TOWARDS THE FUTURE

For Christianity, that unique modern entity that asserts unequivocally
the end of the world, there is, in fact, no end of the world.
Instead, the end of the world is, rather, the end of this world
—the end, that is, of our misery.

E. Mounier

In every man lives an expectation; an expectation that arises from an experience of impotence or from the perception that the present, as it is, cannot suffice. A very famous lyric by Salvatore Quasimodo expresses it very well: «Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth pierced by a ray of sun: and suddenly it is evening».
The time of Advent helps us to recognize that One can fill this waiting, One whose face and name we know: Jesus Christ. If it is true that, as Christians, we allow ourselves to be defined by our relationship with him, by the love we have for him, and by the trust we place in him, we know that he has come, that he is coming today and that he will come at the end of history. Therefore, before us there is not nothingness, but a certain hope founded on a promise: “Yes, I am coming soon” (Rev 22:20). Only in this way can that “being alone on the heart of the earth”, suffered by the Poet, open up to a presence of communion already now. In Christ, then, the expectation of man meets with the coming of God. And if Christ makes us men and women of hope, we also understand that each of us is determined not by his past (that past that weighs on us perhaps since our youth) but by the future, by what Christ will do for us and with us.
But the coming of the Lord asks us for patience because we know neither the day nor the hour. And patience, so necessary, is the art of living the incomplete, the partiality and the fragmentation, without ever despairing. But not only that: patience not only sustains our existence but embraces the other, the brother or sister, that is, it educates us to a path of communion and solidarity. A final note. Paul often emphasizes that waiting must also be characterized by love, by an ardent love for the Lord (cf. Rom 8:19). Only in this way, the believer becomes young again every morning, does not flee from the world, but flees with the world towards the future of God.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey