Memorial of Saint Benedict, abbot

The musketeer
at Saint Xavier University
Cincinnati 

A new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt.

I think there are few more ominous sentences in all of scripture than this eighth verse of the Book of Exodus. It stands as a sobering challenge to everything we think should or must happen.

In the 1950’s the actor Ronald Reagan taught us baby boomers, “Progress is our most important product.” I learned to expect improvement in every field of life. Technology led the way, of course; but it was followed closely by prosperity. Prosperity would enable equal opportunity and civil rights for African Americans, women and homosexuals. This child of an Irish Catholic mother was assured that barriers against Catholics and Irish had already been blown aside.

The Second Vatican Council promised greater participation of the laity in church; increasing collaboration among Christian denominations; and a more lively experience of the liturgy, especially the Mass. When I was ordained in 1975 I expected to hear more Catholics singing, and to see most Catholics receiving the Precious Blood from the cup. “Soon and very soon” Catholics would celebrate the daily Liturgy of the Hours. There was even discussion of women’s ordination and married priesthood in those heady days after the Council.

But, as the drug dealer Sportin Life sang in ­Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so….”

The optimism I was taught is called determinism. It’s a belief that life is always getting better, that we move from success to success, and our achievements are irrevocable. In recent years we’ve heard that the Internet is here to stay, that we will always have a presence in outer space, and that slavery is a thing of the past. I’ve heard that gay marriage will certainly be accepted by all fifty states and the Western world in general. I was also told, or led to believe, that religions were dying, especially Islam. It ain't necessarily so.

I now believe that no one knows the future and all predictions are idle speculation.

The virtue of hope is not determinism. Hope is founded on the promises of God but how God must work out his promises no one knows. The Jews foresaw neither the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem nor his death on Calvary. Jesus’ disciples did not expect him to rise from the dead. A catechism for children might suppose these revelations were obvious. Surely everyone could see Jesus was the Christ! Surely his disciples knew everything would be okay. Don’t the good guys always win in the end? It ain't necessarily so.

History is full of setbacks. I’m reading now Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Iran’s “advances” into western culture were “reversed” by Ayatollah Khomeini’s assumption of power. Suddenly an “enlightened” culture slipped “back” into “darkness,” and the hard won freedoms of Iran’s women were cancelled. It wasn’t supposed to happen but it did. Will the Arab spring of 2011 lead to true democracy in the mid-east? Come back in fifty years.

Saint Paul wrote to the Romans:

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.

Determinism wants to show you what it sees in the future and sabotage your need for hope. But Christians have a long memory. We have enjoyed freedom of worship and we have suffered persecution for our faith. We know that only God’s promises remain sure and certain, and the glorious promises of this world are fleeting at best. Pharaohs come and go; some of them know Joseph; most do not; but

…I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.