"Christ within you, your hope of glory." With these words, Paul sums for the Colossians his doctrine about "the mystery hidden from ages and generations past." As we have noted several times, over the years our reflections, there are in the New Testament, many sentences which succinctly sum up our Christian faith or at least a certain part of it. At different times throughout each liturgical year, we will hear these sentences again. Responding to our own particular needs at the time, some of these words will strike us with greater intensity.

Christ is within us as individual Christians and amongst us as the community which is his Mystical Body. This presence is the fruit of the Eucharist as it is the fulfilment of the promise Jesus made before he ascended to heaven: I am with you all days, till the end of the world. Our Christian hope, then, is not an emotion, a nice feeling, a kind of optimism. Our hope is Jesus himself, our Lord and Saviour.