50th Anniversary of the publication of “Road of Hope”

“This book is like a fresh, clear, inexhaustible spring. It is dripping with the Gospel. Because of its thousand maxims, I would call it ‘A Thousand Drops of Gospel.’ It can be spread out and smelled morning and evening. It exudes a true fragrance, like those whose secret lies in the East.

However, it should be known that each of these crystalline drops was originally a drop of blood that sprang from the solitude of a prison. This transmutation is the daily miracle of merciful love, whose unfathomable abyss lies in the heart of the crucified Christ.

On the paths of earthly life, everything is a ‘path of hope’: “Have you ever seen the raindrops falling thick and fast on a winter afternoon? Just as numerous are the people who enter eternity every day, and almost no one notices. One day you yourself will be one of these drops” (n.665).

The poet Charles Péguy had God say: “The faith that pleases me most is hope”.

This is the presentation, signed by Card. Roger Etchegaray, who was President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and President of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum,” of the book “Il cammino della speranza. Testimoniare con gioia l’appartenenza a Cristo” [“The Way of Hope. Witnessing with joy to belonging to Christ”] (Città Nuova edition) that collects the writings of Cardinale François-Xavier Nguyên Văn Thuận from his long years of detention in prison.

A work conceived by the Bishop for “his people,” to the community of faithful Catholics of his diocese, whom he wished to reach from the isolation of prison, that later became universal spiritual patrimony.

In the darkness of the night, between the silent walls of his prison, his spirit rose up to Christ, and in the embrace of the Cross, which gives meaning and substance to hope, his thoughts and prayers took on words in the form of exhortations, warnings, reflections capable of illuminating the faith of thousands of people.

Entrusted to the gentle hands of a child, these writings arrived at the community of the faithful, to be copied and disseminated, across borders.

The story of this volume, by many considered the spiritual testament of the Vietnamese cardinal, began in 1975.

Now 50 years later, when the universal Church celebrates the Jubilee of Hope, the message of Cardinal  Văn Thuận comes to life again as a timeless model and witness.