In Auschwitz, Primo Levi was given a share of bread every day by [an Italian bricklayer named] Lorenzo Perrone. Levi later wrote: ‘I believe it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still exists a world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage… something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good but for which it was worth surviving. Thanks to Lorenzo I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.’ The small portion of bread saved his soul. […]
At the Last Supper, the disciples received a hope beyond all that they could have imagined: the body of Christ and his blood, the new covenant, eternal life. In the light of this Eucharistic hope, all their conflicting hopes must have seemed as nothing, except to Judas who despaired. This is what St Paul called ‘hoping against hope’ (Romans 4.18), the hope that transcends all of our hopes.
Our hope is Eucharistic.
--Fr. Timothy Radcliffe
Image source: Primo Levi with his children; he named his daughter Lisa Lorenza in honor of the man who had offered him salvation in his darkest moments. https://storygenius.it/2023/02/25/primo-e-lorenzo/
Quotation source
Hoping against hope. The hope that transcends all of our hopes. Beautiful!!
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