Single

To be single is not a curse, nor a disease, nor anything that demands condolences or sympathy. Singleness is the universal vocation, the one vocation that all people have at one point in life or another, sometimes at many points, sometimes only at a few. We all know it. We all associate loneliness with it. But loneliness exists even with those who live in community, or who are part of the brotherhood of priests. And it certainly exists among those romantically linked into pairs. Loneliness is the soul's longing for its end in God, and the loneliness we feel for others is only a portion of this need, for we are to love God first, then our neighbors. Being together with another romantically is not an end, it is a beginning. For those called to it, it is the path they walk to God, to the real end of loneliness, and loneliness will be a struggle all their lives, even together in the community of the family. To be single is not to be doomed to loneliness and misery, but to have the opportunity to approach that end individually, to enter into God, and if He so wills it, to be brought through and by Him to the other He means for you.