Filling the Hole in Your Heart: How to finally heal your loneliness

 

A Worried Young Woman and a Word from Scripture

This morning I went to breakfast with a beautiful family. We were talking about life and love and weddings, and I talked a little bit about my family and my parents. I probably said too many things, because then a young lady who was my student said to me, “Wow, there are so many things to worry about.” She told me she might be getting engaged pretty soon, and I think I made her worry.

I believe today’s readings can help us put our hearts to rest.

The reading says, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water.” Well, yeah. Obviously. “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?” That part, that part is significant.

That word satisfy is important. It shows up again in the gospel, where after Jesus multiplied the bread and gave it out to everyone, the people ate and were satisfied. To be satisfied in your life. The hand of the Lord feeds us and answers all our needs.

Then Paul asks, “What will separate me from the love of Christ?” Most of us do not have to worry about persecution or famine or the sword. But we have other things. Loneliness. Illness. Rejection. Trials. Difficulties. Those are the fears we carry in our hearts.

So when the Lord says, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water,” he is really saying: all of you who are looking for more in your life, come to me. The Lord is the water. And all of you spending your energy on what fails to satisfy, come to me.

The Lamborghini and the Little Boy

A couple of days ago I celebrated my birthday. I made it. I am 61 years old.

A wonderful family asked me what we could do to celebrate, and I said why don’t we invite my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, a couple of friends, some families I know well, and go out to dinner. The meal did not settle well. I felt bloated and a little sick to my stomach afterward. It is a great place, do not get me wrong, but that night it just was not good.

So I said to everyone, let’s go for a walk. It was around 9:30 or 10 o’clock at night. We were walking along, and all of a sudden we see this car. A Lamborghini. That sound, that unmistakable engine sound. (watch the video for Father doing sound effects, timestamp 4:31) There was a seventh-grade boy with us, part of one of the families, and his mouth just dropped open. It was a beautiful car.

The Lamborghini slowed down, then stopped, then backed up. The passenger-side window came down, and the driver leaned over and said to the boy, “You want to come in?”

The kid was starstruck. 

We all looked at each other. Who is this guy? Then he opened the driver’s door, and it opened up with a ssssss. The boy got into the driver’s seat and was just thrilled out of his mind. We were all happy for him, taking pictures. I ended up in the back of the car where the engine sits, and the driver stepped on the gas from outside. I felt like my pants were on fire. The heat, the energy. It was just amazing.

We thanked the driver, he took off, and a little further down the road we saw he had parked the Lamborghini outside a restaurant. Probably the owner, who knows.

On the drive home I kept thinking about it. The scripture came back to me. “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?”

That driver had more pleasure seeing the look on that little boy’s face than from the Lamborghini itself. The fact that he could make that boy’s night, that he chose to stop, to back up, to ask the kid if he wanted to see inside, that was the thing that brought him joy.

When you buy something, it might give you pleasure for six months. Maybe. Then it is over. But what brings you greater joy is what you least expect, and that is when you are able to give something. To show love. To bring excitement to someone else. To do something special for someone else.

This is the beauty of what God does for us. He does not just give us things. He gives us the satisfaction, the love that goes with it.

Share

The Fountain That Beat Six Flags

I remember many years ago taking a family to Six Flags. Four kids, their mom, and me. Do you know what you spend 80 percent of your time doing at Six Flags? Waiting in line. You spend a fortune to wait in line. We had a good time, but we spent a fortune.

Afterward we went to get ice cream in Richardson, and nearby there was a little courtyard with a fountain that shoots water up into the air. The kids played in that fountain, and they had more fun there than in the hundreds of dollars we had spent at Six Flags all day.

Why? Because they were together. They were having fun. It was simple and it was good. It is hard to fully describe, but they were family, and that was enough.

My Greatest Life Lesson

At dinner on my birthday, someone asked me what I had learned in 61 years of life. I gave some answer on the spot that I do not even remember now. But driving home that night, after everything that had happened, I finally knew what I wanted to say.

In 61 years, the most important thing I have learned is this: I am not God. I need God. And thank God I have God, who brings meaning and purpose to our lives.

He is the water we are looking for.

Think about it this way. Imagine if you had a stomach and there was no food in the world. Imagine if you were created with a throat and there was nothing to drink. Imagine if you were given a tongue but could not speak. What an awful thing, to be created with a need and have nothing to fill it.

Now imagine a world where you are looking for love and there is no love to be found. Or you feel lonely and there is no companionship anywhere.

This is what makes life so remarkable. If you are looking for love, there is love. If you are looking for meaning, there is meaning. If you are looking for food, go to the grocery store. If you are looking for something to drink, go to the fountain. Everything you are looking for exists. You just have to go to the right place.

Come to me. All you who are thirsty, come to the water.

There Is No Reason to Turn Anyone Away

One more thing from the gospel. The crowd had been with Jesus for hours. They were tired, hungry, and it was getting late. The disciples wanted to send everyone home. And Jesus said, “There is no reason to turn them away.”

Thank God he said that. Because it means you can come to him for everything. Whatever you are looking for, this is the place.

That is the difference between a seventh grader and a 61-year-old. At that age, you feel strong, you feel like you can do it all yourself, and you want the fancy things. Then as you get older, you begin to realize there is only one thing you need. You just need to know that you are loved. That is it. That is enough.

I am not God. I need God. And thank God I have God.

What Are You Selling Your Soul For?

 

The Treasure Hidden in the Field

In the Gospel today, Jesus said to his disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field.” The person who finds it hides it again, then goes and sells everything he has so he can buy the plot of land that holds the treasure.

So the question is, what is the treasure?

The answer is Jesus Christ. The Christian way of life is the treasure.

Now, you might be thinking, of course you’re going to say Jesus. You’re a priest. You’re in a church. If you asked a car salesman, he might say the Porsche, the Ferrari, the Lamborghini, the Bentley, the G-Wagon. And if you asked a teenager, they might say being popular, being sought after, being one of the cool kids.

There is a story from fifth or sixth grade that makes the point well. Back then, pants with holes were just a fact of life. Every day at recess meant sliding in the grass, sliding on cement and gravel, and coming home with a ripped pair of pants. Then one day I saw a girl, and suddenly, “Ma, I need new pants.” That was the treasure. Looking good mattered now.

But there is a hint, beyond the fact that we are sitting in a church, that maybe the real treasure really is something deeper.

What Would You Ask For?

In the first reading, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night and said, “Ask something of me, and I will give it to you.”

Imagine that. Whatever you want, it’s yours. Would you ask for good looks? Power? Fame? To be an influencer? Would you ask to be rich?

King Solomon surprised the Lord. He asked for one thing: the wisdom to know right from wrong. And God was so pleased that Solomon hadn’t asked for a long life, a healthy life, riches, or victory over his enemies, that He gave Solomon exactly that understanding, plus everything else. 

Solomon asked for wisdom. And he got it.

And then he turned out to be one of the worst kings in Israel’s history. He lost the kingdom.

So what happened?

What Happens When People Start Paying Attention to You

Think back to your First Communion picture. Think about how reverently you walked back to your seat, how carefully you carried yourself when you were young. And then think about what happens as you get older. People start noticing you. You become more popular. Someone starts paying more attention to you.

That’s what happened to Solomon too. All the admiration, all the attention, and it went to his head. It goes to all of our heads. That is the pattern, and it is as old as scripture itself.

The Wisdom That Takes a Lifetime

Not long ago, my 85-year-old mother was praying the rosary. I asked her what she prays for. 

She said she asks for forgiveness from her parents. She explained that when she was young, she felt like she was living in a jail. Her mother always wanted to know where she was going, who she was with, and what time she would be home. She felt suffocated. She resented it. And now, at 85, she asks for forgiveness for what she put her mother and father through.

That is wisdom. That is what wisdom actually looks like. And sometimes it takes most of a lifetime to get there.

The Fake Treasure

The worst thing that can happen is that you sell everything for the fake treasure.

What is the fake treasure? It is popularity. It is approval. It is any goal that asks you to trade away your values, your morals, your principles, and your faith in order to reach it.

To be elected, some people sell their values and their principles. To have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, some people sell their dignity and their faith. To fit in, to be liked, to be seen as successful, people hand over the very things that make them who they are.

And for what? For something that will never love them back the way God does.

When the temptation comes to compare yourself to everyone around you, remember that you are only seeing one snapshot of their lives. One moment frozen in time. That is not the whole picture.

Hold On to What Actually Matters

Saint Paul says it plainly in the second reading: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God.”

Not some things. All things.

So do not sell yourself short. Do not sell your dignity. Do not sell your values, your morals, or your principles for something that cannot love you back the way God loves you.

If you are going to sell everything, then sell it for the Lord. Keep your morals. Keep your principles. Keep your values. Keep your dignity.

That is the true treasure.

When I Feel Tired, Their Faith Slaps Me Awake

 

Giving Credit Where It’s Due

When Dave told me that he wanted to give him this award, my first thought was that the real recipient should be Dave Palmer.

In order for me to be able to do all the things that I wanted to do on Guadalupe Radio, Davee had to say yes. When people say yes, great things can happen.”

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

That simple word, yes, set everything in motion. And so before anything else, I want to thank Dave and Guadalupe Radio for the honor.

The People Who Passed on the Faith

Looking out at the panel of presenters, I found myself thinking back to his younger years and the voices that helped my rediscover his faith.

He remembered watching Father Mitch Pacwa on EWTN as a young man. He spent what he described as “a ton of money” buying books and tapes from Catholic Answers with Dr. Carl Keating. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of books from Ignatius Press with Father Joseph Fessio. These were the people I called transmitters of the faith, and they laid the groundwork long before social media made it possible to share the Gospel with the entire world at once, and for free.

“There are so many people that have helped to communicate the faith over the years. It’s such a blessing to see how social media has allowed the faith to blossom and to be shared with so many people around the world at the same time. 

A Family That Gave Testimony

My mother was in the room that night, along with his sister and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law had asked him beforehand whether I was nervous.

Not really, I said. The mission is the boss. The mission comes first. The mission never ends.

Thank you to my family not just for being present but for the lifelong testimony you give me, a testimony that eventually led me to enter the seminary. Your sacrifices shaped everything that came after.

The People Who Work Alongside Him

Thank you to the Mary Immaculate community and the people who work with me. I know it’s not easy. I’m always asking what comes next. There’s no more than two minutes of applause before the questions start again.

“What can we do better? What can we do more?” We never look backward, always pressing forward.

Why Catholic Radio Still Matters

Someone might wonder whether Catholic radio is still relevant in 2026. 

Go to the nursing homes. Find the people who are old and tired and lying in their beds. They are listening to Catholic radio. It brings them calm. It brings them trust in God. It brings them warmth, faith, and hope.

Catholic radio is extremely important.

What It Actually Means to Trust in God

The theme Dave had introduced earlier is trust in God. I want to put flesh on those words by pointing to the people in Scripture who actually lived it out.

Who are they? The four friends of the paralytic man who carried their companion up to a rooftop, broke through it, and lowered him down in front of Jesus. That was trust in action. They didn’t quit. They found another way.

And the Syrophoenician woman who came to Jesus asking him to heal her daughter. Jesus pushed back, and she pushed back harder, not out of defiance but out of certainty that her cause was worthy and that God was with her. She got exactly what she asked for.

Think of the blind man crying out along the road, not caring what anyone thought, just calling out to Jesus with everything he had. “That’s trust in God,” Father Alphonse said. “If you are God and if you love me, if what you say is true, then you’re going to help me.”

And then there was the Roman centurion, a man who had every reason to feel the awkwardness of approaching a Jewish rabbi for help. He set that aside completely. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” That, Father Alphonse said, is the full picture of what trusting in God looks like. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened.

Read the Gospels and just look for those examples. You’ll see what it means to trust in God. It means getting out of your comfort zone. It means pushing yourself where no one else has gone

The Rocket and the Critics

A Starship rocket was recently been scrubbed at the one-minute mark. The comments online were predictable. People called it a failure, mocking the effort, writing off the whole endeavor.

Ridiculous. That rocket is going to take off one day. It’s going to orbit the moon. It’s going to reach Mars. We’re going to have colony on the moon. The critics don’t even try. They have no idea what they’re talking about.

God created us to discover who we are and what we’re here for and to discover the world that we live in. It’s going to happen.

The People in the Pews Who Inspire a Priest

All of you inspire me.

When I see people coming to Mass every Sunday, walking slowly, limping, arriving in wheelchairs, and still showing up, it inspires me. If I feel tired and I see you, I slap myself and I say, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get the job done.

The mission is the boss. The mission comes first. The mission never ends.

Thank you everyone.

Feeling Hopeless? God Never Gives Up on You (Priest's Powerful Take on the Parable of the Sower)

 

God Throws the Seed Everywhere

We all know the Parable of the Sower. We’ve heard it hundreds of times. It’s about God’s word and how we receive it. If we have an open heart, an open mind, an open soul, we allow God’s word and God’s graces to come into our life.

But today the focus is on the seed itself.

Think about this for a moment. What farmer would throw seeds in awful areas? What farmer would ever waste seed by throwing it into thorns, dry land, cracked land, land that can’t grow anything? No one would do that. No one except God.

God is extravagantly generous. He throws the seed everywhere.

Right now, some of you are listening with open hearts and open minds. And some of you, honestly, are somewhere else entirely. There’s no one standing at the door asking whether you’re going to pay attention today. Nobody’s going to turn you away if you won’t. The seed gets thrown anyway. God is generous. God’s word penetrates.

What Isaiah Tells Us About Rain

The first reading from the prophet Isaiah puts it beautifully. The rain and the snow come down and do not return. Rain falls on cement, on grass, on dirt, on rock. It doesn’t stop to consider what the ground thinks. It slaps the ground. It trickles. It nicks the surface. And eventually, it penetrates.

That image matters because so many of us hold back when it comes to sharing our faith. We talk ourselves out of it. “Don’t bring up religion with this person.” “Don’t even go there.” And in doing that, we deny someone the opportunity to hear a message of love.

We can’t do that. We shouldn’t do that.

Abraham Lincoln and a Drop That Changed Everything

While watching a History Channel series on Abraham Lincoln over the Fourth of July, something stood out. (I love Abraham Lincoln, I hated reading before I read about Abraham Lincoln.) Lincoln’s mother died when he was very young. He grew up in a log cabin in the wilderness of Illinois. His father would leave him for months at a time with his older sister while he went to look for work and food.

Eventually his father went away and came back with a new wife. A stepmother.

We all know the reputation stepmothers carry in stories. But this woman loved Abraham Lincoln. She encouraged him. She inspired him to get an education, to learn to read, to write. She was a drop of rain that fell into the soil of his life at exactly the right moment.

And who would have thought that was fertile ground? Who would have looked at some kid from a rough, remote corner of the country and predicted he would become President of the United States and help free millions of people from slavery?

When Jesus says that the seed falling on good soil will produce a hundredfold, this is what he means. You never know the impact you will have in someone’s life. You never know what kind of soil is hiding underneath a hard surface.

The Child Who Won’t Smile

Here’s another way to think about it. When a child is upset with their parents, they shut down. They cross their arms. They look away. And what does a parent do? They come close. They make a face. They say, “Come on, where’s that smile? Where is it?”

And little by little, the child starts to crack. Then they start laughing. It happens with teenagers too. It happens with friends. It happens with wives (though husbands might have to try a little harder).

The point is that persistence and love wear down the hard ground.

If someone wants to give you a hug, let them. If someone wants to talk to you, let them talk. If someone smiles at you, smile back. If someone wants to share something with you, let them share it. If someone keeps dropping grace into your life, don’t shut them out.

Those are the people you should never ignore. Those are the people you should open your heart, your mind, and your soul to.

Let Them In

That is what God does with us every single day. That is what the people who love us do every single day. They keep showing up. They keep throwing seed. They keep letting the rain fall.

The only question is whether we are willing to absorb it.

The parable is not just about what kind of ground we are. It’s an invitation to become the kind of ground that lets things grow. To stop deciding in advance that certain people aren’t worth the effort, or that we ourselves are too hard, too tired, or too far gone to receive something good.

The seed is already falling. Let it in.

---

Upcoming Retreats

Christ Renews His Parish invites you to join them for a women’s retreat on August 22nd and 23rd, and a men’s retreat on August 29th and 30th. There is a table in the narthex with all the information. It is a two-day program, and those who have participated before consistently come back grateful for the many blessings they received. If you are interested, stop by the table and ask any questions you have.