On the eve of Advent in 2007 then Pope Benedict XVI delivered the encyclical Spe Salvi. In it he talks about how faith unites the present and the future:
Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.
Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (Vatican City 2007).
What are you reading and studying during Advent?
The Letter to the Hebrew (11: 1) is the basis for Benedict XVI’s thought, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This quote from Spe Salvi helps me see the mission I have been chosen, that of Christ, and where he leads me from his mission in my present vocation and service into eternal life.
In the way that an inventor has an idea that has to be brought into existence by experimenting with the materials that make it possible or an author tries to bring to life the story that he feels compelled to write.