The ink is still damp, but here’s Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Saved By Hope.

John Allen’s report is right here.

Snip:

We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day,” Benedict writes in Spe Salvi, released today by the Vatican. “But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God.”

That point leads Benedict to accent what has emerged as the core concern of his papacy: a determination to focus on the heart of Catholic identity, and on the distinctive spiritual message the church has to offer the world.

“Self-criticism of the modern age in dialogue with Christianity and its awareness of hope is necessary,” Benedict writes. “In such a dialogue, Christians too, in the context of their awareness and their experiences, must learn anew what their hope truly consists of, what they have to offer the world and what, instead, they cannot offer.”

Or, in the words of Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.

H/T to Amy at Charlotte Was Both.