Christian hope

As we embarked on Advent, I was bombarded by hope. One thing that occurred just as I was beginning to think about my homily for the First Sunday of Advent, was receiving the Summer issue of Communio, the theme of which is hope. Giussani's image below beautifully illustrates something I read in a talk given more than twenty years ago by then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Antonianum in Rome, a quote I used in my preaching to the effect that to be "human is to experience ourselves 'within the tension between the past and the future as [we] pass through the present'" (Homily for Year B First Sunday of Advent).

"Man lives in the present and imagines the future, projecting the present onto the future, and this either distracts from the present or makes it vague, or twists it, it becomes a little strange... What does the Christian life do instead? It makes you live in the present with great attention towards all the things of the present; and paying attention even to the sea in front of you, you spot on the sea's ultimate horizon a little point; and it isn't a ship that's moving off, but one that's coming to you; and the day in which you become aware of that little point that is destiny that's about to arrive is a great day, as it was for Christopher Columbus: that day when he began to glimpse a little stretch of land was a great day" (Is it Possible to Live This Way?: An Unusual Approach to Christian Existence vol. 2 Hope, pgs 13-14).