No One Will Steal Our Hope

Only those of us who have lived in Venezuela over these last ten years know what it means to live clinging to hope. Without it, we would have stopped fighting, and the sadness would be terrible. Some Venezuelans who come back from other countries and see with their own eyes how we are facing reality find it hard to understand the hope we have and the joy we radiate, despite the thousands of problems we face every day, and despite the anguish of saying goodbye to our children every day without knowing whether we will see them alive again. That is how harsh our reality is!

And even though some say you are a dreamer and this country will never get ahead, many of us are clear that no one will be able to steal our hope for a better future. That is why we keep fighting. Because when you fight, when you want to reach a goal (even if the slope is steep and sometimes slippery, as Brother Ginés used to say), you find that there are many others doing the same.

There are many working so that this country does not repeat the mistakes of the past, nor those being made in the present. So that an end may come to violence, to hatred, to the corrupt mentality that says you have to get rich fast without working. So that an end may come to mediocrity; to growing used to what is wrong as if it were normal; to the selfishness of thinking only of yourself instead of living to serve others.

Venezuela is full of people of integrity, valuable, studious, hardworking people who have gotten ahead on their own without connections, who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, who have lived detached from many things in order to help those in need…

In short, there is no shortage here of people who want to help build a country with values, with honesty, with study, with preparation, with work and with efficiency. Will it be hard to build? Maybe, but that doesn’t frighten us in the least or paralyze us, because if there is one thing we have learned these years, it is to work hard and fight with everything against us.

That is why, for many, hope is, and will remain, great. Hope that the words insecurity, lies, corruption, injustice, waste, vice, hatred, division and death will disappear from the map of Venezuela…

Hope that the words safety, truth, honesty, freedom, justice, sobriety, work, unity, life and peace will shine…

For the most part, the generation of young people who have grown up in Venezuela in these years are different. They are unique!

Young people sensitive to what is happening in the country and in the world, with a great love for their Homeland, with leadership ability and a strong social conscience.

Today I can say that the number of high school and university students who went to work in the poorest areas of Venezuela during Holy Week to help those most in need ran into the thousands (in the Catholic Church alone; it was the same in other churches).

Not to mention the many young people who were at the Holy Week services praying for a better future for their country, the country they love so much and which they know is falling to pieces.

On Palm Sunday Pope Francis told us: “Do not let yourselves be robbed of Hope… We must not be afraid of the Evil One when he tells us that we can do nothing against violence, injustice and sin… We who have welcomed the Lord and know that He is close to us, present within us and among us as a friend, as a brother, and also as a king, that is, as the shining beacon of our life, we have hope and we have joy. Never be sad men and women: a Christian can never be sad. Never give way to discouragement. Our joy is not something born of having many things, but of having encountered a person, Jesus; of knowing that with Him we are never alone, even in difficult moments, even when the path of life runs into problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable… and there are so many! We accompany and follow Jesus, but above all we know that He accompanies us and carries us on His shoulders: this is our joy, the hope we must bring to this world of ours. Let us bring the joy of faith to everyone.”

Well, it is from our great Faith that we draw so much Hope, and no one (I say it again, a thousand times over) is going to steal it from us!

Even if they tell us that what we are doing is very little, there are a great many of us doing a little; and what we are sowing will sooner or later bear fruit. Because there are many of us working “silently and tirelessly” for a better country.