Moments come in most people's lives when they experience a feeling of the insufficiency of creatures to satisfy. Have you ever noticed that when first you meet a stranger you think him quite charming, but if you continue to see him very often he gradually seems to become less and less attractive? Little mannerisms of his get on your nerves; the subjects he is interested in have only a moderate interest for you, and little by little you find yourself inclined to keep away.
Or you take up a new author, and you are enthusiastic about his first book. But by degrees, as you read him more, you discover a sameness in his style or a repetition in his theme that bores you and you throw him aside.
This same experience of the emptiness of creatures, of their inability to satisfy, comes home, perhaps most of all, when a heavy cross is laid on your shoulders. After the death of wife or husband, of parent or child, the whole world seems to fall to pieces; life can never be the same again; you wonder, indeed, if you will ever be able to carry on. Friends will try to be kind, but you are acutely conscious of their insufficiency. Through no fault of theirs they are just not able to touch the place of the wound; it is too deep and too painful.
It is easy to go on illustrating the different ways in which this realization comes. With it there is born a feeling of isolation, of aloneness, apartness, which leaves you unsettled, which seems to dig a trench, deep and wide, around your heart.
One wonders if this is the reason why the Scriptures repeat so often that the Holy Ghost "fills" the heart and soul of man. The repetition is quite remarkable. Thus in the mystery of Pentecost, we read that the apostles "were all filled with the Holy Ghost." St. Stephen, we learn, "being full of the Holy Ghost ... saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." Ananias, on meeting the newly converted Saul, declared that Our Lord had sent him in order that Saul might receive back his sight "and be filled with the Holy Ghost." Elizabeth, on saluting Our Lady at the Visitation, "was filled with the Holy Ghost."
That feeling of the emptiness of the world and its powerlessness to fill the heart is an immense grace. Many people try to shake it off by plunging all the deeper into a life of distraction; God intends this sense of aloneness to draw the soul to seek its satisfaction in Himself alone. Many fail Him; many throw aside the grace; many do not realize, until death, how superficial are the lives they are leading.
One stands back sometimes to look and marvel at the ceaseless rush and agitation of the millions who pack our city streets. What is it all about? Do they ever give themselves time to breathe freely and ask themselves why they are in the world? Do they? Do I? I am here in this place of silent prayer, precisely in order to maintain my hold on realities; to preserve my sense of perspective; to realize the fundamental truth that this heart of mine can be filled only by God Who made it for Himself.
But the pull against me is strong, Lord. Yours it must be to give the counterattraction which must be far stronger than the force which so powerfully draws in the other direction. My soul tosses continuously on a tempestuous sea. Steady it, Lord; fix my will immovably on Yourself.