I don`t think there is someone who would not be, one way or another, concerned about the future. We try to think with confidence and hope in what it is to come, praying and asking the Lord for help in everything that will happen. Still, indisputable fact, no matter how much we persevere in prayer, we are very afraid of the vastness of our ignorance, of the sudden changes and happenings which we will experience in a rather different way from what we would like to be further. The future is beyond time, in that timeless world, impossible to shape or analyze with worldly eyes. For this reason it appears as full of insecurity and uncertainty, disappointment being always possible. Despair follows, as the next stage of doubt, a mischievous deepening of the insecurity from which we started. Theology is not afraid of doubt, on the contrary, it places it in the normality of existence as undeniable evidence. Pure faith helps us to see another meaning here, another wisdom of things and facts. Everything that happens is important for us, for our salvation, for the true life that is to come. Under the seal of the Lord, future makes sense, a meaning that we can define.

Keywords: hope, future, mistrust, doubt, despair, justice, love

DUMITRU HORIA IONESCU