For the Salvation of Souls:
A Preacher's Contribution

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More than 25 years ago I was assigned as a new priest to St. Dominic's
Parish in San Francisco, while I was still studying theology. Enamored by
the following phrase of a German theologian (Jurgen Moltmann), I said in
one of my first homilies that "The goad of the promised future stabs
inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present." Fr. Vincent Cavalli was
the pastor, and I'll never forget when he came up to me afterwards and said,
Ed, why do you say stuff like that in a homily? Well, I was young and wild
then!


I thought of that phrase again as I looked at today's readings, and reflected
on the meaning of Lent, particularly how HOPE suffuses these liturgical
seasons of Lent and Easter. There are really two facets of hope, it seems to
me, one which looks primarily to the future, which we celebrate during
Easter, and which revolves around the resurrection: we look forward to what
will happen to us, the future God has in store for us. And so we hope


for universal peace and reconciliation when Christ returns;


We hope that then the poor/hungry/homeless will finally be
satisfied;


We hope that those who mourn shall be comforted;


We hope in a rule of God that will be at once just and merciful.


Too often, perhaps, we think that this is the only aspect of our hope; and it is
not. Sometimes we so think of our hope as residing solely in the future, that
we don't let it affect and empower our present. And so we go about our
merry way in life where there is


little peace, but much war and strife;


where the poor/hungry/homeless are all too often not satisfied, but
rather forgotten and even persecuted;


when those who mourn are not given comfort; but rather ignored;


where our governments too often are not based upon justice and
compassion, but on power and arrogance,
and we simply wait for all that to change in a future time.

But there is a second facet of hope, which we especially celebrate in Lent,
one that looks both to the future, but also to the present. It is this facet of
hope that sees the future under the judgment of the present in such a way
that "The goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every
unfulfilled present." What Moltmann is saying here is that one of the main
reasons God gives us so much hope for the future is that such hope should
allow us to understand that things should not be the way they are in the
present. Only if we are able to look forward to a time of universal peace and
reconciliation in the promised future will we gain a lively sense of how
unpeaceful and how unreconciled we are now, not just in our world, but in
our own communities, in our own families: and we will not be satisfied with
that because of what we hope for: "The goad of the promised future stabs
inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present."

Because we look forward to a time when the poor and hungry will
be given their fill, we cannot be satisfied with the way things are now with
them, and we're driven to do something about it now, in view of that
promised future.


Because we look forward to a time when those who mourn will be
given comfort, we cannot be satisfied with the way things are now, when so
many around us mourn the evils that have befallen them, and are given no
comfort,, and we're driven to do something about in now, in view of that
promised future.


Because we look forward to a time when we will be governed with
justice and mercy, we cannot be satisfied with the way so many of our
leaders do not govern with justice and mercy, and we're driven to do
something about it now, in view of that promised future, whose goad stabs
inexorably into the flesh of OUR unfulfilled present.


In the Christian tradition the Kingdom of God is not only a future reality, it is
a reality that begins even now, in the present, a reality that is gradually
brought about by the hope of that future kingdom which we know will
eventually come. Lent is a time to reflect on that hope: but in a particular
way, not in the kind of joyous way we do during the Easter season when we
reflect simply on the kingdom as it is promised, but rather hope as it
empowers us to see how unfulfilled things are now in ourselves and in
others, and how much work we have to do, how much work of repentance
we have to do if that Kingdom of God is going to have a chance of being
realized among us.

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