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Daily reflections for Lenten Easter, written by Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

Few persons in recent centuries have touched the human heart as deeply as has Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher. There are many reasons for this, some of which are obvious. He was a man of rare brilliance, with a lot to give others.

One of the reasons that he was able to so deeply and exceptionally touch people’s hearts, however, had less to do with his brilliance than it had to do with his suffering, especially his loneliness.

As a young man, he fell deeply in love and for a time planned marriage with the woman to whom he was passionately attached. However, at one stage, at great emotional cost to himself, and so, history would suggest, at even a greater emotional cost to the woman involved, he broke off the engagement and set himself to live for the rest of his life as a celibate.

His reasoning was simple. He felt that what he had to give to the world came more from his own loneliness.
He could share deeply, because first of all, he felt deeply. Loneliness gave him depth.

Rightly or wrongly, he judged that marriage might in some way deflect or distract him from that depth.
Painful as it was. Albert Camus once suggested that it is in solitude and loneliness that we find the threads that bind human community.

Kierkegaard understood this, and he embraced it to the point that he positively cultivated his own loneliness in loneliness and longing.

Empathy is born when nothing is foreign to us. No body will be foreign to us, and our words will begin to heal others.