Year of Hope: faith brings light to darkness

18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Wis 18:6–9
Second Reading: Heb 11:1–2, 8–19
 Gospel Reading: Lk 12:32–48

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” we hear in this Sunday’s Second Reading. Accordingly, people of faith are also people of hope, or—better—trust.

We are like the Israelites in the First Reading, who had been told beforehand of their delivery from slavery in Egypt “so that they might rejoice in sure knowledge of the oaths in which they trusted.”

We are like Abraham in the Second Reading, who stayed “as in a foreign land, living in tents,” waiting for “the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

We are like the servants in the Gospel Reading, dressed for action, our lamps lighted, “like those who are waiting for their master to return … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of Hope, thus continuing the message of his first encyclical, The Light of Faith, begun by Pope Benedict XVI.

“In God’s gift of faith, a supernatural infused virtue, we realize that a great love has been offered us, a good word has been spoken to us, and that when we welcome that word, Jesus Christ the Word made Flesh, the Holy Spirit transforms us, lights up our way to the future, and enables us joyfully to advance along that way on wings of hope,” Pope Francis said. “Thus wonderfully interwoven, faith, hope, and charity are the driving force of the Christian life as it advances toward full communion with God.”

Many people today reject the idea of faith as a light, for they associate it with darkness, he noted. It appears to give “an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge.”

Other people admit faith only where the light of reason does not lead to certainty. They understand faith “either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed to others as an objective and shared light which points the way.”

Faced with the fact that “the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future,” the Pope noted, people have “renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself.” Instead, they have contented themselves “with smaller lights, which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove incapable of showing the way.” People can no longer distinguish between “the road to our destination” and “roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.”

“Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift,” is the light we need to guide our “journey through time,” the Pope said. It comes “from the past,” from “the life of Jesus, which revealed his perfectly trustworthy love, a love capable of triumphing over death.” However, “since Christ has risen and draws us beyond death,” it also comes “from the future,” guiding us “beyond our isolated selves toward the breadth of communion.”

We need to recover our conviction that “faith does not dwell in shadow and gloom,” but is rather “a light for our darkness,” he said. It is “a time of grace which is helping us to sense the great joy of believing and to renew our wonder at the vast horizons which faith opens up,” so that we can “profess that faith in its unity and integrity,” he said.

Accordingly, as successor of St. Peter, whom Christ told to “strengthen his brothers and sisters,” and calling himself “servant of the servants of God,” Pope Francis proclaimed a Year of Hope.

I encourage you to read the document of proclamation Spes Non Confundit (“Hope Does Not Disappoint”), which you can download from vatican.va.

“To all who read this letter,” the Pope said in its title, “may hope fill your hearts.”