Testimony of Hope

The Spiritual Exercises of John Paul II

by François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

Testimony of Hope is the complete text of the Spiritual Exercises given by Archbishop Van Thuan in 2000 to Pope John Paul II and the Curia. In this moving work, Archbishop Van Thuan addresses our need for hope at the beginning of the twenty-first century. As a prisoner in various Communist prisons for thirteen years, nine of them in solitary confinement, Archbishop Van Thuan faced what he describes as "the agonizing pain of isolation and abandonment." Recounting the details of those long years, he reveals the secret that allowed him to cling to hope in the midst of despair. The hope he discovered in imprisonment is also our hope for the Church and the world at this momentous point in history. Faced with any darkness, we have a reason for confidence: Christ, Hope of the World.

THE DEFECTS OF JESUS

Then one day I found a way of explaining myself. I ask your understanding and indulgence if I repeat here, before the Curia, a confession of faith that might sound more like a heresy. "I left everything to follow Jesus, because I love the defects of Jesus."

The first defect: Jesus has a terrible memory.

On the cross, during his agony, Jesus heard the voice of the thief crucified on his right, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Lk 23:42). If I had been Jesus, I would have told him, "I certainly will not forget you, but your crimes have to be expiated with at least twenty years of purgatory." Instead, Jesus tells him, "Today you will be with me in paradise." (Lk 23:43). He forgets all the man’s sins.

He does exactly the same thing with the sinful woman who has anointed his feet with perfume. Jesus does not ask her anything about her scandalous past. He simply says "her many sins have been forgiven because she loved much" (cf. Lk 7:47).

The parable of the prodigal son tells us that on the journey back to his Father’s house the son prepares in his heart what he will say. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands" (Lk 15:18). Yet, when the father sees him from a distance he has already forgotten everything, he runs to meet him, embraces him, and does not even give him time to speak. He tells the servants, who stand there stupefied, "Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again" (cf. Lk 15:23–24).

Jesus does not have a memory like mine. He not only pardons, and pardons every person, he even forgets that he has pardoned.

The second defect: Jesus doesn’t know math.

If Jesus would have had to take a mathematics exam, he might have failed. He indicates this in the parable of the lost sheep. A shepherd has one hundred sheep. One of them becomes lost and, without delay, he sets out in search of it, leaving the other ninety-nine in the wilderness. Finding it, he puts the poor creature on his shoulders and returns to the fold (cf. Lk 15:4–7).

For Jesus, one is equal to ninety-nine—and perhaps more! Who could ever accept this? But his mercy reaches from generation to generation…

When it is a matter of saving the lost sheep, Jesus does not become discouraged by any risk or by any effort. We can contemplate his actions, full of mercy, when he sits beside Jacob’s well and speaks with the Samaritan woman, or when he wishes to dine at the house of Zaccheus! What simplicity that knows no calculations, what love for sinners!

The third defect: Jesus doesn’t know logic.

A woman who has ten silver pieces loses one of them and she lights a lamp to search for it. When she finds it, she calls in her neighbors and says to them, "Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver piece that I had lost" (cf. Lk 15:8–10).

This is truly illogical—to disturb your friends over one silver piece and then to plan a feast to celebrate the find! Even more, by inviting her friends, she is bound to spend more than the one silver piece. Not even ten silver pieces would be enough to cover the expenses…

Here we can truly say, with the words of the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, "The heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t know."¹

Jesus reveals the strange logic of his heart at the end of this parable, "Just so, I tell you, there is more joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" (Lk 15:10).

The fourth defect: Jesus is a risk-taker.

The publicity manager of a company or someone running an election campaign prepares a precise program, which includes many promises.

Nothing of the kind for Jesus! His publicity campaign, judged with a human eye, is doomed to failure.

Jesus promises trials and persecutions for those who follow him.

To his disciples who have left everything for him, he does not guarantee food or lodging, but only a share in his own way of life.

To a scribe who wanted to join him as a follower, Jesus responded, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Mt 8:20).

The gospel passage of the Beatitudes, the true "self-portrait" of Jesus the risk-taker for the love of the Father and of humanity, is a paradox from beginning to end, even for us who have become used to hearing it:

Blessed are the poor in spirit…
Blessed are the afflicted…
Blessed those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven (Mt 5:3–12).

The disciples had faith in this risk-taker. For 2000 years, and until the end of the world, the multitudes following Jesus will never be exhausted. It is sufficient to look at the saints of every age. Many of them belong to this blessed association of risk-takers—with no address, with no telephone, with no fax machine!

The fifth defect: Jesus doesn’t understand finances or economics.

Recall the parable of the workers in the vineyard:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard and, after agreeing with the workers on a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. And when he went out about nine o’clock he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, "You go out into the vineyard, too, and I will give you whatever is just." So they went off. When he went out again at about noon and three o’clock he did the same. Now at about five o’clock when he went out he found others standing there…. He said to them, "You go into the vineyard, too." When evening came the lord of the vineyard said to his foreman, "Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning from the last up to the first." (Mt 20:1–16).

If Jesus were named the administrator of a community or the director of a business, the institution would surely fail and go bankrupt. How can anyone pay someone who began working at 5:00 p.m. the very same wage paid to the person who has been working since early morning? Is this merely an oversight? Is Jesus’ accounting wrong? No! He does it on purpose, as he explains, "Can I not do what I want with what is mine? Or are you jealous because I am generous?" (Mt 20:15).

AND WE HAVE BELIEVED IN LOVE

Perhaps we can ask ourselves why Jesus has these defects. Because he is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16). Real love does not reason, does not measure, does not create barriers, does not calculate, does not remember offenses, and does not impose conditions.

Jesus always acts out of love. From the home of the Trinity he brought us a great love, infinite, divine, a love that reaches—as the Fathers of the Church say—even to the point of folly that throws our human measurements into crisis.

When I meditate on this love, my heart is full of happiness and peace. I hope that, at the end of my life, the Lord will receive me as he did the smallest workers in his vineyard. I will sing of his mercy for all eternity, forever in wonder over the marvels he has reserved for his chosen ones. I will be happy to see Jesus with all his "defects" which are, thanks be to God, incorrigible.

The saints are experts in this type of boundless love. In my life, I have often prayed to Sr. Faustina Kowlaska to help me understand the mercy of God. When I visited Paray-le-Monial, I was struck by the words that Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, "If you believe, you will see the power of my heart." Let us contemplate together the mystery of this merciful love.

You have made all things wonderfully

God created man and woman in his image, "You have made them a little less than the angels" (cf. Ps 8:6; Heb 2:7), giving them immortality, truth, justice… The Second Vatican Council teaches: "The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. The invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot fully live according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his Creator" (Gaudium et Spes, n. 19).

In his freedom, however, man can refuse the greatness conferred upon him according to God’s plan. He can seek to fulfill himself according to his own plans and pursue a different future than that promised by God. He can seek to guarantee his own future, as did the pagan nations—according to the testimony of Scripture—through the search for riches, reliance on human strength, covenants with powerful foreigners, and the possession of sacred things (cf. Hos 2:10; Ezek 16:15 ff.). Thus, humanity falls in its misery. It no longer hopes in God, but follows false hopes.

And more wonderfully have restored them

The Lord, especially through the prophets, does not cease to call men and women to the true hope that is Jesus, the only Savior. In Jesus we have been given the light of truth, the remission of sins, the restoration of freedom from the forces of evil, a new ability to love, participation in the divine nature, victory over death through the resurrection of the body, and life eternal. Jesus comes to meet human misery. Saving us, he made his gospel and his grace the renewing principal of the world and, above all, of humanity in all areas of existence: private and public, cultural and social, political and economic. To restore all things in Christ.

In ecstasy before Jesus who is Deus meus et omnia, "my God and my all," I desire to be, together with him, a source of hope in the garden of the world, as Charles Péguy writes:

"You may wonder, you may ask yourself: but how is it
That this fountain of Hope flows eternally,
Eternally young, eternally pure.
Eternally fresh, eternally flowing.
Eternally living….
My good people, says God, it is not tricky.…
If she wanted to make pure springs out of pure water.
If she wanted to make springs of pure water,
Then she would never find enough of it in (the whole) of my creation.
Because there is not a whole lot of it.
But it is precisely with the impure water that she makes her springs of pure water.
And that is the reason she never runs out.

But that is also why she is Hope….
…and that is the most beautiful secret in the garden of the world!^"

Salve Mater misericordiae
Mater dei et mater veniae
Mater spei et mater gratiae
Mater plena sanctae laetitiae.
O Maria!

Hail Mother of mercy
Mother of God and mother of forgiveness
Mother of hope and mother of grace
Mother full of holy joy
O Mary!

--excerpted from Testimony of Hope, pages 14-20

Testimony of Hope
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Other Writings of Hope
Prayers of Hope: Words of Courage
The Road of Hope: A Gospel From Prison