Hope

  We can take a number of measures for our spiritual life, yet we do not have to move anywhere. There is one big difficulty. God needs to reconcile the seemingly inconsistent. Everything we have and what we are from God. Without him, we can’t do anything. Every progress is due to His grace. But this state can completely demotivate us. We are not happy when we rely on someone. The biggest problem for the homeless is not that he has nothing but that he has no human dignity. He has no experience of being able to take care of himself. He’s in a vicious circle. It suits him that he does not have to do anything, just reach out and someone will take care of him, but it is this way of life that destroys him most.

            God does not want us to be such homeless. That is why he wants us to cooperate in our salvation. But with that there is the opposite risk – pride. Expecting salvation as a merit for your deeds. The manifestation of this endeavor is an unhealthy desire for perfection, when we cannot accept our own sinfulness, we are still disgusted because we are not good enough. Another manifestation is the constant desire to do something to make us feel useful and so on.

            So God wants to make us accept that everything is grace, that is, everything comes from him, but while this truth does not humiliate us and lead us to inaction. Therefore, he invites us to cooperate with him. On the other hand, he wants us not to fall into self-salvation as a result of our activity, and therefore he is letting go of his hands as soon as he perceives that we want to do things ourselves without his help. This is how he wants to bring us to work with him. So salvation is nothing but balancing on this thin line: God’s initiative and man’s response.

            How to best achieve this? God recommends the path of children. Unless you are like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven … (Mt 18: 3). What is the essence of childhood? Hope, unshakable confidence that everything will be good. The child has no big problems. We are often attracted to shots, for example from refugee camps, where parents explain their hopeless situation and the children play happily in the background. This cheerfulness and carelessness often adds strength to adults not to fall into depression and fight. Even if the baby is crying, he does not know the despair and unattainable wishes. The future is straightforward and certain for him.

            Puberty begins where this world finds itself in crisis. When the simple certainty in the procedure begins to disappear. The adolescent is already losing confidence in their parents. Therefore the Lord invites us to spiritual childhood. He wants us to enjoy the world carelessly, love him and trust him that he will take care of everything.

            But the fact is that we are as adolescents in the eternal conflict between ideal and reality. This contradiction adolescents experience passionately and spontaneously. They want different things, they want to solve everything, their solutions are often contradictory and illogical. But there is no way to live in contradictions. A solution is being sought. The character of the future man is created by how he has solved this question. The solutions are personal and therefore diverse, but can be divided into four groups.

            The first is an idealist. To avoid giving up his ideals, he does not want to see the world with his true face. He fights against windmills and tries to follow his ideal.

            The second is a burger. He’s a realist. He sees so well the reality that he has completely lost any ideal. It only survives and has no problem using every circumstance. Indeed, opportunities are for man to seize them. Unnecessarily seeks ideals, prefers to take advantage of the present opportunity.

            Revolutionary. Not all idealists are empty dreamers. Some will become revolutionaries. They see well that the world is not ideal, but why should they accept it? Why couldn’t the old broken system be removed and a new order be established? Although the revolution will succeed, even the newly created order does not correspond to ideals, and therefore new contradictions arise.

            The fourth is an eclectic, a man of choice. He is the most successful. He, too, has many ideals, but realizes that not all are feasible. Therefore, he chose one and sacrificed everything for him, as for the pearl of the parable (cf. Mt 13:45). He will then become a great musician, a scientist, possibly a saint. Or a loser, it can happen. Because when someone bet on one card, they either win or lose everything.

            Each of these four types has its own strength as well as its weakness. The conflict between ideal and reality cannot be resolved completely.

            In Christ, all ideals, all good, all truth, all beauty are embodied. And this Word has become flesh and dwelt among us (cf. Jn 1:14) and will come again at the end of the ages in full glory, and his kingdom will not be over. It follows that all the ideals that a young person dreams of have already begun in history.