I have been riding an emotional rollercoaster the last couple weeks, with some ecstatic highs, and the most bottomed out of lows, holding onto both supernatural hope and all consuming grief in the same heart.
At the same time, I have realized that I am a devout follower of Prestige, and it’s worship has left my spirit exhausted and empty.
My friend seeing me in this state gifted me with Pope John Paul II’s excerpt from a vigil he gave at World Youth Day in 2000, which I’m including below.

I am re-learning how to be a human being, after having become a human do-er so long ago I don’t even remember when it happened. I am seeking Jesus in my hope and my grief and my desperate need to be relevant and important. My hope in sharing is that if there are others like me, you know there is a center focus, a place to go back to, and company on the way.

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”