A BAREFOOT HOPE

WHY? If we analyze our prayers carefully, we see that when we pray, it’s to ask for something: Lord, that I have a job, that I have a good husband, Lord, that I have good health, a good result on exams, a good position… In general, we don’t pray for nothing. All this shows that waiting for the Lord’s answer encourages us to maintain hope that He will answer us soon, and so, the days go by, sometimes without the answers we expected.

We find that desires are persistent, and sometimes even the most pious get angry with God when He doesn’t respond positively to their requests, even within a very limited timeframe. Since He doesn’t respond to our rhythm of waiting, it seems that evil things come to us. We begin to doubt the truth that this Jesus healed, forgave, and raised the dead, like the example of his friend Lazarus. And if He did, why not do it today? One doubts and asks if the gospel is true. The question is: Why believe? Why doesn’t He care for us in our suffering? What then can we expect from the Lord?

Waiting barefoot: Knowing that, when we wait for the Lord to act, He already makes us live in hope. Hope after torture: In Romans 4:24-25, like the death of Jesus “delivered up for our trespasses,” His resurrection, which guarantees our justification before God, says, we are already saved, though only in hope.

He took the life of Saint Bakhita as another example: Pain as a Path to Hope. Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese woman who, after being kidnapped and enslaved at a very young age, suffered extreme physical torture. One of the most shocking episodes of her life was when her masters made 145 incisions on her body, which were filled with salt to leave permanent scars. Without anesthesia. Without mercy. This inhuman act, far from destroying her completely, was transformed by God in her life as a starting point toward a profound hope, not in the world or human justice, but in Christ.

Hope from the Scars: Bakhita did not deny or forget her suffering, but reinterpreted it from the perspective of the cross of Christ. She once said, “If I hadn’t gone through all I went through, I wouldn’t be a Christian today.” This kind of hope is not a naive or evasive illusion. It is a hope that springs from pain, not despite it, but through it, like the cross that leads to resurrection. When one of her sisters told her one day, “Are you really living a Calvary?” she replied, “I’m not living Calvary, I live on Tabor.”

In our lives, tears are not contradictions to hope. We must become aware that we live in a world where we live in ambiguous situations and ambiguous responses. The God we love is not easy to find because we wonder if he is only in the good things or if he is also where there is so much injustice… but we must see figures who have persevered and who give us light, like the example of Christ, like Bakhita, Abraham, who did not see the generations symbolized by the stars that God promised would be his children, and that we are today, who are his children. We must follow those figures, sowing and knowing that others will reap.

Marie Claire Silatchom

Spain