Rogerio Cietto
Christian, what is your hope? Pray to win the lottery? Work hard to create and maintain your family? Waiting for public authorities to solve all your problems? Escape from big cities and live in the countryside? Build an underground shelter and await the destruction of humanity? If any of these is your hope, you can sit tight, because your hope is vain and meaningless. I explain. Or rather, I will let the Word of God explain your lack of hope. 'How happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord, in his God,' Psalm 145 (146), 5. You are placing your hope in the things of this world, such as money, your individual effort, the material, scientific and technological progress of humanity. They are gifts from God to us, but they perish as the moth consumes it and the thief steals it, and they do not bring true hope. Learn from the saints of the Church, who have stored up treasures in heaven and are there in eternal happiness and union with God. They simply followed the Divine Model of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Eternal Truth, Way of Salvation and Full Life. Of course, each of the saints had a different way of life, they were married or celibate, lived in poverty or were kings of great nations; all they had to do was live the Gospel well, simply and faithfully, defying the persecution, temptations and lusts that we all have to face. Since the beginning of human history we have been challenged, and since Adam and Eve we have discovered the price of leaving the path suggested by God. With our first parents everything was good, since they had been created by God as we see in Genesis. But with the redemption by Jesus Christ we find an even better place, where we can go if we have waited devotedly and acted accordingly. It turns out that scientific and technological progress, which we have experienced from the end of the 20th century to the present day, has made the vast majority of humanity believe that it is possible to achieve everything good in this world with sufficient knowledge and resources to spend in this regard. In fact, we have made unimaginable progress in technique and science in the last fifty years. People believed that in our time we would have cures for all types of diseases, teleportation, (good) printed food and complete dominion over nature. Anyone who was a fan of Star Trek must remember the famous phrase: 'Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, on its mission to explore new worlds, seek out new lives and civilizations, going where no man has gone before.' In practical terms, the proposal is: let’s get together a group of people with a high degree of curiosity, willing to leave their families behind (or take them to space), risk their lives and spend their entire existence wandering around, searching for knowledge. This was their hope, to seek knowledge. Now compare this motivation with that described by Pero Vaz de Caminha on Portugal’s first arrival in Brazil, in the squadron led by Pedro Álvares Cabral: 'However, the best result that can be taken from it seems to me to be saving these people. And this must be the main seed that Your Highness must sow in it. And if there was nothing more than having Your Highness here, this inn for this navigation of Calicut was enough. How much more, willingness to comply with it and do what Your Highness so desires, namely, adding to our faith!'
