Lately I visited an elderly woman. During our conversation she lamented that nobody seemed to care about her fate, not even her only son and his family. She said that she was experiencing an utter neglect from her sisters and brothers. No one seemed to be listening to her pain, not even God. “How many times I asked God why and he never replied!” she kept telling me. Loneliness seems to be the bread and butter of being human. Meditating on the second station of the Via Crucis, when Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested, Pope Benedict XVI presents loneliness as the main consequence of betrayal.
“And so Christ faces another trial: betrayal and its resulting sense of abandonment and isolation. This is not the kind of solitude he loved when he would withdraw to the mountains to pray, it is not the interior solitude which is a source of peace and quiet, since it gives us a glimpse of the mystery of the soul and of God. Rather, it is the bitter experience of all those persons who, at this very moment when we are gathered here, as at other times of the day, find themselves alone in a room, facing a bare wall or a silent telephone, forgotten by everyone because they are elderly or infirm, foreigners or outsiders. Along with them, Jesus drinks from this chalice, which contains the gall of abandonment, loneliness and hostility”.
The only thing I could say to this heartbroken woman was to turn to Jesus, and with great trust in his loving mercy pray to him: “Jesus I trust in you”. Trusting in the abandoned and lonely Jesus is a sound antitode to live fruitfully existential loneliness. For all those who turn to him in their hour of trial they are to be assured that Jesus will be present for them. In fact, according to the Orthodox Bishop, Hilarion Alfeyev, our loneliness has already been redeemed by that of Christ. “In fear and trembling, bowing before the holy tomb of Jesus in silence and reverence, let us thank the Lord for He was alone so that we might not be alone, He was abandoned so that we might not be abandoned, He suffered insults and mockery, slander and humiliation, suffering and death, so that in the midst of any suffering we might feel that we are not alone, that the Saviour Himself ‘is with us unto the end of the ages’”.
Amid our loneliness Jesus’ presence opens us for God and for each other. It helps us to extend ourselves to hear the cry of the poorest of the poor. It introduces us to the way of life! As Pope John Paul II rightly pointed out: “With his invitation “follow me”, Jesus not only says again to his disciples: take me as your model, but also: share my life and my choices, and stake your life for love of God and for neighbour together with me. This is how Jesus opens up before us the ‘way of life’… The “way of life” continues and renews the mind of Christ in us and becomes the way of faith and conversion. … It is the way that does not fear failure, difficulties, isolation, loneliness, because it fills our hearts with the presence of Jesus”.
The noted second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold said: “Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for”. May our loneliness become an opportunity for deepening our relationship with
Jesus and live his life vision!
■ Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Gwann