that allows us to live today with eyes and hearts open to God's grace.

Happy Advent to all.

The author has not revised the transcript and its translation.
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