Have you ever felt a deep loneliness? If you have, did you ask the Lord what was this loneliness within you? Sometimes we try to fill this feeling with temporary fixes. But the loneliness comes back. Is it possible that God is permitting you to experience this emptiness for a reason? St. Augustine confronted this hole in his heart by coming to the truth. "My soul is restless until it rests in you, my God." Only God can fill this sense of loneliness. What appears to us to be a pain, my in reality be a grace, calling us into a deeper intimacy with God.  We may be afraid of this intimacy with God because of our many sins. But God is not thwarted by our sins. He forgives them, so that we may be one with and in him. It will not happen overnight. It will entail dying to what is not of God and surrendering ourselves into the hands of the Lord's love. As long as the lover is away from the beloved, there is a sense of loneliness. But it the mutual love between them that enables them to wait for the day of union once more.