"Thus today we often see in the faces of young people a remarkable bitterness, a resignation that is far removed from the enthusiasm of youthful ventures into the unknown.  The deepest root of this sorrow is the lack of any great hope and the unattainability of any great love: everything one can hope for is known, and all love becomes the disappointment of finiteness in a world whose monstrous surrogates are only a pitiful disguise for profound despair.  And in this way the truth becomes ever more tangible that the sorrow of this world leads to death: it is only flirting with death, the ghastly business of playing with power and violence, that is still exciting enough to create an appearance of satisfaction.  "If you eat it you must die" -- for a long time this has no longer been just a saying from mythology (Gen. 3:3)."

-- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's "To Look On Christ", published by Crossroad, 1991, pp. 69-70.

Isn't it true that we keep bumping up against our limitations, our finiteness, our finitude, even as we yearn for eternity in the very enjoyment of earthly delights?  This feeling of constant frustration over our inability to ever achieve lasting joy and love and happiness in this life should drive us all to despair, if it had not been for our faith and our hope, which has been guaranteed by Christ's resurrection.