Jubilee 2025: The little girl Hope

Charles Peguy's The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (Le porche de mystere de la deuxieme vertu in its original title) appears a necessary read for the Jubilee 2025. The extracts below are taken from the early pages of David Schindler's translation, and offer a kind of taster for the whole.

The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.

Faith doesn't surprise me.
It's not surprising.
I am so resplendent in my creation....

Charity, says God, that doesn't surprise me.
It's not surprising.
These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for each other ....

But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.
Even me.
That is surprising.
That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better....

What surprises me, says God, is hope.
And I can't get over it.
This little hope who seems like nothing at all.
This little girl hope.
Immortal....

It's faith that is easy and not believing that would be impossible. It's charity that is easy and not loving that would be impossible. But it's hoping that is difficult.

The little hope moves forward between her two older sisters and one scarcely notices her....

In his translator's preface, David Schindler explains that the Portal is not just a poem but in fact a play. The "portal" refers to the entrance of a medieval cathedral, above whose doors might be depicted a Christian mystery. The cathedral portal was also the place where mystery plays were typically enacted. 

If we keep in mind that the Portal is a play, we are better able to appreciate the conversational quality of the writing. Madame Gervaise, God's "mouthpiece" in the poem, address her monologue to the young Joan of Arc, who remains silent throughout. She speaks in short phrases, pausing after each one as if to make sure that "Jeanette" has understood it.

The presence of Joan of Arc can be presumed from Charles Peguy's earlier work The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc.

David Schindler also observes that Charles Peguy approaches the Christian mystery by way of the experience of it in life, a theme that Hans Urs von Balthasar explores in greater detail using the term enracinement, to articulate a rootedness of Christianity in history and time (cf The Glory of the Lord vol III pp.465 ff):

His language is filled with images drawn from the basic experiences of life, rather than sophisticated argumentation aimed at an elite few. There is no trace of condescension in his tone: God does not speak from the sublime heights of heaven, looking down on the world from an infinite distance. Rather, having assumed everything human, he speaks from within the world; he speaks, as it were, as "one of us".

An endnote to the penultimate extract cited above makes the suggestion that we might see the inspiration for the image of the "little girl hope" in Charles Peguy's own daughter, who would have been nine years old at the time of the writing of the Portal. This would perfectly exemplify the author's approach.