Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has gone home to the Father, and as we remember his life and legacy and reflect on the large body of teaching and spiritual wisdom he left, we are reminded that he was a man of great hope. He believed that hope is rooted in our acceptance of God’s love for us, and this in turn gives us the confidence to look to the future as we make the journey to eternity.
The dawn of a new year is a time when we aspire to be more hopeful so let these 5 quotes by the humble and brilliant Benedict XVI inspire you to be filled with hope in the days and months to come.
We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. — Spe Salvi, Nov. 30, 2007
“Look to the future with hope: trust in God; reconciliation is the fruit of inner change,” Benedict XVI said while speaking in Portuguese, Angola’s official language. The Pope called on all the faithful to realize that the Church, in Angola and throughout Africa, is meant to be a sign before the world of that unity to which the whole human family is called through faith in Christ the Redeemer. — Message from March 22, 2009 trip to Angola
To have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above all, to men, to try to see the image of God in each person and thereby to become a lover.
Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
One who has hope lives differently.
And today we celebrate...