Spe salvi

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Coat of arms of Pope Benedict XVI.

Spe Salvi ( lat. "On hope (we are) saved") is the second encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI. and deals with the concept of hope . It was released on November 30, 2007.

The predominantly theological text stretches from Paul's letter to the Romans through the hope of the early Christians, the Church Father Augustine, to modern thinkers. The main theme of hope, with which Benedict XVI. concerned in this encyclical, is after “ Deus caritas est ” (God is love) the second encyclical of his (partly still planned) encyclical trilogy on the three divine virtues faith - hope - love.

Contents of the encyclical

The encyclical is divided into the following sections (digits denote the paragraph numbers):

  • Introduction (1)
  • Faith is hope (2 - 3)
  • Understanding the Hope of Faith in the New Testament and the Early Church (4-9)
  • Eternal life - what is it? (10 - 12)
  • Is Christian Hope Individualistic? (13 - 23)
  • The True Shape of Christian Hope (24-31)
  • Places of learning and practice of hope
  • I. Prayer as a school of hope (32-34)
  • II. Doing and suffering as learning places of hope (35 - 40)
  • III. The judgment as a place of learning and practice of hope (41 - 48)
  • Mary, star of hope (49 - 50)

introduction

“PES SALVI facti sumus” - “in hope we are saved”, with these words Pope Benedict XVI begins. his encyclical, using the letter Paul to the Romans ( Rom 8:24  EU ) as his starting point :

“For in hope we were saved; But hope that is already being seen is not hope; because what one looks, what can he hope for? "

The Pope wants to present to Christians of today his views on essential questions about this central word of biblical faith: “What kind is this hope that allows us to say, from it and because it exists, are we redeemed? And what kind of certainty is there? "

Virtues and truth

The Pope sees hope as a divine virtue (alongside faith and love ) in the biblical sense as an anticipation of a definitive fulfillment of human longing in God's love . The category of earthly progress should not be confused with the expectation of eternal life with God. Progress must take its measure of truth from moral good in order to be truly human.

Benedict also sees the Christian truths of faith in the last things ( death and judgment , heaven , hell , purgatory ) as the touchstone of Christian hope. Whereby Karl Marx is also quoted, albeit with reservations, since he has secularized Christian hope and with his idea of ​​a hoped-for paradise in the classless society contributed to its perversion into inhumanity.

Modern times and hope

The Pope is generally against the transformation of the Christian faith in hope in modern times and also sets important socio-political accents. He criticizes Francis Bacon's pure belief in progress and in redemption through science and technology, the contradicting rule of reason and freedom in the French Revolution, and Marxism , which treats and treats people as the product of economic conditions without their freedom, without their humanity brought hopeless destruction. The encyclical emphasizes that true Christian hope - like the love of God - cannot be experienced individually, but only collectively. The Pope attaches great importance to freedom, which "always demands a coexistence of freedoms", but which can only succeed if people have a common inner dimension. It is reason, the great gift of God, he states, that must remain connected to God, since reason and faith need each other to fulfill their tasks. “It is not the laws of matter and evolution that are the last resort, but understanding, will, love - one person”, God with a human face, emphasizes the pontiff. Because “freedom always remains freedom to do evil”, progress without moral responsibility could become a threat. The Pope is convinced that the best social structures can only prove themselves if they receive the free consent of the people, and draws the consequence from this that the structures could never become a perfect human kingdom of good, because human freedom is with it would be negated and the structure would not be good after all. “Freedom must always be won anew for what is good,” pleads the Catholic head of the church.

In the following sections, the thoughts of Pope Benedict XVI. summarized without indirect speech so that they can be better reproduced in their originality:

Hope concepts

The encyclical "Spe salvi" illuminates the various concepts of hope. Everyone has and needs hopes, even everyday ones. The foundation of the greatest hope, however, can only be God, who showed himself to be love in Jesus: “His love alone gives us the opportunity, in all sobriety, to withstand time and again in a world that is essentially imperfect, without losing the vigor of hope . ”The biblical hope for the kingdom of God not only means the anticipated and deeply expected eternal life, it also affects the present:“ His kingdom is where he is loved and where his love reaches us ”. The hoped-for future through faith is already there in seed form. The present reality of the future thus becomes "evidence" ( hypostasis ) for the future reality that there must be an afterlife in the infinite love of God. Hope thereby gains certainty, the positive reality of the future in turn affects the present: life receives real meaning, its hardships become bearable, "so that we know ourselves redeemed through the hope that it means." This is how the gospel of Jesus can Christ , the good news about the redemption of man, the salvation of the soul from the finality of death, not only " informative " but " performative " (changing): "He who has hope lives differently; a new life has been given to him been ".

Eternal life

One should try to imagine eternal life with God not as an endless change of day, but as a fulfilled state without temporality, “in which the whole surrounds us and we surround the whole”, like a “moment of immersion in the ocean of the infinite Love ”which is“ life in its fullest sense ”.

Lights of hope

People who show the other way and goal of meaningful, real life are indispensable earthly "lights of hope", their work is also "a proof that what is to come, the promise of Christ, is not just expectation but real presence" and reliable hope is: “God showed himself in Christ. He has already communicated to us the “substance” ( hypostasis ) of what is to come, and so waiting for God receives a new certainty. ”The life paths of saints make clear in the encyclical how the encounter with Jesus and so with hope, the life of believers can change and thereby influence the development and design of the world. “ Christianity did not bring a socially revolutionary message”, rather one goal of the Christian faith is “the victory of reason over unreason”. The relativization of the meaning of material possession ( hyparchonta ) compared to possession of belief ( hyparxin ) as the basis of existence does not bring the believer any compulsion, but freedom of hope and a wealth that no one can take away. An early Christian example illustrates how common hope can change a society from within, even if the external structures remain the same, how interpersonal relationships can become fraternal and sisterly even with different social statuses of individuals in concern for the weak and suffering: "Hope in the Christian sense is always hope for others."

Practice of Christian Hope

The longer chapter “Places of hope and practice of hope” analyzes the practice of Christian hope. The prayer , as a personal and community encounter with God is also an internal cleansing, awakens the conscience , recognize each other there and is capable of great hope. God can always listen to us and help us with our everyday hopes. “The person praying is never completely alone” - a sentence that recalls the motto of Pope Benedict's visit to Bavaria : “Whoever believes is never alone”. The kingdom of God is a gift, we can not “build” it with what we do, but doing the right thing is always part of the fulfillment of hope. And even if all of our everyday hopes remain unfulfilled, the great hope gives courage for our further actions, "to take the side of the good, even where it seems hopeless". The ability to endure suffering, suffering with others, for others, out of love, or for the sake of truth and justice, is not only a measure of humanity , it depends directly “on the manner and measure of hope we have carry in us and on whom we build ”- this is shown to us most clearly by saints.

Hope for justice

The Last Judgment (Last Judgment) is the judgment of the dead by God. The atheism of the 19th and 20th centuries denied the existence of God because of the injustices of history, but with the most cruel self-righteousness . Others have questioned the righteousness of God. But the story of Jesus' passion gives the certainty of hope that God creates justice , namely “in a way that we cannot think of and that we are allowed to foresee in faith”: through the resurrection of the dead, past suffering is made good and justice is restored. “Therefore, belief in the Last Judgment is first and foremost hope”. People's longing for immortal love is an important reason for Christian hope, but the longing for universal justice, where injustice is not the last word in history, is the strongest argument for faith in the returning Christ and eternal life.

“The justice of the Last Judgment is an intermingling of punishment and grace .” What is guilty is painfully punished, in the destructive but at the same time saving purgatory - it is perhaps Jesus himself - burned. It is a blissful pain through which the purified man is preserved for the eternal love of God if he keeps at least a small inner corner open for Jesus. There are also people who in their “life” only bore hatred and who completely exterminated love in themselves, from whom nothing can be cured - “some figures in our history in particular reveal such profiles in a frightening way”. A state of irrevocably destroyed good: "This is what the word hell means".

Hope and salvation

The Last Judgment is not a threat, even if it was often depicted iconographically in the past (the images of heaven also remain far removed from what it embodies in faith), but rather a positive source of motivation. Precisely looking ahead to future judgments has given Christianity its present formative power - as a moral standard, a requirement of conscience and hope for God's justice. The practical chapter closes a core idea in popular form: “As Christians we should never just ask ourselves: How can I save myself? But also: How can I serve so that others are saved and that the star of hope rises for others? Then I did most of it for my own salvation. "

Marian prayer

A long prayer to " Mary , Star of Hope " forms the last chapter of the thoughtful and also "performative" encyclical of the Pope.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, our mother, teach us to believe and hope and love with you. Show us the way to his kingdom. Star of the sea , light up us and guide us on our way! "

Quotes

  • " Suffering is just as much a part of human existence as doing."
  • "We know that there is this God and that therefore there is power in the world which 'takes away the guilt of the world' ( Jn 1:29)."
  • “Especially when people try to avoid suffering and try to evade everything that could mean suffering (...), they drift into an empty life in which there is perhaps hardly any pain, but all the more the dull feeling of senselessness and the There is lost. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deus caritas est , first encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI. (2005)
  2. ↑ “Christianity is a positive option” ( Memento of February 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), television interview with Pope Benedict XVI. on August 5, 2006 in Castelgandolfo

literature

  • M. Reményi / J.-H. Tuck, keep hope alive. Experiment on the encyclical Spe salvi, in: J.-H. Tück (Ed.), The Theologian Pope. A critical appreciation of Benedict XVI. Freiburg 2013, pp. 58–82.

Web links

Original text

Appreciations