A Letter to Single Catholic Men Called to Marriage

"Meanwhile Isaac had gone from Beer-lahai-roi [“God lives and looks on me”]...and caught sight of camels approaching. Rebekah, too, caught sight of Isaac, and got down from her camel. Then Isaac brought Rebekah into the tent of his mother Sarah. He took Rebekah as his wife."~ Genesis 24:62-64, 67

Isaac was going through perhaps the most painful experience of his life up to that point.

His beloved mother, Sara, had just died, and he knew that his father, Abraham, would soon join her. Furthermore, the women in the land where he lived were Canaanites, few of whom were God-fearing and virtuous. Finding a good wife must have seemed a near impossibility. Given all this, Isaac must have been tempted to surrender to feelings of loneliness during this time.  

I bring up this story because it describes a situation that may be similar to yours if you are a Catholic single man. You may sometimes (or often) experience feelings of loneliness. You may feel that, given the state of secular society, you have worse odds of finding a Catholic wife than Han Solo had of successfully navigating that asteroid field. If you do experience those feelings, then you are undergoing a trial similar to Isaac’s. 

Now, I’m not saying that being single is just one big, unmitigated cross.

You can have a lot of (healthy) fun as a single person. The single state is a great opportunity to form and enjoy friendships with members of your own sex as well as the opposite one. There’s also flexibility to your schedule when you’re single, the flexibility of which you can and should take advantage.

However, many single Catholic men do experience feelings of loneliness and discouragement, at least from time to time. Even if you are a single man who generally feels happy and positive, chances are you go through at least short bouts of vocation-related discouragement. 

So how can Isaac’s story help you in these moments of struggling? Well, God is probably not going to send your father’s servant to find you a wife and then deliver her to you by camel (that’s what happens for Isaac; technically God could do it for you too, but I doubt even Han Solo would take those odds). There is something Isaac was doing before he met his bride, though, that you should imitate: he would go to a well named “God lives and looks on me”, and he would meditate there. 

Think of that name: “God lives and looks on me.”

Isaac would go and meditate where God lived and looked on him. Where can you and I go to meditate where God lives and looks on us? I am sure you know the answer to that: to the Blessed Sacrament, in which God Incarnate is truly present. The advice is cliched, I know, but think! Isaac would regularly go to meditate at a well with a holy name.

If Isaac was so dedicated to praying in the presence of a mere symbol, how much more dedication should we have to praying in the presence of Christ Himself! 

Once you are married, if that is your vocation, you will likely not have as much time for visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Now is the time to take advantage of your free time and your more flexible schedule. Make visits to the Blessed Sacrament frequently. Drink from that spiritual well, so that you can be as holy and as strong a man as possible.

Sometimes your visits will be accompanied by feelings of comfort. Sometimes they won’t.

But make those visits, all the same, in imitation of Isaac. If God is calling you to marriage, this is the best thing you can do to prepare yourself for marriage. If God is calling you to the priesthood or religious life, then it is the best thing you can do to prepare yourself for Christ’s Wedding Feast.

Either way, in order to accept and delight in whatever God wills for your life, you must cultivate a relationship with Him that is best obtained through Eucharistic devotion. 

So moving forward, resolve to begin (or continue) striving for a deeper love of the Eucharistic Christ. And as you do, remember that thousands of years ago, a lonely, heartbroken single man in the Middle East was doing the same thing in spirit. And remember that the young man was the ancestor of the same Christ you worship. Truly, God receives and gives back a hundredfold!