“Always
be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your
hope.”
One
of my absolute favorite verses in all of scripture. 1st Peter 3:15. Just proclaimed in
our second reading.
“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.”
It’s
a very rich verse, and if we cut it up and take it apart, there are quite a few
questions we have to ask ourselves.
The
first and most basic is this - do we have hope?
Am I a hopeful person? St. Paul
in his letter to the Corinthians tell us “faith hope and love, and the greatest
of these is love.” But for a Christian,
hope shouldn’t be far behind.
But
we know from experience, maybe from others’ experience, and for many of us our
own experience, well, at times hope is hard to come by. The world wants to beat us up, beat us
down. “Life” is not the bowl of cherries
some would have you believe. Pain and
suffering are part of all of our lives. The
devil, oh and the devil is very real, wants nothing more than for us to give up
hope, to give in to despair.
Maybe
we’re here this morning because we are filled with hope. Maybe some have come here searching for some
glimmer of hope. If you’re at the end of
your rope, and trying to rekindle some glimmer of hope, ask for it. God give me hope. Pray for it.
Show me, O Lord, what there is to be hopeful about.
Ultimately
there’s only one thing to be hopeful about it.
Which leads me to the second question - what is the reason for our hope? And the reason is not a thing at all; the
reason is of course a person - Jesus
Christ. The only hope.
And
our hope in Jesus Christ is found in the event that we continue to celebrate today,
as we have for the past five Sundays – the Resurrection of Our Lord. Easter.
We who gather here share faith that Jesus Christ once was dead but rose
again and now lives eternally with the Father.
And
the meaning of that singular most important event in the history of the universe
is that you and I, too, may share in that resurrection, that you and I, too,
may live forever in the joy of that eternal Divine relationship of Father and
Son. That is our hope. As we walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, that is our only hope.
But
our hope in Christ is in this earthly life, too. He promises us that He is with us even to the
end of the age, that He will walk with us, shepherd us, not to avoid the valley
of the shadow of death but to accompany us on our journey through it.
With
Him by our side we can live hopefully, even joyfully. We recall the words we heard every Sunday,
until they were slightly changed in the recent re-translation of the missal – “In
your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as
we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
And
that, sisters and brothers is the simple but profound answer if anyone asks us
for a reason for our hope. Because we
know Jesus and He is with us on our journey.
That He, and He alone, is our hope.
Now
we might ask ourselves – do I live in such a way that anyone would ever ask me
why I’m hopeful? Why I’m so joyful? Do I exude hopefulness? Am I an example of joyfulness? Do the people who see me see a person of
hope, a person of joy, a person who despite all the sorrow and pain and
difficulties of this life still shines with peace, and joy, and hopefulness?
If
the answer to those questions is “no” or “I’m not so sure,” then what we need
to do, I think, is pray for the outpouring of the third person of the Holy
Trinity, God the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Peter and John prayed down on the
Samaritan people, the same Spirit advocate promised by Our Blessed Lord in this
Gospel.
You
see, in order for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we kind of have to put
ourselves, our self-centeredness, our selfishness, our self-pity, aside. We need to be emptied of all that, so that
the Spirit can fill us. As happened to
the Samaritans, evil spirits had to be case out first, so that they could be
filled with the Holy Spirit.
And
that same Spirit, then, will fill us with hope and all the other gifts of the
Spirit –wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear
of the Lord. We have all these gifts, to
be sure, from our Sacraments of baptism and confirmation, but as we come to the
end of our Easter Season, as we celebrate the Lord’s Ascension this week and
the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in two weeks, let us pray again for
a renewal of that same Spirit in each of us, in all of us. Come Holy Spirit,
Come.
For that same Holy
Spirit is Who, if we ask Him, will fill us with hope, with peace, with joy,
with love. Who will speak through us
when anyone asks what got into us – why are you so joyful, so full of
hope? And Who will give us the courage
to proclaim the Name. The Name of our only hope, Our Blessed Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.
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