A Reflection for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20 Luke 6:17, 20-26
Alexander Herzen dedicated his last work, From the Other Shore, to his son, then 15, addressing him as “My Friend Sasha.” The 19th-century Russian socialist admitted that he had not succeeded in abolishing selfdom or liberating his homeland from autocracy. “I have sacrificed much, but not the courage of knowledge,” he wrote.
That curious coinage, “the courage of knowledge” was all that he could give to his son, who would inherit the struggle “against an obsolete, slavish and spurious set of ideas, against absurd idols, which belong to another age and which linger on meaninglessly among us, a nuisance to some, a terror to others.”
In the 21st century, we recognize that we are doomed to disagree about what constitutes “the courage of knowledge.” What are the old, absurd idols to be overthrown? “Slavish and spurious ideas” can be both old and new. It is only learning, critical thought and sometimes costly experience that show the way forward.
Herzen told his son:
In your life there will be other questions, other conflicts…there will be no lack of toil and suffering. You are only fifteen, and already have experienced some terrible shocks.
Then, he humbly added:
Do not look for solutions in this book—there are none; in general modern man has no solutions. What is solved is finished, and the coming upheaval is only beginning.
He set it in a secular key, but Alexander Herzen was schooling his young son in the Christian virtue we call hope. Like faith and charity, it is a strength in life that comes from contact with the living God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines hope as:
the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (§1817).
Christian hope, we might say, only begins when human optimism is exhausted. It is the river we forge because we can no longer stay on this side.
Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus’ preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the “hope that does not disappoint” (Rm 5:5). Hope is the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul…that enters…where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb 6: 19-20) (§1820).
For us as Christians, “the courage of knowledge” is not a formula, not a doctrine. It is an act of trust, one born by an intimate relationship with the person whom we trust. Christ is the knowledge that gives us courage because to know Christ is to learn that we are loved by him. Put another way, if you do not know that you are loved, you know Christ only as an idea, not as a person.
Herzen told his son Sasha that all we can do is to build a bridge to the future.
But do not, I beg, remain on this shore…. Better to perish with the revolution than to seek refuge in the almshouse of reaction. The religion of the coming revolution is the only one that I bequeath to you. It has no paradise to offer, no rewards, except your own awareness, except conscience.
The text is quite secular, but the insight—that conscience and awareness matter most—lies at the heart of our faith. If revolt against injustice, oppression and sorrow begins in the heart, it will not die. The broken heart is the tomb from which Christ rises.
If revolt against injustice, oppression and sorrow begins in the heart, it will not die. The broken heart is the tomb from which Christ rises.
The catechism closes its discussion of hope by quoting St. Teresa of Avila, whose hope lay not in an agenda but in her beloved.
Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end (§1821).
