By Rev. Josh McDermid
“Your sorrow will turn to joy.” We are presented in this Gospel passage with this paradox. We hear Jesus telling his disciples something that would have been confounding, “in a short time you will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see me again.” Whereas we, of course, have the benefit of knowing exactly what Jesus is doing; He is foretelling His death and resurrection.
For us as Christians, this is a central mystery of our faith and of how we fundamentally understand life. To most people the idea that from sorrow comes joy is extremely counterintuitive to say the least, just as the idea that there could be a ‘Good’ Friday is mystifying. That from death comes resurrection. This does give us a profound advantage in interpreting the events of life, because inevitably life is not all good times and successes. We all experience grief, difficulties, and failures. If the story were simply to end with death, then life would truly lack hope, we would indeed live in a constant state of weeping and wailing. And tragically, when we look around us, particularly, it seems, at people our own age or younger, it would appear that this is the outlook that many have.
That is, many people seem to live, to a large degree, without hope. As Christians we have hope not as some sort of superficial positivity, with insincere smiles plastered on our faces. No. We have hope firmly grounded in the Resurrection. Grounded in the fact that love has conquered death, that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.
As baptised Christians, and particularly as priests of the future, we know that we have a mission and a duty to spread the Good News. And as we are no doubt aware, we are in a Jubilee Year, and the papal bull for the jubilee is titled “Spes non confundit,” “hope never disappoints.” So, we are reminded in a particular way this year that our mission and our duty to spread the Good News, is a mission and duty to spread this message of hope. And so, as we go out into a world in which many are hopeless or do not know what they can possibly hope in, we redouble our efforts to share the kerygma of our faith, the ultimate message of hope, so aptly summarised in the encyclical Evangelii Gaudium: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”