Anchored in Eternity

Preparation for the Jubilee of Hope, with Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, OCist.

The anchor is a symbol of hope – and not any hope, but a sure and certain hope.  The reference to this symbol is from the letter to the Hebrews where the author speaks of God’s promise to Abraham, confirmed by an oath:

“…so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.  We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.” (Heb 6:18–20)

Hope is like an anchor, thrown down to attach a ship to the safety of a fixed point, to prevent drifting due to ocean currents and wind, or to stabilize it by increasing the drag through turbulent water.  Let us picture the anchor for a moment: not a light and flimsy thing, but huge and weighty.  Bronze age anchors were simply rocks, and ancient Greeks used baskets full of stones, but over time the technology developed using wood, iron, and lead in a distinctive shape.  Since the 18^th century, the basic design consists of a vertical shank, with a crown at its base and two arms extending on either side.  At its head is a ring and a stock that extends perpendicular to the arms, though modern anchors tend to be stockless for ease of storage.  Anchors work by using a combination of their sheer mass and hooking onto the seafloor to secure them in place.  Larger anchors can weigh more than 25 tons and rely mainly on their mass, while anchors on smaller boats have a fluke – the triangular-shaped part at the end of the arms that hooks onto rocks or embeds into the soft seabed.  Once the anchor has been dropped, horizontal force is applied to the chain attached to the ship, so that the anchor hooks into the seabed.  There needs to be enough slack in the chain to stop the vessel from moving the anchor around, so the chain is just as important as the anchor.

To return to the anchor as metaphor, the fixed point into which our hope is embedded is God’s promise, a promise of life and fruitfulness, of life to the full, a promise God reaffirmed with an oath: “I swear by myself” (Gn 22:16).  This promise and oath has been further guaranteed by God’s act of redemption in Christ, sending his Son to the tumult of our earthy life, so as to reattach us to God our Father in eternity.  Dom Mauro affirms:

“Basically, the anchor of hope is Christ himself, his crucified humanity, which bears our wounds in the presence of the Father.  An anchor, in fact, has the form of the Cross, and for this reason it also gets represented in the catacombs to symbolize that the faithful deceased belong to Christ the Savior.”

In early Christian iconography in the Roman catacombs (c. late 100-400 AD), one often finds on the tombs of the dead Christians an anchor as a symbol of their firm hope in eternal life.  Persecution of the early Christians led to their use of a rich array of symbols for their faith.  The anchor stood for the cross, and Christians were portrayed as little fish attached to the cross of their Savior.

Dom Mauro continues: “But by now the task is no longer that of casting the anchor and hooking it to the sea bottom.  The task is to attach our ship to the line that, so to speak, hangs down from Heaven, there where the anchor of Christ is firmly fixed.  By attaching ourselves to this line, we attach ourselves to the anchor of salvation and make our hope certain.”

So, a certain hope comes from being firmly attached to the anchor, to the cross of Christ, to his saving death and resurrection.  In a change of metaphor, this anchor is not fixed on the seabed, but in heaven (we may also reflect on the cross-form of a kite, whose line hangs down from above to be grasped and held onto lest the wind tear it away).  The Letter to the Hebrews shifts from the horizontal axis (up or down) to a reference to depth, “the inner place behind the curtain” (Heb 6:20), as a metaphor for eternity.

“This image makes us understand that there is no certainty in the hope with which we walk in life if there is not this link with eternity.  But not a vague, faceless eternity: the trinitarian eternity, the eternal love of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, to which Christ crucified and risen has, with his human body wounded and glorious, anchored our wounded humanity, called to make landfall, to reach the glory of Heaven with Him.”

Today’s gospel makes clear that if our hope cannot be sure and certain if it is anchored in things of this world.  To seek security in being the greatest, in being powerful, being in control is doomed to failure.  It is a false hope.  This is why Jesus placed the child in the midst of the disciples as a sign of one who relies only on God for security.

At this point, Dom Mauro makes another shift in metaphor: the anchor is not fixed to a stationary point in this world, but to “the inner place beyond the curtain” to eternity, which is a destination.

“If the anchor of Christ was fixing us the bottom of the sea, we would remain still where we are, tranquil perhaps, without problems, but unmoving, without voyaging, without going forward.  Instead, precisely life’s being anchored to Heaven makes things such that the promise that gives rise to our hope does not halt our walking, does not give us a safety in some refuge in which we could close ourselves up and stay still, but it grants us a certainty in walking, in continuing the journey.  The promise of a certain destination that Christ has already reached for us makes every step in the path of our life steady and decisive.”

So, like ships that are not designed to be stationary, but to carry things from one place to another, we are not fixed in one spot, but led to move forward toward something, toward Someone.  Our faith is not static, but dynamic.  Jesus says: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6).  He calls us repeatedly to follow, to move forward, to continue on our journey, attached to him, and so drawn toward the Father.

Some questions:
Do I find my hope in the cross of Christ, firmly embedded in the eternal life of God?
Am I securely attached to this anchor, so that my hope is fixed not on what is earthly, but what is eternal?
Can I allow myself to move, to journey out of false securities, through the vicissitudes of life toward the father who draws us to himself by his Son?

Sources:
https://www.ocist.org/ocist/images/pdf/03ENMFC2024.pdf
https://www.edwardflemingjewellery.com/blog/2020/10/15/anchors-function-symbolism-and-jewellery
https://earlychurchhistory.org/christian-symbols/an-anchor-potent-christian-symbol/
https://www.ocist.org/ocist/images/pdf/04ENMFC2024.pdf

Image: Catacombs of St. Domitilla, Rome