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“Dear young people, let yourselves be taken over by the light of Christ, and spread that light wherever you are.” (St. John Paul II)

Amid all the disaster and distress

that wheels around and swirls within us in chaotic times,

there are also always marvels to behold.

Let neither fear nor preoccupation

keep you from being touched

by wonderfully wounded life.

May you find a way in every day,

to share your great-fullness

for all that touches your eyes.

May you refuse to be crushed

but rather, look lovingly upon all with tear-washed eyes,

trained on woundedness, straining for wonder.

As you savor the sweet brevity of your days,

Seekers, pilgrims, disciples; all are wayfarers who find themselves stumbling along the stony path toward integrity.

The scope of every life is indeed defined by the questions we choose to live into, and if we are blessed to live long enough, we will inevitably end up shaped like a question mark. Since quest is also the start of every question, it is questions, not answers, that are the surest guideposts for any journey of faith —which necessarily means moving into the unknowable. Always trust the open, heartfelt question that lays bare the soul to unknowing.

Francis took Christ’s teaching seriously. He was too honest to read Scripture selectively and too unsophisticated to spin elaborate no-risk interpretations of it. Instead, he championed the radical notion that Christ meant what he said when he spoke of love and poverty and sacrifice. To presume otherwise is to conclude that Christ was in the strange habit of always saying one thing but meaning something quite different.

When we go into the inner desert, we appreciate for the first time just how much unnecessary baggage we carry around. We see and gasp at the incredible artificiality of our old way of life, the flimsiness of our old values, the duplicity of our old self. The process is harrowing because it rips away everything by which we’ve defined ourselves. But this desert dying, this going under, is a necessary condition for the kind of “ineffable joy” and “wonderful light” that suffused Francis at the end of his time in the pit.