Single Not Alone

"Home and possessions are an inheritance from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD."

- Proverbs 19: 14

Beloved of God, the highest goal of the Christian life is not marriage. The propagation and therefore, the preservation of our one race of humanity is important and in a highly secularized, materialistic world, this might be viewed by many as the highest duty of every human being. Indeed, the survival of our race is vital but for the Christian, however, there is a much higher calling than this. For the highest goal of the Christian life is to advance the cause of Christ which is to bring forth the salvation of our poor world and this accomplished through baptism of water and confirmation of fire that work the rebirth, by merit of the the Passion and death of Jesus Christ, of the elect but fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

Our highest purpose as dutiful Christians, my precious friend, is to bring forth the fullness of the age of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ in ourselves in order to diffuse the grace of God into our poor world. This is our highest Christian duty and all of the three recognized vocations of our Holy Mother Church; the religious state, the married state and the single state work as a synergistic, blessed whole towards this end as the Mystical Body of Christ.

Of all the three vocations of life, I've had the most experience in one: The single lay vocation. I know a lot of single people just want to keep it quiet thinking to themselves perhaps that they have somehow failed somewhere in their lives, that the marriage boat has for some reason sailed away without them. Let me tell you, my precious friend, I know this feeling very well. There used to be a time in my life when I had felt this tremendous pressure to get married. But I realized that I can not decide to get married like it is when I decided on my college course. One soon realizes that marriage require more faith, more hope, more trust, spent outside of the self for it to even become a possibility. Why? First of all, because it involves another person, another body and soul. And second and most important of all, it involves the Lord: The one Divine Love from Whose sacramental grace and blessing husband and wife become that one blessed unity as they realize, moment by moment, their unsurpassed love for one another; a love that gives birth to sacred life and sacred life that, in turn, gives glory to the Lord our God.

The beauty of the married state is this synergy of husband and wife, a synergy that is founded perhaps, at first, in the vanity of physical appearances and in the easy world of similarities between the lovers but whose longevity will ultimately be derived from the undying bonds of the spirit that measure the maturity of their love by their enduring together as one the great sacrifices that arise from the difficulties and differences of real life. Yes, my Companion, in a nutshell - a good wife is from God. But let us now talk about the single lay vocation.

What is the single life? First of all, being single is not a kind of failure. If you are single like me, let me ask you this: How can a Christian who is seriously practicing his or her Christian faith be a failure? Christianity is not a faith that subscribes to fatalism. No Christian, of whatever state of life, is a failure who clings to God in faith, lives in hope and continuous repentance and proclaims with love in his or her soul the salvation of Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and forever. No, my precious friend, even in the midst of grave sin, we are never a failure unless we admit into our hearts the isolating bitterness and dark despair that lead to the ultimate defeat of whatever light of faith or song of hope that remain in our hearts and minds - in our souls.

A single, a Christian single, a Catholic lay single is not the unfortunate residue of the springtime passing away of youth. No, my precious friend, we are a unique vocation - a particular Christian occupation that satisfy a particular need of our Holy Mother Church. I am of the belief, my precious friend, that single lay Christians have much to contribute towards the building of a better world for all men, women and children.

"Duc in altum" - set into the deep! As laity we have the ability to penetrate deeply into our poor world to bring forward the evangelizing light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through thought, word and deed across the front lines of solid Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy safeguarded by our clergy and our religious contemporaries to advance bravely the cause of Jesus Christ right into the very heart of the darkness of the wars within that plague the peace of our world without. Indeed, the evils of the present are sufficient enough for every reasonable Christian single to manifestly believe that it is high time we live out our greatest potential in Jesus Christ.

The greatest peril for the single Christian is loneliness for this loneliness can easily lead one to bitterness and despair. Bitterness come from past hurts inflicted by evils that we refuse to let go and therefore remain unforgiven or unaccounted for and fester in the present like open sores. Bitterness like its taste are those evil things that linger and stain one's daily appetite for general human living. From this bitterness come a kind of misplaced anger and resentment, powerful passions that spead like the taste of bitterness to obfuscate right reason making evil appear good and good appear evil and may lead the less vigilant to forget that what animates and informs Christian life is charity; that what motivates us is divine love. Love requires us to be merciful. Our Lord's prayer prescribes us to be forgiving as our Father in Heaven is forgiving. But one who is bitter who relentlessly and secretly refuses to forgive the sin of either the self or of others consequently chooses to retain it. One then begins to be driven by a hate one does not recognize like a demon in disguise, this secret sin work to deny us our peace with our Savior and undermine the will leading the unwary soul towards subtle rebellion against the sovereign will of God.

We are nameless in the face of evil. And I speak here both of physical evil - of corporeal pain, senescence, illness, accident and death as well as the evil of sin - moral evil or the mystery of iniquity. Physical evil does not seek us out as unique individuals. Physical evil befalls all men indiscriminately because it is with humility that we must accept the fact that in this world, our Lord's Providence sustains both the wheat and the tares, bringing forth sunshine and rain alike to both the good and the bad.

But moral evil displays a disturbing kind of intelligence that is called the mystery of iniquity. All evil involves the destruction of what is real. Whereas physical evil acts externally causing injury, suffering and death to the corporeal body, moral evil pursues the annihilation of the inner nature of things and therefore desires our absolute destruction. Moral evil attacks the human soul.

We are nameless in the face of this evil because this evil strips us of everything and anything that makes us human. Those who abandon themselves to this enemy become the appearance of their sin. In the Solidarity, this mystery of iniquity is our sworn enemy with God and God's hosts. It is the beast of war.

But two things the faithful must bear in mind when it comes to the mystery of evil. First is that our Lord Who goes ahead of us will never give us a burden that we can not carry. Second is that whatever it is that befalls us Christians in this life happens always with God's permission. The good and the evil things that happen to us is always God's will for us and therefore, we always have reason to hope that our Lord will either give us strength to endure or He will not allow us to suffer. For God turns all things to good to those who serve Him with love and holy fear.

We are all wounded by Original Sin but let us all recall that our God made us to be good. Hence, whenever the good in us comes into contact with what is evil, there is suffering. This encounter with the mystery of evil and the suffering it inflicts to the good is clearly manifest in the Passion of our Savior Who is Goodness Himself. But it is never by the evils inflicted to our persons alone that we are distinguished as Christians. All the evil in the world will not be punishment enough to atone for what offense we are all guilty of in the face of our one God who alone is Good.

It is what hope we become in Jesus Christ, it is how we bear with virtue the evil of the times that our Christian character receives the shining recognition of both heaven and earth. Trials alone do not make us good Christians, it is what good we bring about amidst evil times that confirms us in Christian truth and virtue. It is what we become in the midst of life's suffering that confirms us in grace. Our Lord's Passion and death alone does not complete our faith. Our Lord's Passion and death as well as His Resurrection into the glory of God the Father make valid and whole our Christian witnesses. Evil is to be overcome with good for good alone prevails over evil because God is Goodness Himself.

In much the same way, it is true that we must carry our crosses with Christ but how we labor to overcome these crosses with, through, in and for Christ depend entirely on how we share our burdens, one with another, as one universal Christian Church and not as disparate individuals or separate Churches for how do we carry our crosses with Christ; how do we overcome the evil of our present times without the good of being able to share our burdens, one with another, willingly, obediently and with joy? We can forever rail bitterly against the evils of the present time and be in danger of sin or we can accept the evils of the present time and through mercy and penance, add to the peace of our times by quenching with our Lord's peace the wars that rage within us.

Good men who live in evil times know from Whom they receive all in all and are never anxious for they are at peace with the One who is Good. Evil men who live at all times know no rest.

My Companion, there is a great difference between our letting go of something good and true and something evil and false. Good things tend to last because all of heaven and earth know that the good stand on a foundation of truth. What is true is also what is good. But evil is ephemeral unless it finds a footing in the soul. And it matters not whether this evil be the evil of other people or the evil that lives in our own selves, evil things have no foundation at all unless we stand them on a platform of unforgivingness and decide to hold on to the lie that lives within this sin. The justice of God is not served by our anger nor is God's righteousness a validation of our hate. It never serves the Christian soul to be so unforgiving of self or others as to give anger, ephemeral by its own self, a lasting place where it can quietly usurp the unsung love that keep the very supernatural life of grace that keep us alive in God and God in us. Once we recognize evil, it would serve us well as Christians to withstand the lie of this particular sin, the very same lie of the serpent of faded Eden, and to deny it entrance to our souls and recalling the peace of our Lord, to let it go either by virtue of mercy or penance.

In the Solidarity, it must be recognized that all the evil in existence is as a tiny drop of ink and God's mercy, an endless, clear ocean. All of evil shall ultimately disappear for those who believe in the victory of Jesus Christ and the infinite mercies of the Father Who sent Him. Good is by nature of its own truth ascendant over evil and must receive the right proportion of its significance in our collective and individual awareness within the community that with due diligence do we perform the eternal fruits of virtue to the glory of God and with the correct promptitude do we fly away, body and soul, from the ephemeral temptations that herald the approach of the evil of that same wicked lie that live within all that is sin. This is the foundation thought of Ascendant Concentration; the methodology of teaching within our community.

Despair as a sin against hope is when one becomes so disposed to believe that salvation whether it be their particular own or of other people in general is unattainable even though the words of our Savior Himself counsels us that everything is possible in God. But the despair I am speaking about here is a kind of sorrow that arise out of lack of faith in things greater than one's own self as God, the will of God and the greater community of other people, our neighbors. This despair is more of a weakness but a weakness still that lead to either bitterness or to the real sin of despair which is a sin against hope.

Because of all of this, the Christian lay single must above all else avoid feelings of isolation from the whole communion of the Church - a single lay Catholic must above the two other states work to merit by the grace of Jesus Christ an active and lively place within the communion of Saints - most especially those Saints and Holy Souls in purgatory that God Himself prescribes to this or that particular single believer. A single lay Catholic must know with the conviction of the Holy Spirit that he or she is single but not alone, never alone. For our corporeal bodies that live here in the temporal world are only representations of the whole person of a human being. Our whole person as human beings extend beyond temporality because our souls have a local consciousness that exist beyond time and distance almost touching the infinite realms of the divine. Our souls are not our corporeal bodies, our souls are the whole of our awareness and extend beyond the corporeal realm to broad horizons of consciousness that are continuously realized, enlarged, magnified and expounded by our profound encounters with the deep reality of the supernatural through correct prayer and the proper reception of the sacraments of our Mother Church.

Our souls are not contained by our corporeal bodies, nor are the dimensions and powers of our souls the same as our physical forms. Our souls are the life giving principle of our corporeal bodies, the physical body is inhabited by our souls but this physical body can not contain what in reality has the ability to pierce freely the veil of time and breach the imprisoning walls of nature and space by strength of mind and will of faith alone. By our common baptism, a particular Christian character is imparted to our souls, a character that by grace of God will crown and perfect in eternity the unique human personality that already exists in the self.

This planet is far too small for our souls not to touch, despite the ignorance and the darkness of exile time and in spite of the artificial limitations of the divisive politics that the misguided and the untruthful unjustly create, there is a social dimension to human consciousness, a collective spirit that exist in our humanity which is greater than the sum of its parts, a conscious reality of the common things that make us care and reach out with concern to one another.

We are therefore, my precious friend, truly always present together in our hearts and minds, we form a togetherness in spirit through our souls in community one with another that is more real than the illusions of the distances of time and space that appear to separate our representative, physical bodies here on this world. We are, most especially in our prayers, public as well as private, ever a standing together in the presence of our Lord and each other even though our corporeal bodies may be a wide distance apart; we are, after all a one, whole communion of Saints.

Having said all that, it must also be said that it is inevitable in the life of every man of any state of life, religious, married or single, to feel lonely. This world is indeed sometimes a desperately lonely place which is why Christ is our hope. Indeed, Jesus gave us His hope and His hope for us became our own hope - the hope of abundant life and the necessary grace that through the workings of the Holy Spirit leads to the promise of an everlasting life lived in the fullness of joy caught forever between the most precious embrace of the Father and the Son.

Single people are not failures unless we allow ourselves to believe in the miserable lie that isolates us from the company of both the seen and the unseen, the lie that thinks we are alone.

We are single not alone. We can feel lonely like the rest of humanity at certain times and places but because we are Christian, this loneliness is only a challenge to draw nearer to our blessed Lord, His Holy Mother, the Angels and Saints of heaven and the Holy Souls in purgatory in prayer that confirm virtue, as well as to our own contemporaries here in the militant Church and our contemporaries in the tremendous world of our common human hopes in virtue that bring forth good works.

Beloved of God, I know of a truth that the relationships we will enjoy in eternity are infinitely deeper and more intimate than the relationships we know here on earth. Embraced by the timeless beauty and exquisite felicity of the vision of God we become to each other more than a wife or a husband, a brother or a sister. I know of no human words to describe this blessed friendships born to an eternity of joy into the pious society of Saints and Angels, relationships founded upon truths noble and divine, relationships built upon virtues, holy and pure, friendships filled forever to the overflowing of a Love, immortal and divine, untrammeled by sin and unhindered by neither sorrow nor separation. The covenant of marriage ends with our inevitable passage into this greater unity of the whole of the communion of Saints. For our Lord Himself said that we are to be like the angels in heaven. Now, married couples need not worry, it is not a step down of your love for one another to become like the angels for this transformation across the veil of exile time perfects our union with God and with each other making what was an imperfect love sublime. This also leads us to realize that there is a love that exists that is deeper and more profound than our need for sexual fulfillment and it is this one love being the theological virtue of charity that is the requisite ingredient of a happy Christian life of any state.

If we put the need for sexual fulfillment first, as the world, the flesh and the Devil would have us do so nowadays, before we even begin to love another, that person ceases to be a person and becomes a mere object in our eyes. The immense value of the virtue of chastity that guard the sacred purpose of God in the procreative act between man and woman is easily overlooked and then annihilated altogether as the capital vice of lust take prominence in soul of a person. Lust, having found a foothold in the soul, is then free to work its scandal and soon spreads like a cancerous malignancy among the sons and daughters of our common humanity. The sacred purpose of the sexual act as a means to transmit life and consummate the love of God that exist in the union between a man and a woman protected by the sacramental grace of their sacred wedlock vows is so recklessly abandoned to the detriment of families, the deterioration of the Domestic church, and our eternal Christian regret.

Pornography and the pornographic nature of our times constantly reinforces this mindset, a poisonous mindset that reduces the dignity of the human person into the play thing of the sins that victimize with such scandal and severity the nobility of man.

Indeed, the greatest challenge of the single person in the context of our sexually saturated present time is the defense of chastity. The Venerable Louis of Granada in his book, "The Sinner's Guide", have described this as the most severest warfare that a Christian is expected to fight. It is something that can not be done without God's strength and fidelity, the efficacious intercessions of the whole Christian community, the one whole communion of Saints led by the Immaculate Heart of the Queen of heaven and earth.

Homosexuality is a sure sign of a calling towards the single life. Indeed, the identity struggle that every homosexual man or woman must suffer through must eventually come to the same rational realization that there is no real substitute to the union of man and woman. This truth must not serve to imprison them. They will be led to ask questions that challenge their Christian identity and the stereotypes of the world and the ignorance of many shall lead most of them to hopelessness and despair. Trapped in artificial circumstances they feel powerless to prevent, external circumstances that deprive them of their God-given dignity as human beings they will become angry and this anger will prevent them from recognizing the liberating peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It will isolate them.

In the Solidarity, we will view homosexuality not as a gender identity. We will rise above the prejudice and stereotypes of this world that attempt to deceive us with labels that break us up into descendant parts and disparate pieces, into tiny islands of truths that disappear here and there in a vast ocean of lies, into little spaces of indistinguishable peace in instances far and few in between separated by a million wounds of war. We will view homosexuality for what it really is, the manifestation of a unique soul - a unique soul the same with all our souls, irreplaceable and unrepeatable potentialities imprinted with the image and likeness of God - and a particular Christian calling, a very specific calling towards the single lay vocation.

The homosexual is more akin to the angels than they realize. They are a unique personality just as valuable and just as capable of giving and receiving love along with the rest of our common humanity. The difference is that the truth that live within the homosexual personality is one that shall ultimately find their absolute and most beautiful expression not in this world but in the world to come, in the world that is promised by our Lord. They are reserved for a much better time and place if they likewise preserve themselves in chastity with courage in their faith in God in Jesus Christ. It is a challenge indeed for them to be courageous for the promise ahead of them is tremendous. It is something that we must leave for them to discover for themselves.

Our task is to share our burdens together with the burdens that our homosexual brothers and sisters carry for they are not exempt from our Christian obligation to love each other as our Savior loves us. We are to welcome the sinner but never the sin. Towards this end, the Solidarity shall support units of Courage or Catholic Courage at the Squadron level to encourage, support and bring out of the darkness, our suffering homosexual brothers and sisters who desire to live in the peace of Jesus Christ in full communion with God and Holy Mother Chruch.

Our life, homosexual or not, is a lonely path that shall only find fulfillment not through sexuality or promiscuity but through the sanctity of the one love of God in charity, a love that run deeper than human sexuality and its challenges to our wounded humanity.

The single vocation could be a temporary vocation or a permanent one. It depends on the person whether he or she would like to fully dedicate their lives as consecrated singles in the service of Christ and His Church or to accept the will of God for them should they in time find a suitable partner in marriage.

In the Solidarity where we as Catholic laity live the awareness of the whole communion of Saints - militant, suffering and triumphant - the single person is recognized for who she or he is, not as an object of suspicion or idle gossip but a valuable friend and Companion, a Beloved of God.

For the militant Church exists not in the stone of its buildings, these structures only serve the whole of the Chruch - militant, suffering and triumphant. The militant Church or the pilgrim Church of Jesus Christ here on earth, exists in each and every person of the faithful - so when we say we belong to our Holy Mother Church, we expressly mean we belong to each other as one whole communion of Saints because, my precious friend, we are the militant Chruch and no one else, we are the life of this world that must give glory and dutiful service to the God of our hopes and the Lord of our lives, for love of Christ on behalf of suffering humanity and the salvation of our own souls.

Glory to God in His creation
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.