Others of us, fixated on stresses in the present, choose to "drown our sorrows" at a holiday party through addictive behavior, pouring alcoholic drink after drink.
Or we can look with gratitude at the faces around us at that party and choose hope, mentally ready to move ahead into the future joys life promises us in our relationships, ready to love even though we risk sadness, ready to move ahead in becoming all that we can become.
If we live a life of faith, we choose to hope. We have discovered that our God is a God of surprises Who is always calling us to move ahead into the future. The future may be full of risks, full of unexpected detours to the lives we've planned. But the future is where God waits for us to reveal more of who we are, more of what our lives can become.
St. Francis Xavier, for example, was born the son of a wealthy landowner in the Kingdom of Navarre with a life of security and political advancement ahead of him. But his father died when he was nine. Then Spain invaded Navarre, the family lands were confiscated, and the family was left with only their family residence. Francis' brother participated in the ongoing war. By the time Francis studied at a University in Paris, he was evading his grief, sorrow, and anger by being a party boy, a drinker.
But Francis' roommate, Ignatius, challenged his way of life by talking to him about Jesus and the lifestyle of sacrificial love that Jesus preached. At first Francis thought Ignatius was a joke, and made sarcastic remarks about him. Despite Francis' pride, resistance, and worldly ambitions, a persistent Ignatius got him interested in Jesus Christ. Eventually Francis helped Ignatius found the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order - Pope Francis is a Jesuit). Francis' life was taking a gigantic detour into unknown, unexpected territory.
Francis the original party boy ended up leaving Europe and traveling to India, Malacca, the Molucca Islands, and Japan as a missionary with a heart on fire for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though he had a lack of proficiency for foreign languages, a lack of funding, and a lack of cooperation from European officials, he managed to convert so many people that he is considered the greatest missionary since the time of the apostles. His body is enshrined in a church in Goa, India. I'm sure that as a youth, he never dreamed that his life would be so surprisingly different from what he had planned for himself.
Many of us today sabotage our own spiritual, intellectual, and emotional potential because we stay "stuck" in either the past or the present. Elizabeth A. Johnson says
"Some people ...live with a focus on the past, on the hurts whose remembrance requires self-pity or even vengeance, or on sweet times that wash them in nostalgia and a desire to return to the way things were. Our own culture tends to fixate us in the present, where we can ignore the suffering of others by busying ourselves with a thousand distractions, entertaining ourselves to death.
"But faith keeps up a steady drumbeat to move into the future, where the ever-coming God will meet us in new challenging and comforting ways....We human beings have a passion to be and become ourselves. This cannot happen if we try to return to the past or stay wedded to the present moment..... 'Leave, go forth,' God addresses each of us. Come ahead to the place, the vocation, the relationships, the work, the griefs and joys I will show you."
God's plans for our lives are always bigger than anything our puny little minds could conceive of. Fear of the unknown can only diminish the promise of who we can become, what we can accomplish. When we say "My Jesus, I trust in You" we mean that we trust God with our very lives, with what He has planned for us if we can follow His call and live in hope.
Amazingly, living in hope leads us to love more and more. Loving more and more leads us into more and more joy. St. Katharine Drexel talks about this constant walking forward with God into our futures, living in hope and discovering joy:
"If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to Him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy which invites us. PRESS FORWARD AND FEAR NOTHING."