Living the future

This is essentially welcoming the future: the willingness to change by placing one's trust in God. Willingness to change which means living in the future, that is, being at ease in situations different from those to which we are accustomed. Probably the only possibility to live in the future, that is to be at ease in the future, is to have faith in God and to abide in Christ, as John says in his first letter, but with that profound sense of Christianity which leads to a busy but serene way of life. One dwells in God as one dwells in one's home, one is peaceful in God as one is peaceful in one's home, together with one's relatives, together with one's friends.

If we were able to abide in God when we think about the future, about the things that are not yet, we will perhaps be able to welcome this future more easily even when it passes by us, even when it begins to materialize close to us. Each of us must learn to welcome ourselves into the future: in the coming months, in the coming years, because tomorrow each of us will be different from what we are today. Welcoming tomorrow will mean welcoming ourselves older, sometimes sicker, sometimes more tired, sometimes more generous, more capable of commitment, sometimes capable of doing things that we were once unable to do. (…)

But also learn to welcome changes. It is not easy to accept the most distant people, such as foreigners, and all the diversity that we will encounter little by little going forward. It's not easy to accept prophetic people, it's not easy to accept the saints who pass us by, it's not easy to accept new technologies, new ways of working, accept new diseases: it's not easy to accept all that is new. In this welcoming of new things in people probably lies one of our abilities, one of our greatest possibilities for welcoming the future.

Giorgio Ceragioli
NP Novembre 2022