shall we face the theme of hope from the viewpoint of St. Paul?
St. Paul is a great theologian of hope and he offers us noteworthy hints for reflection. I limit myself to indicate some of them. First of all, according to St. Paul hope does not start from man, but from God. There is a human hope understood as invocation of God: it is man who waits for God. However, St. Paul puts this perspective upside down and speaks about the God of hope (Rom 15, 13), to mean that it is God that turns into hope for our sake. Another element of the Pauline hope is its Christological centrality, bound to the expression, Christ, our hope (1 Tm. m 1, 1). This is to be read both in an objective as well as in a subjective sense. In the first sense, the Christian hopes Christ, the destiny of resurrection and joy of Christ. The Risen Lord is our hope, so that his Ascension and glorification is the future before us. In the second sense, Christ hopes in me: I hope with the hope full of trust and certainty as that of Christ. Christian hope shares the strength of Christ, the
