(from Pope Francis’ general audience on April 12, 2017)
But you might ask me, “No, it is a loser’s logic!” It may seem that way, that it is a losing logic, because he who loves loses power. Have you ever thought that? He who loves loses power, he who gives loses possession of something, and love is a gift. In reality that logic of the seed that dies (John 12:24), of humble love, is the way of God, and only this bears fruit.
We see it in ourselves too: possessing drives us always to want something else: I have obtained something for me, and immediately I want another, bigger, and so on, and I am never satisfied. That is an ugly thirst! The more you have, the more you want. Those greedy are never satiated. And Jesus said this clearly: “Whoever loves his life loses it” (John 12:25). You may be greedy and try to have many things but… you will lose it all, even your life, so that he who loves his own life and lives for his own interests is full of himself only, and loses. Instead, he who accepts and is willing to serve, lives according to God; and so he is victorious, he saves himself and others…. Perhaps we will tire! But life is like this, and the heart fills with joy and hope. This is love and hope together: serving and giving.
Certainly, this true love passes through the cross of sacrifice, as for Jesus. The cross is the obligatory passage, but it is not the destination, it is a passage: the destination is glory, as Easter shows us. And here another beautiful image comes to our aid, that Jesus left to the disciples during the Last Supper. He says, “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (John 16:21). There: giving life, not possessing it. And this is what mothers do: they give another life, they suffer, but then they are joyful, happy because they have brought to light another life. It gives joy: love brings life to light, and even makes sense of pain. Love is the motor that makes our hope carry on. And each one of us might ask: “Do I love? Have I learned to love? Do I learn to love more every day?”, because love is the motor that makes our hope carry on.
“The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1818)
