Hope can be a difficult virtue to obtain, especially when it is not rooted in an ardent faith in God.
Without faith, the world can seem like a very dark place, where sadness and anxiety prevail.
Early Christians also struggled with hope, but their hearts were lifted-up in hope after reading Psalm 23.
The Shepherd
Pope Benedict XVI refers to the experience of early Christians in his encyclical, Spe salvi, and how the Good Shepherd spoke to their hearts:
[T]hrough the figure of the shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art. There the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a tranquil and simple life, for which the people, amid the confusion of the big cities, felt a certain longing. Now the image was read as part of a new scenario which gave it a deeper content: “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want ... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ...” (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4).
Pope Benedict XVI expands on this image, linking it to Christ:
The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.
This image of the Good Shepherd gave hope to the early Christians, as Pope Benedict XVI concludes:
The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his “rod and his staff comforts me,” so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers.
If you are ever struggling with hope, read Psalm 23 and trust that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is there with you through your darkest days and is guiding you to greener pastures.
