A Terrible Cavity

The world famous author/psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Tournier, has called loneliness “the most devastating malady of the age.” Another eminent physician has said of loneliness, “There is no human condition so acute-or so universal.” Loneliness “doesn’t happen just on dark days,” novelist Faith Baldwin has written, “it can pierce you like a knife on a spring morning or a golden summer afternoon, no matter where you are or what you are doing.”

It was Good Friday Through a series of chance circumstances, a celebrated Broadway actress found herself sitting in a crowded church, listening to a reading of the “Passion of the Lord.” For months the woman had been suffering from what she described as a “terrible cavity somewhere in the abdominal region.” She had been examined by several doctors who found no physical cause for her pain. She had undergone exploratory surgery at her own insistence. Again she was found to be well physically. Now, in church, as the Passion Story moved toward its…