Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

Some words are charged with feeling, vibes, associations: lone, lonely, loneliness, alone, lonesome. One or the other is the engine behind many a song or poem. E.g., “None but the lonely heart/ Can know my sadness/ Alone and parted/ Far from joy and gladness.” Goethe/ Tchaikovsky. Or, “I’m so lonesome I could cry.” Hank Williams Sr. After saying that God has taken away friend and neighbor, the last verse (18) of Psalm 88 shocks with: “My one companion is darkness.” A Peace Corps volunteer deposited among villagers speaking a unique dialect says, “I was so lonely I cried myself to sleep for days.”

These few examples barely touch the depth of pain these words can evoke. Many of us have experienced this almost indescribable pain. It could be the sadness of ‘empty nester’ parents; the longing ache for love mixed with sexual desire of an adolescent; the heartbreak of a broken relationship; the disorientation and shock of the widowed; the isolation of an older person bereft of peers and forgotten in a nursing home; the dazed and unsure feeling of a new student away from home.

Is there some meaning in this for the life of a Christian? Is it like physical pain, illness, sin, betrayal, disappointment where at least in retrospect we can find something resembling purpose? Is it a setback in our life or a step toward something better? How does loneliness relate to our life in Christ? Is it our equivalent of the cry of Jesus from the cross “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Let’s end this foray into the subject with a little hope and light. Can we--presuming we are not ourselves in the throes of loneliness--can we do or be something for others caught in this misery? (Sensitivity and caution required!) “I was lonely, emotionally crushed, and. e.g.: You came to my help? You comforted me? You befriended me? You consoled me? You joined me in the cafeteria? You....?”

 (More on this subject another time.)

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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