It is not good for man to be alone.
I remember about halfway through the Seminary I was praying and discerning priesthood and I read this line and thought, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. Why am I not getting married God?’ It really shook me. It made me think. Why do we have a celibate priesthood? Why am I not getting married?
It is not good for man to be alone. It is a true statement. I want to talk both about the beauty and the goodness of marriage and how God desires to provide for us, even outside of marriage.
In the beginning, when God formed man and woman, the two of them came together and they became one flesh. In the garden before the fall, there was this perfect union, this perfect complimentary of man and woman and out of that came children and the human race. That was the only perfect marriage that there ever was. As some of you might know, marriages are not always perfect. Sometimes we grow up in families where marriages that are not perfect. Some of us may grow up where marriages might not even be. From the moment of conception, each and every one of you were willed into existence. God loved you so much that He wanted to bring you into the world.
If you are married and you have come from a family where your parents are still married and so are your grandparents and great-grandparents, what a wonderful blessing that is. What a wonderful gift that is to have family and to be raised in family. That is the ideal. We all know that sometimes life brings us less than the ideal. Sometimes we don’t grow up in that situation.
We can think, well, it’s not good for man to be alone. Jesus wanted to heal this. He wanted to meet this need in each one of us. He came down in the flesh, He suffered, died, rose, ascended into heaven; He sent His Holy Spirit upon the church, and He gave us the great gift of the Eucharist, the very Flesh and Blood of our Savior. When we receive Jesus, we become one flesh with Him.
Man is not alone. Woman is not alone. We are always, when we are here, with Jesus. He wants to meet this original aloneness, that each one of us experiences in some way in our lives.
Even if you’re married, you probably still can feel lonely at times. Even if you have a family, there are probably still times where you feel lonely or where you can’t connect with them. Jesus wants to connect with each one of us here in this Eucharist. He wants to become one with us.
Not only does He do this in the flesh of the Eucharist, but He also does this in the body of Christ, His church. Each and every one of us are members of that body. What that means is that there are people in this world that are so alone and lonely and sometimes the only love that they will ever know is from this Body of Our Lord, Jesus Christ of His gathered members.
There are times when we feel alone and there are a couple of practical things that we can do.
First, whenever we feel alone it’s a call towards communion with God. The greatest gift that He gives to us is the Blessed Sacrament. Whenever we feel alone, we can come before Him in the Tabernacle and just be with Him and allow Him to fill that lonely void that only God can fulfill.
Another way that He does it is through this gathered assembly. Just by coming to Mass today and socializing the way that St. Matthias does, you are experiencing His Body. You are experiencing communion with each other.
One of the reasons that we have the Tuesday night teaching is that there is something at least once a week that everyone can come to and experience communion with each other. Where we can experience this community that God has given to us here at St. Matthias.
We have a wonderful Ministry called Steven Ministry where we have ministers that are willing to walk with you during anything that you may be going through. Any struggle that you may have.
Though man wasn’t meant to be alone, sometimes we are. Sometimes we do experience loneliness and God wants to meet us there. If you feel lonely, understand that that is part of the human condition. There are times when we do feel lonely, but God wants to meet us right there.
I made a 30-day Retreat when I was in the Seminary. It is a silent Retreat for the whole time. You don’t talk to anyone except Jesus and your Spiritual Director. I wanted to do that because I wanted to face my loneliness, and I wanted to discover that I could be alone and not be lonely. What I discovered during that 30-day retreat was that there certainly were times of loneliness, but there were also times where I discovered that God was right there with me.
One of my favorite lines that came to me was in Psalm 23. The translation I prayed with was the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. So, because He is my shepherd, I lack nothing. I don’t ever have to be alone.
Today I want to honor marriages and families and what a wonderful gift that is, but I also want us all to know that if we come from broken families or we do find ourselves alone, maybe some of us here never got married, like a priest. The Deacon did get married, so I think we have the good of marriage and also of celibacy. I know what it is like to go to bed alone. I know what it is like to not have somebody there at the end of the day, but I am not the only one. Probably many of you experience that. Some of you have maybe never gotten married or divorced or maybe your spouse has died. We experience this loneliness, but God does not want us to be alone. It is not good for man to be alone. That is why we gather here on Sundays to celebrate this Eucharist. That is why we have the gift of the Blessed Sacrament and why we have the gift of this wonderful Faith Community.
In some ways, I think St. Matthias fulfills a special unique role in our Diocese. We don’t have a big grade school. We don’t have a ton of younger families, and I think this is a refuge for people. I think this church, this parish is a refuge for people that haven’t found a home somewhere else. If you’re here, you’re not alone. God is with you and we are with you.
