For the Lonely

Some may feel more loneliness than joy during the Holiday Season. Thanksgiving to New Years can be just a series of obstacles to get through for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps the absence of something or someone haunts us like a ghost of Christmas past. The hustle & bustle of the season can also show us how a crowd can be the loneliest place.

For any believer who feels this way, this brief reflection might help…

“Any experience of being left alone, disregarded, forgotten – if it does not isolate the soul and make it retreat inwardly – invites a recognition. Our unimportance to others can combine with a fruitful realization. The more we disappear from the attention of others the more we are watched by God in a different manner.”

– Fr. Donald Haggerty

Our fallen nature tends to make us dissatisfied with God and what He gives us; always seeking something “other than God” when he has already given us himself. Emmanuel means "God is with us", so we are never truly alone. Theologically, we can say that God is so “with us” that he holds our being continually in existence. If God were to stop thinking about us or to stop loving us, we would lapse into nothingness, but how can one internalize that kind of closeness? Perhaps a mirror can help.

When you stand in front of a mirror, what do you see? You see your image & likeness. If you leave the mirror even for an instant, what happens to your image & likeness? It ceases to exist! You “being” in front of the mirror continually holds your image & likeness in existence. So God is right there, continually holding us and constantly sustaining us as we journey through the holidays or anytime.

“And behold, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

 

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.