One way to find hope is to learn from those who walk in faith and have experienced trials, illnesses, or death. Just as all people are noble and sacred, everyone’s death experience is precious. We all have to pass through the arduous and challenging gate of death, experience extreme pain, suffering, loneliness, and bitterness before we die, and wrestle with the question of hope in the face of death.
Finding a thread of hope is listening to the stories of such ‘witnesses of hope.’ The character Job in the Bible symbolizes a righteous person who suffers unjustly. He prayed to God in a critical situation, argued with God, and wrestled with Him. He stood before God and tried to solve his problems with Him, and eventually, he could meet God and reach a high level of wisdom.
Many poems of lamentation or petition to God are found in the Psalms of the Old Testament. In his book “Mercy”, Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany says the following:
“The psalms of petition in the Old Testament ( 6, 13, 22, 31, 44, 57, etc.) all come from great hardships of being abandoned by God, and they speak of great existential shocks. Nevertheless, these psalms never end in despair, but rather with the conviction that God is by one’s side in times of trouble. Each psalm of petition has a dramatic reversal from complaint to praise. The psalms of petition do not end with complaints, condemnation, or despair, but always end with praise and thanksgiving.”
The cries of a believer in the midst of suffering make his prayers not a ‘transaction’ with God, but a place of internal ‘purification’ and a ‘school’ where he learns hope. It is to realize that God is the only object of our hope and reliance. Father Chastan, a French missionary who was martyred on September 21, 1839, while working as a missionary in Korea, left the following letter:
“Just as I was entering the Diocese of Joseon, five believers were being tortured in the prison of Seoul. When I heard about the tortures they were subjected to, I was so weak-hearted that I trembled with fear. After that, the Lord, who had given me grace, made me no longer fear. Among the believers who were enduring the tortures in the prison, there were many old believers and new believers who received the sacraments from me, and children as young as 15 or 10 years old. These people, who endured the tortures so steadfastly, aroused the admiration of believers and non-believers outside the prison and strengthened our hearts to a surprising degree.” (Letter of September 1, 1839)
Pope St. John Paul II's powerful testimony also inspires a passion for hope in our hearts.
“You are young, and the Pope is old. Life at the age of eighty-two is not the same as life at twenty-two. But the Pope still shares your hopes and aspirations completely. Although I have lived through many darknesses under harsh totalitarian regimes, witnessing various ordeals has given me the strong conviction that no difficulty or fear is so great as to completely suppress the hope that rises eternally in the hearts of young people. You are our hope. Young people are our hope. Do not give up hope! Entrust your life to hope!” (From a sermon at the 2002 Toronto World Youth Day)
The witnesses of hope urge us not to lose hope in the midst of our lives threatened by despair, and to continue to fight for hope.
