By Neville Kyrke-Smith*
In this Jubilee Year of Hope, we might well wonder what Christian hope is and where it is to be found. Thinking of conflicts and suffering in today’s world, it is almost counter-intuitive to say that hope is most often revealed at times of abandonment and seeming nothingness.
For more than 30 years, I was National Director of Aid to the Church in Need UK, and involved in this international Catholic charity which helps persecuted, oppressed and needy Christians. I had the privilege and challenge of travelling to many places where Christians had suffered or were suffering for their faith.
Persecution and oppression have not gone away. Indeed, you just have to look at somewhere like northern Nigeria. More persecution of Christians is taking place there than anywhere else in the world. In just 12 years, 43,000 Christians have been killed by fanatical terrorists. Whilst other communities have also suffered, the Christians have been deliberately targeted, with more than 17,500 churches attacked. More than 2,000 Christian schools have been attacked and 4 million people displaced.
Yet, so often it is in the rubble of suffering and torment, amongst refugees, that hope is found; both in the faithful themselves and in the charity provided by Christians and others. Often too, vocations to the priesthood and religious life arise after times of torment.
I remember being in northern Iraq, in Al Qosh, back in in 2016. An 89-year-old lady sheltered from the heat in the shade of a small stone building where her family lived. She said something as I passed by. In Aramaic – Our Lord’s language – she said: “I am praying for you. Will you pray for me?” She and her family had fled from their home in terror as ISIS (Da’esh) attacked. ISIS forces were just ten minutes away from where we met.
Later that same day, in Erbil, northern Iraq, I visited refugees from ISIS sheltering in a half-built office block which a compassionate Muslim businessman had given to the Chaldean Church. In this incomplete building, with no windows and just concrete walls and floors, an old Yazidi lady held my hand as I sat on the rug with her and told me that it had not been for ‘Abouna’, Father, she would have died, along with so many of her families.
In the next room, in a doorway without a door, I met Nareeman from Mosul, who had taken refuge with her mother, brothers and sisters. She had been a student at university in Mosul and spoke perfect English. I naively asked: “Do you have hope?” and she looked taken astonished and replied: “Hope? Of course we have hope – we are Christians – we have hope in Jesus.” I felt truly put in my place!”
This hope amongst the rubble is really our resurrection faith. I recall Mountaha in Lebanon telling me how she had fled with her family and very sick husband from ISIS as they had attacked her village in Syria. Mountaha said: “We have the faith of Jesus and Mary – we are still alive!”
Her words are echoed by so many around the world who are enduring such suffering today for their Christian faith and love. A Catholic Coptic seminarian in Egypt said quite simply to me, when I visited on behalf of the charity: “It is a privilege as you help us, for we believe that the only way is Jesus – the way of the Cross and the way of the Resurrection.”
So in this Year of Hope, we can reflect and meditate on Pope Francis’ powerful document Spes Non Confundit, ‘Hope does not disappoint’ (Rom 5:5). He speaks, amongst many important points, about the “Signs of the Times” and “Signs of Hope” including the need for peace, the desire to transmit life and the need to transmit hope to the young.
Pope Francis writes (paragraph 3): “Hope is born of love and based on the love springing from the pierced heart of Jesus upon the cross: ‘For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life’ (Rom 5:19 ) “. He speaks (paragraph 5) of the interplay of hope and patience which “makes us see clearly that the Christian life is a journey calling for moments of greater intensity to encourage and sustain hope as the constant companion that guides our steps towards the goal of our encounter with the Lord Jesus.”
Furthermore, on Pilgrimage, Pope Francis then writes (paragraph 5): “In a particular way, I would like to invite the faithful of the Eastern Churches, particularly those already in full communion with the Successor of Peter, to take part in this pilgrimage. They have suffered greatly, often even unto death, for their fidelity to Christ and the Church, and so they should feel themselves especially welcome in this City of Rome that is also their Mother and cherishes so many memories of their presence. The Catholic Church, enriched by their ancient liturgies and the theology and spirituality of their Fathers, monks and theologians, wants to give symbolic expression to its embrace of them and their Orthodox brothers and sisters in these times when they endure their own Way of the Cross, often forced by violence and instability to leave their homelands, their holy lands, for safer places. For them, the hope born of the knowledge that they are loved by the Church, which does not abandon them but follows them wherever they go, will make the symbolism of the Jubilee all the more powerful.”
In such meditations and reflections in this Jubilee Pilgrimage Year of Hope of we can also begin to rediscover hope, as we think of suffering and the witness to Christ; for the Hope we share was extended to all by the open arms of Christ on the Cross.
* National Director of Aid to the Church in Need UK for 31 years. In this role, he travelled widely, including to the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus. In 2021, he was awarded a Papal Knighthood of St Gregory in recognition of this work.
