3. What is hope? Hope is a gift from God.
It is ‘the theological virtue through which a person both desires and expects the fulfillment of God’s promises of things to come’ (USCCA, 515).
Hope is linked with our desire for happiness, holiness and justice.

4. Chesed Steadfast loyalty and love
Chesed is the Hebrew word for
‘commitment’.
Chesed is a key attribute of God as well
as a quality that describes the
relationship between God and the
human family.
God calls us to be chesed people.
Chesed is a way of being faithful in love to God, to ourselves and to our neighbor, as the Great Commandment teaches.

5. Covenant chesed
Chesed is at the heart of the Covenant that God and his people freely enter into, which some biblical scholars translate as ‘covenant love’.
In biblical times, a covenant was an irrevocable ‘commitment’ to someone, for which those involved were willing to give their life and their blood.

6. I AM who I AM
God’s Word is who he is. God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is my name forever’ (Exodus 3:14, 15). God always keeps his Word.

7. The God of the Covenant God has given us his Word in Jesus,
the Word of God made flesh and
the ‘new and everlasting covenant’.
Our faith in Christ gives us the vision to keep
on hoping.

8. Cain and Abel
The story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4) reveals that sin turns differences and disappointments into hatred and tragedy.
However, God perseveres in chesed.
Even when one brother murders another, God’s steadfast love and mercy is the divine response.

9. Ruth and Naomi
The story of Ruth and Naomi provides models of chesed for God’s people.
Ruth’s promise to stay with Naomi is a strong example of chesed love.
Jesus is the ultimate model of Ruth’s chesed love.
Such love gives hope for ever.
(see p. 6061)

10. God’s Covenant with Abraham
The story of God’s people in the Old Testament is a story of infidelity and fidelity, of slavery and liberation and of exile and freedom.
Jesus Christ is the ‘new and everlasting Covenant’, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises to and Covenant with Abraham and his descendants—and all humanity.

11. God’s Covenant with Israel
Moses received the Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue, which ‘express man’s fundamental duties toward God and toward his neighbor’ (CCC, no. 2072).
The Decalogue, the law written on the heart of every person, is the law of the Covenant, which Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill.

12. The Prophets
Judges, kings, prophets and others were inspired to remind God’s people that they were unfaithful and needed to return to their Covenant commitment with God.
Though the ancient Israelites turned away from God, God responded with chesed.

13. The promise of a world renewed
Each of the covenants that God and the Israelites entered foreshadowed Christ and his Paschal Mystery.
Jesus is the ‘new and everlasting covenant’ between God and humanity.

14. Typology in the Old Testament
The Old Testament records the history and the hopes of the ancient Israelites and points in a prophetic and ‘hidden’ way to the coming of Jesus and to his Paschal Mystery.
To read the Bible ‘typologically’
means recognizing a kind of
‘foreshadowing’ in the Bible.

15. The Suffering Servant
God chose the prophet Isaiah, whose name means ‘God is salvation’, to deliver a message and vision of hope to the Israelites.
Central to that message are the four ‘Suffering Servant Songs’ in the Book of Isaiah:
Isaiah 42:17
Isaiah 49:17
Isaiah 50:49
Isaiah 52:13—53:12***

16. Who is the Suffering Servant?
The Suffering Servant represents:
the entire people of Israel, temporarily defeated but God will save them;
the ‘remnant’ of true believers: those exiled Jews who have maintained their commitment to God;
Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Suffering Servant.

17. Sacred Scripture
The New Testament lies hidden in the Old [Testament] and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New —CCC, no. 129
All Sacred Scripture is but one book, and this one book is Christ.
—CCC, no 134

18. The path to eternal Life
Christians know that living as people of the ‘new and everlasting Covenant’ requires us to do the works of compassion—to live the Works of Mercy, the works of chesed.

19. The story of St. Damien of Molokai
Born Jef de Veuster in Flanders, Belgium in 1840.
Became a priest and changed his name to ‘Damien’ in honor of an ancient saint who refused payment for healing the sick.
Pastor of a leper colony on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.
Died after contracting leprosy.
Patron of people with Hansen’s disease and HIV/AIDS.
Canonized on October 11, 2009.