The Best Devotion for Single Catholics Who Want to Get Married
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Do you find yourself alone at night asking begging God to give you someone to fill that void?
Is your circle of single friends getting smaller because everyone is getting married?
Do you feel like a third wheel when you do manage to go out with your friends...all of them married?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on...
This was me about three years ago! I was a miserable mess that was tired of dating and being lonely. I was looking for a woman who could challenge me on a spiritual level. She had to be wise in worldly ways, but at the same time, not worldly. She had to be funny and witty with an outgoing personality that would understand my introverted nature and painfully dry jokes. Oh, and she had to be really pretty too!
I had been faithful to the Lord by going to Mass and praying my rosary. I was working on a strict plan for self-improvement. I was even striving to further my career in ambitious new ways so that I could have the income needed to provide for a wife and family in the high rent district of our nation, the DC suburbs. I was checking all the right boxes and having some worldly success, but still alone and frustrated beyond belief.
To all the single people reading this who feel as I did, sad, lonely and dejected: embrace the devotion to Divine Mercy, STAT!!!
What is the devotion to Divine Mercy?
The devotion to Divine Mercy has been a part of Catholic devotion for 2,000 years. But it has been promoted in a rather profound manner for only the past 100 years or so by St. Faustina and Pope St. John Paul II. It’s a devotion that recognizes who God is and our relationship with that God, who is our Father. It's a devotion that calls us to conversion.
Divine Mercy calls us to abandon our sin and worldly habits by a change of heart where we desire God and the goodness that He desires for our lives. Divine Mercy gives us the courage to approach the Divine Majesty and beg for forgiveness with confidence. Divine Mercy emboldens us to abandon ourselves to the good God by saying, “Jesus, I Trust in You.”
One Sunday, during the Year of Mercy, I was sitting at Mass, alone, and heard the gospel of the Prodigal Son. At that moment in time, I felt very much like the prodigal son before he headed back to his father; I was in the dumps!
So I threw a little bit of a spiritual temper tantrum and told the Lord, “If you want me to be in heaven, you have to have MERCY on me. Without it, I won’t make it there.” This spiritual temper tantrum set me on a course down the road of Mercy, a road from which there is no turning back.
The road of Mercy for me has had three memorable mileposts: a prayer, a book, and a person.
1. A Prayer
I unknowingly started down this road of Mercy several years ago because of my laziness. The priest who occasionally gives me spiritual direction told me I need to pray a daily rosary. I did it most days, but some days I didn’t feel like investing the twenty minutes it took to pray the Rosary. So instead, I would pray the Divine Mercy chaplet, which only takes about ten.
2. A Book
A good friend of mine gave me a book by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, entitled No Turning Back: A Witness to Mercy. It's a story of his conversion, and boy, what a story it is!
By age 15 he was involved in drugs, alcohol, pornography, and a Japanese gang. He was a wanted man boy by the U.S. government, the Japanese government, and the U.S. Navy. After he was deported back to the States, his life went from bad to worse until he hit rock bottom. Alone one night and coming off his drug-induced high, he was treated with a heavy dose of Divine Mercy which set him on a course of profound conversion. I highly recommend you get a copy and read it.
3. A Person
I met a girl on CatholicMatch who, by the looks of her profile, seemed nice enough to go out with. We started dating on the weekends, but it was nothing too serious. One day she relayed something to me that she had received in prayer, that God wanted her to treat me with Mercy.
Naturally, my pride flared up, and I tried to break up with her soon after that fateful conversation. Thankfully, the Lord had other plans because that girl did, in fact, treat me with the mercy I was begging God for at Mass a few months prior. She eventually became my wife, and now I am living God’s Mercy on a daily basis as a married man and father.
The Divine Mercy devotion is the perfect devotion for all single people, young and old alike. If you are searching for your spouse, say, “Jesus, I Trust in You” and get on the road of Mercy, and perhaps like me, you will find your spouse along the way.
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