The creed of hope

«I am a man of hope because I know that the history of the Church is a long history, all full of the wonders of the Holy Spirit.
Hope is a duty, not a luxury ». The Belgian cardinal Leo Suenens did not allow himself to be intimidated by the difficult times that the Church and civil society in the 1970s were going through.
Factories, universities, family, it was all a ferment, a sign that a world was changing.

He lost the certainties - real or presumed - of the economic boom, the common feeling often resulted in bitter protests against each and every one. For Suenens, however, it was a good time to hope, that of the "spes contra spem" of La Pira twenty years earlier ... And hers is not the easy hope of someone who has never had major problems: «I believe that God is new every morning »he says in '43, when, rector of the University of Leuven, he is included in a list of subjects to be eliminated drawn up by the Nazi occupiers.
Saved at the last moment by the Allies, he continues his work on the subject of liturgical renewal and ecumenism. Great protagonist of the Second Vatican Council, he sees in those months the accomplishment of the first steps of a new season rich in grace, a real "springtime of the Church".

At the Council he reaffirmed the role of the laity in the Church, as authentic bearers of charisms, obtaining that some listeners would speak in the assembly.
He strongly believed that a new Pentecost was taking place, indeed, that a new Pentecost is taking place every day: «It is here, under our eyes, like the light of dawn. And the Church of tomorrow, if it remains faithful to the call, will be similar to the God of hope, "young and eternal together", as Peguy sang ».

Annamaria Gobbato
NP June / July 2021