Hope for Unity

In his excellent contribution to The Second Vatican Council, Paul Murray makes a crucial distinction between ecumenical optimism and Christian hope. Optimism, he argues, is “reality-denial,” an assurance that “things are not really bad as they might seem and will all inevitably work out well,” while hope “takes reality in all its starkness radically seriously, even into and through death.” 

In the face of stark evils, hope “knows that our role is not to be the architects and sole producers of a future that is not yet but its servants; that our role is to anticipate this future that is not yet but of which we get a glimpse and taste, and to ask ourselves what it means to live this anticipation now; what it means for us to be conformed to that which we glimpse and taste so that we can grow more fully into it; what it means for us to ‘lean-into’ the presence of the Spirit who is this sure foretaste and down-payment so that we can be held, set on our feet, impelled to action, called to conversion, and made living witnesses to this future in the here and now in ways that will both take us towards it and inspire others also so to travel” (99).

Christian hope is certain that God doesn’t “drive us into corners in order to prod us with sticks,” so if “full structural and sacramental communion is a Gospel imperative, a constant, then so also will God’s resourcing of the churches for this task be a constant” (99). Hope knows that when old strategies and resources are exhausted, God will provide new ones: “Our task is to seek to discern them and to live them with courage, creativity, and fidelity” (100).

Now that is wonderful, a word to every Christian.