Ep 87 - Beyond the Final Horizon

Hope isn’t the belief that everything will turn out well — it’s the conviction that life still has meaning, no matter how things unfold. In Episode 87 of Brother from Another Father, this reflection draws on the wisdom of Václav Havel and Viktor Frankl to explore the human search for purpose, especially in moments of suffering.

Through the lens of the Gospel, Jesus is revealed as the Good Shepherd who leads us not around suffering, but through it — even through death itself. As life forces us to “redraw our maps,” we are invited to trust that beyond every ending lies a greater horizon of hope.

This episode challenges us to confront our fear of death, to hold onto meaning in the midst of uncertainty, and to believe that in God, no suffering is ever wasted.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to episode 87 of Brother from Another Father as we celebrate the fifth Sunday in Easter. The former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, who was also a playwright, said that hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well. Rather, it is the conviction that it will still make sense. Things will still have a meaning, no matter how things turn out. This conviction of Vaklov shows a crucial element of our lives as human beings, namely the need for meaning, the need for purpose. This is also illustrated by a celebrated work written by a survivor of Auschwitz, one of the most notorious concentration camps during the Second World War. He was an Austrian Jew by the name of Viktor Frankl, and he wrote a celebrated work called Man's Search for Meaning. And he says that a person can endure almost any how if they have the right why. A person can endure almost any how if they have the right why. Meaning that if you have the right sense of purpose, if you have the right sense of meaning in your life, you can endure almost any how, any conditions, any form of suffering. And of course, Viktor Frankel illustrates this truth by showing how, because of the sense of his meaning, his own purpose, the faith, his own Jewish faith, he was able to endure the terrible atrocities that were inflicted on him by the Nazis while he was in this concentration camp. In last week's gospel, we celebrated Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who promises to lead us into abundant life. This does not mean that our life will be without suffering. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, leads us even through the valleys of death, through those times of trials in our lives. Jesus invites us to unite our own sufferings to his suffering and to believe that if we do this, we will also share his new life. As Jesus says, it is only when the seed falls to the ground and dies that it can bear life in plenty. And so we are called to trust that if we unite our own sufferings to those of Jesus, we will bear greater fruit. We will come to a greater, more fuller life. I think in our own lives, we find the strength to overcome trials and sufferings through our Christian hope. Why? Well, when we encounter suffering, when we encounter a challenge or a trial in our life, we encounter the temptation to give up hope. Because our hope is often linked to an expectation of how our future will be. And when we encounter suffering and a challenge and a setback, what that challenges us to do is to redraw how our futures will turn out. We have to redraw the map of our future. If you're married and your spouse hurts you in a serious way, perhaps through infidelity, well, you have to go back to the drawing board. You have to say, okay, my life will no longer turn out the way I expected it to be. It's much different. But it doesn't mean that your life is over. You do not give up hope, especially if you are a disciple of Christ, because you redraw how your marriage will look. You redraw what fidelity means to you now in the light of the pain that your spouse has inflicted on you, which you never expected. But that suffering, that pain does give you the temptation of giving up hope and saying, Well, if my hopes are always dashed, what is the point of redrawing my map? If it's always going to change, why should I continually have to redraw my map? And that's the temptation of giving up hope. But the good shepherd, Jesus, invites us to realize that if we do have the courage to redraw our maps, there is joy, there is fulfillment available in our futures. And we know this because despite encountering sufferings and setbacks, if we look ahead to the future, there is a vast horizon of hope, a vast horizon of possibilities ahead of us. And even though each experience of suffering and trials chip away at that hope, chip away at our human fulfillment, when we look ahead and see the possibilities that lie ahead in our future, we get the courage to carry on living, to carry on redrawing our maps. Now, all of this is fine so long as there is a vast expanse of a horizon of our futures set before us. But what happens when that horizon is cut short? What happens when the shadow of death overclouds that horizon and suddenly we can't see many possibilities ahead of us? All that there is is death. This is the final challenge that Jesus must overcome and must demonstrate to his disciples that he can overcome. Because if you think about it, during his life with them and his ministry, Jesus demonstrated to his disciples that he was over able to overcome any challenge, that they didn't need to be afraid of illness. Why? Because he is the great healer and healed many people during his ministry, that they didn't need to fear running short of money or of provisions. Why? Well, because he, his father, was the great provider, and he showed this by the feeding of the multitudes, that they didn't need to fear sin. Why? Well, because his father was the great forgiver, and Jesus spent his ministry showing that mercy to sinners. But the final challenge, the final frontier that Jesus has to show that he can overcome is the frontier of death. And as he is with his disciples in today's gospel, in the farewell discourse, he invites them to a new hope. And he says to them, as the horizon of his death is impending, he says to them, Do not be troubled, do not let your hearts be filled with sadness. Why? Because there is another horizon. Because if I go through this death, it's not going to cut short my possibilities, it's going to give me infinitely more possibilities. And that's why he says to them, In my Father's house, there are many rooms. What Jesus is trying to convince his disciples about is that in his father's house, beyond the veil of death, there is a vast horizon that can give us hope. And just as in our own lives, when we go through a painful experience and then come to the joy that lies at the end, the light that lies at the end of the tunnel, we can say to ourselves, we looking back, that was worth it. It was worth it to get to this joy. In John's Gospel, the quintessential metaphor for this joy is the joy of a woman who has just gone through the anguish and pain of childbirth. When the woman holds her new baby in her hands, she says to herself, All that pain and anguish I endured, it was worth it for this new life. It's similar in our own lives. We relish the joy and fulfillment that come at the end of a long struggle, and we say to ourselves, that struggle, all that suffering, it was worthwhile. Similarly, Jesus is asking us to have the same faith when it comes to death. As we look at death, we can't see what lies ahead of us. And we wonder, is all this pain, this dying that I'm going through, or more importantly, the pain and suffering of a loved one who I must watch die, who I must watch go through a terminal illness. Is it all going to be redeemed somehow? Is it all going to make sense? What is the purpose and meaning of this suffering? Remember, going back to Viktor Frankel, if we can find a meaning and purpose, we can put up with almost anything. And so Jesus is trying to convince his disciples that even death has a meaning and purpose. Its meaning and purpose is to lead us into a new life, a greater life, greater possibilities. And so we are challenged today about how we face our own deaths. Do we fear our own deaths? Because Jesus is saying to his disciples, I'm inviting you to a sense of faith as you accompany me into my death. Jesus tells his captors in the Gospel of Luke when they come to arrest him, Yes, you are in charge now. This is your hour, and darkness reigns. And darkness reigns as long as people do not have faith that death is not the end. If the way in which we approach our own deaths and the way in which we mourn those who we have loved who have died, allows darkness to reign. If we mourn them with an inconsolable sense of grief, then we are no longer disciples of Jesus because we are letting darkness have its day. Yes, death can rob us of hope. When we lose people really close to us, we can say, I had imagined my life with this person and I had drawn a whole future, and now I have to redraw my map, and I simply can't do it. Then we allow death to have the final word. But what Jesus is trying to get his disciples to do in today's gospel is to say, death doesn't have the final word. Paradoxically, as Jesus approaches his death, he's almost excited. He's excited, he says to them later on, You should be happy for me. Why? Because I'm going to the Father. That's where I belong, and that's where you belong. And so, dear friends, we are invited to approach our own deaths with paradoxically a sense of excitement, to approach the deaths of our loved ones with paradoxically a sense of hope. Hope for them and excitement that they are going to a better place. That doesn't mean we won't cry, that doesn't mean we won't feel sad, of course we will. But our faith as Christians should testify to the fact that that sadness is incomparably small to the joy and the hope that they are going to, and that we share with them because we're happy that they're going to the home where they belong. God bless and have a good day.