It is a curious truth that some people do not recognize or want to admit the essential commitment of Christianity to what is new, to the world that needs our hope, to the future whose shape is determined right now by our attitude toward it. The contemporary fashion, of course, is to be overwhelmed by the future, to stagger hazily in the grip of “future shock”. That is part of the temptation described, long ago, by the German author Thomas Mann in his portrayal of persons with a “sympathy for the abyss,” a dangerous, an unchristian luxury. It is almost as bad as the well documented over-reverence of the past that has made tradition- shorthand for “the way we used to do it”- the sole model for the future. We have ample chance to locate our own attitudes toward the future, toward the new world that beckons us as it forms before us. The following might serve as a check list of themes for our own self- examination.
The Gospels challenge us to be concerned not only with the last things, but, more urgently and practically, with the ‘next’ things. Our beliefs were heralded in the testament of the new, and the great cry of the Book of Revelation gives the Christian a feeling for the saving dynamic that reaches out to the future: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5, cfr. 21:1-4). “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” (Lam. 3:22,23). The Christian is called to a life of hope, not just in longing for his own salvation, but in serving the world that is just coming into being. The greatest test the Christian faces- the one that draws the fibres of his being tight every day- is that of continuing to invest hope in others; the most ancient Christian temptation closes a man off in self-concern where he can forget the world of other men or simply say the hell with it. There is nothing more difficult, of course, that continuing to affirm others, especially when they seem so concerned or ungrateful for our interest in them and their lives.