I once heard someone bemoan their solitude; and is it any wonder that they did? It is only too human to be alone and to tire of it. And for a long time since, those words have reechoed in me, at different times, and I feel that they struck a resonance in me that I am only now understanding. The same cry echoes in my heart.
Man was not made to be alone. Every human, in some fashion, spends his life seeking or waiting to be known. I have only truly come to understand how central this is from my own experience, the constant longing to belong, to be known, to love.
And is it not interesting that although on one level, God is the ultimate fulfillment of that desire, he did not create us as solitary creatures? There is something essential in human relationship: he has built in a need in us to be known by each other.
It's expressed most saliently in the story of Adam and Eve; God saw a need to give him someone that was "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." There is something incredibly profound here. In no way is this need for human relation in competition or contrast with our need to be known by God. No: they go hand-in-hand. When we isolate ourselves from one another, our relationship with God will also suffer. And in loving others and being loved by them, our relationship with God thrives. God helps us to see and love others at the level they deserve; and in turn our love of one another is somehow, mysteriously, a deeper revelation of the love of God himself.
Indeed, I often tire of solitude, as we so often do: but the only answer to that solitude must come from the Father and from Christ in the Holy Spirit. Without him, I would be alone indeed: and even solitude within his will is encompassed by his embrace. We are in a desert as long as we walk this earth: given satisfaction, but never total fulfillment. It is only human to be alone and to tire of it. In a sense it is a reality that is always ours, because the ultimate communion we seek will only be found in heaven. Yet even in the desert, we are at the outskirts of the Promised Land, whose oases already reach out to us. I say this by way of reminder: do not think that you have no need of water because you are in the desert, that you will be satisfied without it until you reach the promised land. No: you cannot live without water, even in the desert. And your thirst must be filled even now, by the Living Water. You thirst for a reason: because you need to be filled. And whoever drinks from the springs of that Source will never thirst again. Cry out to be filled: for he who seeks finds. But seek to be filled not in temporal things but in Life Himself, and through temporal blessings from his hand alone. If you have him, you have found your place, no matter your earthly circumstance; you belong; you are not truly alone even if you go through periods of solitude and desert - they are only passing, and the underlying reality that you are loved and provided for unfailingly never passes even when you do not feel it. If you are empty, cry out to be filled, to be reminded that your only life comes from Life and your only love from Love. Waiting will bring you patience, but patience is not complacency. Seek to be filled. Only make sure it is from the Fountain: if love, from Love himself; if peace, from Peace himself; if passion, from the All-Consuming Fire. From his hand, all is immeasurable blessing, and he can fill you as none other can. But do not think this is the final fulfillment. It is only the beginning.
He makes all things beautiful in his time.
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