Category: BEST OF

  • “It is better to suffer from loneliness than to suffer from sin.” 

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef

  • “Sometimes loneliness has led us to new heights of creativity, and sometimes it has led us to drugs, alcohol, and emotional paralysis; sometimes it has led us to the true encounter of love and authentic sexuality, sometimes it has led us into dehumanizing relationships and destructive sexuality; sometimes it has moved us to a greater depth of openness toward God and others, to fuller life, and sometimes it has led us to jump off bridges, to end life; sometimes it has given us a glimpse of heaven, sometimes it has given us a glimpse of hell; sometimes it has made the human spirit, sometimes it has broken it; always has it affected it.  For loneliness is one of the deepest, most universal, and most profound experiences that we have.”

    —Ronald Rolheiser,The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness

  • “Only through shame can you be freed from shame.”

    —St. John Climacus

  • Think of their loneliness on holidays or Sundays, when single people find themselves alone upon leaving Mass, whereas the others are going to spend the day with their family; think of the loneliness in the evenings, when once the day is done, they go back home to find…four walls!  Think of the loneliness of heart, even in the midst of friends, which is often made even more bitter at the sight of those who are not alone.

    The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
    Jean-Charles Nault

  • “Being alone never felt right. Sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”

    —Charles Bukowski

  • “The narrow way is difficult, and it can be very lonely.”

    —Archpriest Konstantine Feodoroff, Narrow is the Way

  • “There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

    —Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  • If you’ve been taught that it is okay to be in this self-sacrificed type of environment and stay away from relationships, you will never—ever—grow.  That is not spirituality.

    That spirituality that says, I’m going to be on my own—read, pray, do whatever, and I don’t care about anybody else – you are not part of the body of Christ.  You are dismembering yourself from the body of Christ.

    Fr. Paul Girguis, Redeeming the Time: Setting Boundaries


  • God often isolates those whom He chooses, so that we have nowhere to turn except to Him, and then He reveals Himself to us.

    —Father Seraphim Rose

  • “There is nothing more freeing in life than when a friend forgives you. There is nothing that feels quite as liberating as knowing you’ve wronged someone that you love so much and, feeling it — feeling it in your chest — and they graciously forgive you. They graciously let it go. It’s the most liberal. It’s it feels like you were in jail and you were taken out of jail. It feels like, it feels like you were in despair, and they lifted you out of their despair. And it’s a unique position where only they have right, only the friend you’ve wronged has the ability to graciously forgive you. So let’s do that with our friends. Let’s model the good behavior. Let’s do this. Let’s do this with our friends.”

    —Fr. Mark Eskandar