An integral part of the World Youth Day gatherings is a series of catechesis: three morning sessions where young people gather to listen to teachings about faith, usually given by bishops. Young people are organized into linguistic groupings and the themes for each day of catechesis are the same, but the individual presenters are free to decide how they will teach and witness to the specific subject given for the day. This morning, I watched the catechesis session offered in English by His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York.
He began by praying with the young people gathered: Jesus, I trust in thee – simple words
which are at the heart of our belief, and the source of our hope.
He then continued by explaining that the subject of this
morning’s teaching is Thirsting for hope;
thirsting for God. Speaking about
hope is not difficult for a person of faith, but focusing the presentation to a
time limit of about 45 minutes is the difficult part.
Hope is found in all kinds of places, sometimes in
circumstances that we least expect. He
told the story of a young lady who he once met, who told him that she had had a
very difficult life, facing the demons of drug addiction and alcohol, until: I met a man who told me that he loves
me. I met a man who told me that he
longs to spend the rest of his life – his eternal life in heaven – with me
because he loves me. Many people tell others that they love them, but
sometimes these words are shallow. When
they are spoken with truth though, they are filled with hope, and can inspire
us to hope. The man who had uttered
these words was Blessed John Paul II, and he filled the soul of this young
woman with hope!
Here are a few other major points Cardinal Dolan raised this
morning during his presentation to the young people:
Hope is based on the belief that promises made will be
fulfilled. We have a God who makes and keeps his promises. Hope is the theological virtue that distinguishes
those who not only believe in a God, but those who believe in a God who wants
to spend eternity with us. The Old
Testament tells us that God asked Abraham to trust him (to hope in him). Prior to this time, all the major religions
had portrayed God as someone who was to be feared, but in Abraham, we were introduced
to a God who has invited us to trust.
New atheism is the
new in thing. Atheists say that they do not have faith,
they do not believe, but do they have hope? They hope in their talents, their
aspirations, their families, their loved ones, but in what would they hope if
all the things they can see and touch were to be lost? Would they lose hope? If not, the thing or person they
could always hope in is God, because God is the ultimate fulfilment of our
hope.
Human beings are hard-wired for God, because our most
ancient longing is for God, a longing and a restlessness which is always with
us, and which is never settled until we find our rest in God.
Saint Augustine was the one who spoke of hope in the best
way: We come from you O God, and our
hearts are restless until we return to you for all eternity. Only God can satisfy the deepest longings of
the human heart! The greatest temptation
in life is to think that someone or something else can completely satisfy us,
but ultimately, no one, nothing can ultimately satisfy our longings except for
God.
Finally, Cardinal Dolan spoke of some threats to hope. He identified four of them:
- ourselves – our sins, failures, imperfections;
- other people – who will sooner or later let us down;
- the world around us – filled with tragedy, suffering, injustice, war, promiscuity, mocking; and
- time – we run out of patience, even with God, but God never tires of us asking for what we need.
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