Hope is the hands which shape the rubble into some sort of shelter for the night when the house is ruined. It cannot be separated from its theological sisters, Faith and Love, but is not to be confused with optimism which is a conceited and secular cousin inherited like a passing bout of influenza from the ease and pride of life. Sheila remembered how two of her fellow prisoners helped her to reshape the rubble of her courage when she lay exhausted, terrified and bleeding after torture by the Chilean police. It is love, Paul repeats in the second reading to the church at Thessalonika, that will confirm our hearts in holiness and make us ready and blameless for the second coming of Christ. Such love is not to be practised in protected or remote corners of life.
Christians are to expand their love to the whole human race , as well as to one another.
This is Paul s prayer for his community, because to be able to walk in such love is a gift of God to those whose hearts are open to spiritual growth and maturity. Paul s end-time vision is realistic about the tension between the now of God s coming in grace to us and the not yet of our final transformation. In the meantime church in which we live, we are called to shape the rubble of our everyday lives sickness, disappointment, anxiety, personal failure, disillusionment with ourselves or our church into a house where God is invited and comes as a welcome and healing guest. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul , we repeat in the responsorial Psalm 25 antiphon as we are called to raise the eyes of our hearts and look with confidence to the Son of Man. To Wait , read a newspaper headline during the recent presidential impasse.