Credo vitam aeternam. Lo decimos en la misa, en los bautismos, en las bodas y en la oración diaria. Sin embargo, si alguien te preguntara ahora mismo: “¿Crees que vivirás para siempre?”, ¿cómo responderías? Si realmente crees lo que profesas, deberías responder con un inequívoco “¡Sí!”.
Pero para el “hmm… no estoy seguro” que hay dentro de nosotros, esperamos con alegría el Jubileo Ordinario de 2025, designado como “Año de la Esperanza” por el Papa Francisco, que comenzará esta Nochebuena. Se arrodillará en el umbral de la Puerta Santa de la Basílica de San Pedro y rezará para que el Jubileo “despierte en nosotros… el anhelo por los tesoros del cielo” (Oración del Jubileo). Ese anhelo es la esencia de la esperanza cristiana. Nuestras almas fueron creadas para tener hambre y sed de unión con Dios de una manera que subordina y reorienta todos nuestros demás deseos.
“Hope,” we read in the Catechism, “is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). As a theological virtue, hope, along with faith and charity, relates directly to God and adapts our faculties for participation in divine nature (cf. CCC 1812). God has “poured out” the Holy Spirit “upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:6-7).
Of supreme assistance in rekindling our yearning for the “treasures of heaven” is a reappreciation of the moment when we first made our profession of faith (or someone made it on our behalf): Baptism. In the waters of Baptism, our death was inextricably joined with Christ’s. Saint Paul teaches that, in Baptism, we die with Christ, we are buried with Him, and we rise with Him: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). In Baptism, we “put on Christ” because through the Holy Spirit we are cleansed of sin, justified, and sanctified (cf. 1 Cor 6:11; 12:13).
A rediscovery of the amazing grace we received at Baptism helps us to remember that Christian hope regards not only the future, but the present. It expresses an encounter with God that is not only “informative,” but “performative,” in that such an encounter can “change our lives, so that we know we are redeemed” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 4 [emphasis added]). We wake up each day in the hope of a new heaven and a new earth. We go to bed in the hope that, at the end of time, the Reign of God will reach its fullness. We live each moment in the hope that, at the universal judgment, the just will reign forever with Christ glorified in His body and soul, and the entire world will be renewed. We live from year to year in the hope that the Church will reach her perfection in the glory of heaven and that the universe “will be perfectly re-established in Christ” (Gaudium et Spes, 39).
To live in the hope of such realities is to have no doubt that they will be fulfilled. To live in hope means to answer unhesitatingly, “Yes, I will live forever!” To live in hope means that, “according to his promise, we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). The expression “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13), rooted in Isaiah (cf. Is 65:17), was understood by early Christians precisely as the renewal of humanity and of the entire world that would occur at Jesus’s second coming. Saint Paul describes it as the “recapitulation” of all things “in the heavens and on the earth” (Eph 1:10), when God will make His abode among us and wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be no death, nor mourning, nor calamity, nor pain, and the new creation will be the last as the prior will fade away (Rev 21:4).
Perhaps most importantly, this consummation at the end of time will be the definitive fulfilment of the unity of the human race desired by God. And do we ever need it! God desired our unity from the moment of creation, and the pilgrim Church is a “sign” of this unity (Cf. Lumen Gentium, 1). Those who will have been united to Christ will form the community of the redeemed, the “holy City” of God (Rev 21:2), and the “bride of the Lamb” (Rev 21:9). The Church will no longer be wounded by the stain of sin, by love of itself, or by anything that can wound or destroy the community of mankind on earth. It will consist in the beatific vision in which God will be opened in an inexhaustible way to all, a perennial source of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.
“Desplegad las velas y dejad que Dios nos conduzca adonde Él quiera”, exhortaba san Beda el Venerable. Si confiamos verdaderamente en que Dios tiene el control de nuestra vida y del mundo entero, nada nos impedirá dejar que Él nos conduzca adonde Él quiera, precisamente porque, en Cristo, tenemos la seguridad de que llegaremos allí con su ayuda.
¡Sí, vivirás para siempre!
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