By Fr. Thomas Brouillette
Vicar General
I think I was 11 years old. It was a warm summer day. The grass was a beautiful green, and there were just a few clouds in the sky. One of my older brothers and a good friend of his, Mike, were getting tired of me wanting to run around with them. I couldn’t blame them.
The only way to stop me from doing so was to secure me to the ground, spread eagle in the green grass with my face to that summer sky. Plastic orange tent stakes were buried in the ground and from them, ropes tied to my wrists and ankles.
If memory serves, I didn’t put up that much of a fight. After a time of looking up at the sun and the trees from that precarious position on the grass that nice summer day, it was getting uncomfortable. And there was no way for me to free myself from these strongholds. I was now alone. The only hope I had of being freed was that someone would set me free. It was not possible for me to free myself. Even though it was uncomfortable, I had a sure and certain hope that someone would save me from the bondage, eventually!
As Pilgrims of Hope who continue on the journey to eternal beatitude and the freedom of God’s children, we heard in this past Sunday’s gospel from Luke about the new teaching of Jesus—the beatitudes. Blessed are those who are poor, who are hungry, who are weeping, and who are hated for the sake of Christ. And a warning of ‘woes’ we must be freed from- the ‘riches’ of self-righteousness, the gluttony of self-indulgence, the laughing off of our sins, and being praised for not having lived life in Christ. Living out this ‘new teaching’ of Jesus helps to set us free from the bonds of death.
The Catechism tells us about Christian hope and these beatitudes…
“Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus’ preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus.”
But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the “hope that does not disappoint.” 88 Hope is the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul... that enters... where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.”89
Whatever may be tying us down, or wherever in our hearts we may find strongholds that need to be untied to set us free, we have hope in what Jesus can and will do. Even if we are still ‘tied down’ by those bonds of sin, the bond that is far stronger and no match for evil in our life is the love of Christ. He can do far more than we think, and so can the virtue of hope.
The same paragraph in the Catechism tells us…
Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: “Let us... put on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” 90 It affords us joy even under trial: “Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation.” 91 Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.
His love for us is far greater than our love for Him. His faith in us is far greater than our faith in Him. And his hope for us is far greater than our hope in Him.
I’m happy to tell you that it was that same brother who had bound me with tent stakes and ropes who was the one to set me free not very long after I had been ‘captured,’ and my hope for freedom was realized through his ‘repentance,’ or pity, but whichever it was, he was the one greater than the strongholds. It was a gift to have been set free from those bonds ‘of death.’
As we continue walking on the Way as pilgrims of hope let us build one another up with the assurances of faith, that Christ Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death, will set us free from the bonds of death and raise us up on the last day.
Our Father, who art in heaven....
