Hajja Salesjana

and they are our enemies as well. However, many of these stories were written before the advent of Christianity. No wonder that many of these stories, notwithstanding their poetic beauty, end either in tragedy or in a tone of cynicism and banality. How can there be hope if all the forces of nature, the old gods, are against us? The Incarnation of God and the Resurrection of Christ show us that even if fallen nature, nature wounded by humanity’s sin, has turned against us, God remains for us and with us, and nothing can separate us from Him. Christ is true God and true man: for us to be separated from God would mean that God is split within Himself, and that is an impossibility. Following the advent of Christianity, even non-religious stories have changed. Now, a happy turn of events is possible at the end of the story. It does not mean that tragedy and suffering are no longer a reality; on the contrary, these make the unexpected happy turn of events even stronger: when the princess lies dead in her coffin, the prince comes and kisses her back to life; when the Battle of the Five Armies is about to end in catastrophe, Bilbo Baggins cries out: “the Eagles are coming!” and goodness triumphs. J.R.R. Tolkien, the English author to whom I owe a lot of this reflection on hope, believed that through these sudden joyous turn of events in stories, we can glimpse a glimmer of the Joy that lies beyond the world's confines. Our greatest desire – the desire to escape death – has been expressed in stories but has become real in history some two thousand years ago. This, then, is the foundation of any possible hope: each of our life stories, with our sufferings and victories, converges into the One Story of God who became human so that creation is redeemed and humanity can truly become like God, not out of its natural strength, but out of Grace. Our Hope is Christ. Photo by Shashank Sahay - Unsplash.com 13 Jannar-Marzu 2025 hajja