Translation of Wir sind Zukunft.

An Outline of Hope -- The Dynamism of Human Existence -- A world Transparent to God -- Man Created Anew -- Perpetual Advance into God -- Heaven as Immediate Contact with God -- Hope Understood -- Life as Imagined Hope -- Personal Life as Explicitly Conscious Hope -- Christianity as a Religion of Hope -- Hope Encountered -- The Child -- Old People -- The Sick -- The Presence of the Dead -- The Gentle -- The Silent -- The Central Question of Hope -- Heaven Is Perfect Fullment -- Structures of Human Fulfillment -- Attainment of Holiness -- Experience of Hope -- Divine Claim and Human Failure -- The Clash of Opposites -- Everyday Hope -- Feed the Hungry -- Give Drink to the Thirsty -- Clothe the Naked -- Show Hospitality to Strangers -- Deliver Captives, Set Prisoners Free -- Visit the Sick -- Bury the Dead -- The Spirit of Hope -- Correct SInners -- Instruct the Ignorant -- Counsel the Doubtful -- Comfort the Afflicted -- Suffer Injustice Patiently -- Forgive Injuries -- Pray for the Living and the Dead -- The FUture of Hope -- Antitheses in Faith -- Christ the Summit of All Cosmic Dynamism -- Death as Final Decision -- Grounds for the Hypothesis Concerning Death -- Consequences that Follow from This Hypothesis about Death -- Spiritual Deepening of the Hypothesis Regarding Death -- The "Fire of Purgatory" as Putting on the Mind of Christ -- Self-Realization as Judgment -- Christ Lives in the Depths of All Things* (The "Descent into Hell") -- Can God Damn Anyone? -- Heaven as the Essence of Our Future -- Testimony of Joy

THe original message of the new covenant was the announcement that in Christ a completely new dimension of reality had opened out, that of heaven, built on the words "No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2,9). It is also the mystery of history that heaven is growing and coming to maturity around and in us, in the children of God, in the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. Since that time it has not been possible to understand man on the merely factual basis that he exists here on earth. His life is directed towards heaven, toward a condition that is at hand is yet still to come. The fact that heaven is at once close and distant creates an intermediate zone of tension and strain, a domain of freedom to obey or disobey, hope or resign. All that happens before heaven, all the seeking and groping that constitutes a large part of the history of mankind and of each one of us, is only a coming to birth. The world only fully attains existence when man enters heaven. We are not yet alive in the real sense. We do not yet see, hear, or understand the essential. The human reality we possess is essentially incomplete and to come. Consequently, reflection of a concrete existential theology of hope involves no less than the task of envisioning in relation to heaven the dynamism that is inherent in all created reality and in Christian thought and prayer. These meditations by an ever more important religious writer convey this experience of hope as the essence of Christian life. The reveal the Christian life as a fruit of hope, a looking forward, a departure into the unknown. Their purpose is to help the reader glimpse, through prayerful thought, the real meaning of his faith.