Last weekend, our youth embarked on a road-trip adventure to spend a whole day at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. On the itinerary, of course, was an afternoon full of roller coasters, selfies, and lots of tasty treats. Our main reason for the trip, however, was to experience an equally exciting gathering of thousands of Life Teen and EDGE youth for the biggest Catholic rally to be held inside the park yet!
“Life Teen Inspiration LA” tour was jam-packed with live music, inspirational faith talks, Mass with Bishop Buckon of the Archdiocese for the Military ser- vices, and a time of Eucharistic Adoration within the park itself. Our keynote speaker, David Calavitta, left our youth with incredible food-for-thought about what it means to glorify God. I want to share a couple of key ideas that impacted the thousands of young people in hopes that they may impact you, too!
You and I have an innate thirst for Something Greater.
After sharing some funny stories, David directed his talk to point out that all human beings live their lives trying to quench a desire to be truly happy, yet we tend to fail miserably. We try to fill in that void with Facebook “likes”, wealth, sex, drugs, sports, approval, relationships, and accomplishments. Somehow though, no matter how much of these “finite” things we accumu- late, we are still left with a longing in the depths of our heart. David called this a “thirst for the infinite”; or an “eternal thirst”. He pointed out that noth- ing on this planet could ever fill this thirst—the sum of all finite things will never fill a desire that is infinite.
Good News: That Something Greater we desire is actually Someone Greater.
David proposed to the thousands of youth that, perhaps the reason why we have an eternal longing for satisfaction is because we were created to be satis- fied by the only thing that is infinite—or rather the One who is Infinite! God created us to be eternally with Him, and so longs for intimacy with us that He sent his Son that we might come to know Him. And if that weren’t enough, each and every Sunday we are given the chance for the infinite God of the universe to dwell inside of us when we receive the Eucharist.
May we all be “inspired” to recognize this longing in our hearts, and may we come to understand how God so desires our happiness in Him.