← The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
What to Do with My Loneliness (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)
00:04:43
Loneliness is real and loneliness is really difficult. How do I handle feeling alone and what does my loneliness mean? Fr. Mike speaks into the deep and painful experience of loneliness, especially in the Christian life. He reminds us that loneliness is not a sign of failure or weakness, but a reflection of our God-given longing for love and communion. While God is always near, Fr. Mike encourages us to be honest about our pain and to invite Jesus into that place — because even in our loneliness, we are never truly alone. Tickets are on sale now for Fr. Mike Schmitz's Parables Tour at https://www.AscensionPress.com/FrMikeTour Loneliness is real and loneliness is really difficult. How do I handle feeling alone and what does my loneliness mean? Fr. Mike speaks into the deep and painful experience of loneliness, especially in the Christian life. He reminds us that loneliness is not a sign of failure or weakness, but a reflection of our God-given longing for love and communion. Whi...
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Loneliness is real and loneliness is really difficult. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension presents. Here's something that can be kind of tough to talk about. Loneliness, loneliness, especially as part of the Christian life. Maybe as Christians we say, no, no, no, but you're never alone. God's always there. And that's true. But the experience of loneliness can be so profound and it can be so overwhelming that sometimes it just helps to hear someone say, oh, this is real and this is really difficult. So here you are, like, I've been trying to cry out to God. I've been trying to find people in my life and I haven't been able to. I'm just lonely, or maybe I'm surrounded by people and I'm still lonely. You know, this is one of the markers of our culture, one of the markers of our lives. Today in the 21st century is a crisis, epidemic even of loneliness. One source is the fact that what we expect people to do when they become adults is leave home, right, Leave your family, leave your friends and start a life somewhere else. That was never the case in the history of humanity. It was always in the town you grew up with, the people you grew up with, the people who raised you and cared for you, hopefully loved you very, very well, of course, with their faults and stuff. But you make a life with them. And so the people that knew you still know you. And the people you get to know, you get to know them in a, in a context where there's kind of a mutual understanding. Now that's not to say that family is the answer, because you can be in your family and still be lonely. Your family can be dysfunctional. Well, actually, sorry, unless you're the holy family, your family is dysfunctional. It's still possible to be lonely in the midst of your family. That is real. And also I'm going to say this, that is completely natural. This is the common human experience. Jesus is known as the man of sorrows. So here's God himself. You know, Jesus, who spent 80% of his public ministry in a five mile radius. He experienced betrayal, experienced denial. He experienced what it was to be alone. He experienced what it was like for his soul to be sorrowful, even to death. Jesus, God himself, in some mysterious way as man knew what it was to be lonely, misunderstood for sure, to be abandoned for sure. St. Paul also had the experience when he says, and that one of his moments of great trial, he said, no one came to my defense. I can imagine that in that season, or maybe many seasons of his life, Paul was like, no, I know what it is to be lonely. So it's not unusual, it's real and it's common. But I would say this. I would say your loneliness points to something. Your experience of loneliness, especially as a Christian, your experience of loneliness points to the fact that you're made in God's image and you're made for communion. You're made for others, and you're made to be known. I think sometimes we can easily rush past this. Your experience of loneliness points to something greater. And that something greater is you're made for others. You're made for love because you're made in God's image and likeness. Right? God's innermost secret of God himself is that he's an eternal exchange of love, eternal communion of love. You being in God's image, to not have that right, to not have someone who knows you, who loves you, means that there's something unmet that you're made for. And to experience pain in that is real and it's natural. Even if you know, I know God is with me, it's still normal to experience loneliness at the same time. The thing I said at the very beginning, that it's not enough to just say, but God's with you all the time. That's true. It might not be enough to say, but God's with you at the same time. God is with you. And the reality, of course, is that as you're going through a season or maybe a long, long season of loneliness, it's not just true that God will meet you at the end. It's not just true that Jesus will meet you at the end of that road of loneliness. It's that Jesus enters into the loneliness with you. This is completely true. Sometimes we cut off what Jesus wants to do in our hearts because we think like, well, once I get better, then I can let him in. Jesus will meet you at the end of your loneliness, but he also wants to be with you in the midst of your loneliness. My invitation is to acknowledge. Yeah, this pain, this loneliness is real. Acknowledge also. Okay? The loneliness you experience is not a sign that you're not worth loving. It's not a sign that you've been rejected. It's not a sign that you're not worthy of love. It points to the fact that you are made for love. And God, who is love, can meet you in the midst of that longing and in the midst of that pain. So let him in. For all of us here at Ascension presents, My name is Father Mike. God bless.