Question:
I am 43 years old, and I feel depressed as if I were dead in life, I struggle and struggle, but I have no luck. What advice can you give me?
Response:
During the recent trip of John Paul II to Spain, in the vigil at Cuatro Vientos (Four Winds), three truly moving testimonies were given by young people. But others had to be left out, so as not to tire the Pope and those present. However, these testimonies were written down. Among them was that of Lourdes Cuní who had planned to tell the Holy Father the following: “I am Lourdes, physically handicapped. My disability affects my speech. I cannot speak and I cannot walk; therefore I must use a wheelchair.” “For a long time I have lived in anguish. I have often wondered what the meaning of my life was and why this has happened to me. This question has been constant and the ordeal has been hard. For years the only answer has been to discover every morning that I was always in the same place: tied to a wheelchair. At times I felt as if my hope had been ripped away from me. I felt like I was carrying a cross, but without the breath of faith,” she had written.
The youth continued saying: “One day I discovered Jesus Christ and it changed my life. With His grace, the Lord helped me to regain hope and walk forward. Now, when I see other sick young people next to me, I think that my cross is small compared to theirs, and I would like to show them how I found the Lord to transform their pain into a path of hope, life, and holiness.”
Finally, she said to the Holy Father: “I know that my wheelchair is like an altar in which, in addition to sanctifying myself, I am offering my pain and my limitations for the Church, for Your Holiness, for the youth and for the salvation of the world… In my Vía Cruces (Way of the Cross) I feel encouraged by the testimony of Your Holiness, that you also carry on your shoulders the cross of sickness and physical limitations and, even more, the pain of suffering of all humanity. Thank you, Holy Father, for your example!”
Our crosses and sufferings are certainly less serious than those of these people. Something very important changes: faith. Ask for the grace of faith and the increase of faith. Do not let yourself be defeated; in the mystery of the cross, of despair, and the daily pain, is hidden also the secret of joy in this life and the hundredfold for the next.
In Christ and Mary,
Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE
Original Post: Here
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