What Does it Mean to be a Hermit in an Essential Sense? (Reprised from 2018)

[[Dear Sister when you have spoken of readiness for discernment with a diocese and even temporary profession as a solitary hermit you have said a person must be a hermit in some essential sense. Could you say more about what you mean by this phrase? I think maybe I know what you are talking about but I also find the phrase difficult to define. Thanks!]]

Introduction:

That's such a great and important question! For me personally, articulating the definition of this phrase or the description of what I mean by it has been a bit difficult. It is a positive phrase but in some ways, I found my own senses of what I meant by this come to real clarity by paying attention to examples of inauthentic eremitical life, individuals who call themselves hermits, for instance, but who, while nominally Catholic, are isolated and/or subscribe to a spirituality which is essentially unhealthy while embracing a theology which has nothing really to do with the God of Jesus Christ.  To paraphrase Jesus, not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" actually has come to know the sovereignty of the Lord intimately. In other words, it was by looking at what canonical hermits were not and could or should never be that gave me a way of articulating what I meant by "being a hermit in some essential sense." Since God is the one who makes a person a hermit, it should not surprise you to hear I will be describing the "essential hermit" first of all in terms of God's activity.

Related to this then is the fact that the hermit's life is a gift to both the Church and the world at large. Moreover, it is a gift of a particular kind. Specifically, it proclaims the Gospel of God in word and deed but does so in the silence of solitude. When speaking of being a hermit in some essential way it will be important to describe the qualities of mission and charism that are developing (or have developed) in the person's life. These are about more than having a purpose in life and reflect the simple fact that the eremitical vocation belongs to the Church. Additionally, they are a reflection of the fact that the hermit precisely as hermit reflects the good news of salvation in Christ which comes to her in eremitical solitude. If it primarily came to her in another way (in community or family life for instance) it would not reflect the redemptive character of Christ in eremitical solitude and therefore her life could not witness to or reveal this to others in and through eremitical life. Such witness is the very essence of the eremitical life.

The Experience at the Heart of Authentic Eremitism:

Whenever I have written about becoming a hermit in some essential sense I have contrasted it with being a lone individual, even a lone pious person who prays each day. The point of that contrast was to indicate that each of us is called to be covenantal partners of God, dialogical realities who, to the extent we are truly human, are never really alone. The contrast was first of all meant to point to the fact that eremitical life involved something more, namely, a desert spirituality. It was also meant to indicate that something must occur in solitude which transforms the individual from simply being a lone individual. That transformation involves healing and sanctification. It changes the person from someone who may be individualistic to someone who belongs to and depends radically on God and the church which mediates God in word and sacrament. Such a person lives her life in the heart of the Church in very conscious and deliberate ways. Her solitude is a communal reality in this sense even though she is a solitary hermit. Moreover, the shift I am thinking of that occurs in the silence of solitude transforms the person into a compassionate person whose entire life is in tune with the pain and anguish of a world yearning for God and the fulfillment God brings to all creation; moreover, it does so because paradoxically, it is in the silence of solitude that one comes to hear the cry of all in union with God.

If the individual is dealing with chronic illness, for instance, then they are apt to have been marginalized by their illness. What tends to occur to such a person in the silence of solitude if they are called to this as a life vocation is the shift to a life that marginalizes by choice and simultaneously relates more profoundly or centrally. Because it is in this liminal space that one meets God and comes to union with God, a couple of things happen: 1) one comes to know one has infinite value because one is infinitely loved by God, not in terms of one's productivity, one's academic or other success, one's material wealth, and so forth, 2) one comes to understand that all people are loved and valued in the same way which allows one to see themselves as "the same" as others rather than as different and potentially inferior (or, narcissistically, superior), 3) thus one comes to know oneself as profoundly related to these others in God rather than as disconnected or unrelated and as a result, 4) chronic illness ceases to have the power it once had to isolate and alienate or to define one's entire identity in terms of separation, pain, suffering, and incapacity, and 5) one is freed to be the person God calls one to be in spite of chronic illness. The capacity to truly love others, to be compassionate, and to love oneself in God are central pieces of this.

The Critical Question in Discernment of Eremitical Vocations:

 What is critical for the question at hand is that the person finds themselves in a transformative relationship with God in solitude and thus, eremitical solitude becomes the context for a truly redemptive experience and a genuinely holy life. When I speak of someone being a hermit in some essential sense I am pointing to being a person who has experienced the salvific gift the hermit's life is meant to be for hermits and for those they witness to. It may be that they have begun a transformation that reshapes them from the heart of their being, a kind of transfiguration that heals and summons into being an authentic humanity that is convincing in its faith, hope, love, and essential joy. Only God can work in the person in this way and if God does so in eremitical solitude --- which means more than a transitional solitude, but an extended solitude of desert spirituality --- then one may well have thus become a hermit in an essential sense and may be on the way to becoming a hermit in the proper sense of the term as well.

If God saves in solitude (or in abject weakness and emptiness!), if authentic humanity implies being a covenant partner of God capable of mediating that same redemption to others in Christ, then a canonical hermit (or a person being seriously considered for admission to canonical standing and consecration MUST show signs of these as well as of having come to know them to a significant degree in eremitical solitude.  It is the redemptive capacity of solitude (meaning God in solitude) experienced by the hermit or candidate as  "the silence of solitude"  which is the real criterion of a vocation to eremitical solitude. (See other posts on this term but also Eremitism, the Epitome of Selfishness?) It is the redemptive capacity of God in the silence of solitude that the hermit must reflect and witness to if her eremitical life is to be credible.

Those Putative "Hermits" not Called to Eremitical Solitude:

For some who seek to live as hermits but are unsuccessful, eremitical solitude is not redemptive. As I have written before the destructive power of solitude overtakes and overwhelms the entire process of growth and sanctification which the authentic hermit comes to know in the silence of solitude. What is most striking to me as I have considered this question of being a hermit in some essential sense is the way some persons' solitude and the label "hermit" are euphemisms for alienation, estrangement, and isolation. Of course, there is nothing new in this and historically stereotypes and counterfeits have often hijacked the title "hermit".  The spiritualities involved in such cases are sometimes nothing more than validations of the brokenness of sin or celebrations of self-centeredness and social failure; the God believed in is often a tyrant or a cruel judge who is delighted by our suffering -- which he is supposed to cause directly -- and who defines justice in terms of an arbitrary "reparation for the offenses" done to him even by others, a strange kind of quid pro quo which might have given even St Anselm qualms.

These "hermits" themselves seem unhappy, often bitter, depressed, and sometimes despairing. They live in physical solitude but their relationship with God is apparently neither life-giving nor redemptive -- whether of the so-called hermit or those they touch. Neither are their lives ecclesial in any evident sense and some are as estranged from the Church as they are from their local communities and (often) families. Because there is no clear sense that solitude is a redemptive reality for these persons, neither is there any sense that God is really calling them to eremitical life and the wholeness represented by union with God and characterized by the silence of solitude. Sometimes solitude itself seems entirely destructive, silence is a torturous muteness or fruitlessness; in such cases, there is no question the person is not called to eremitical solitude.

Others who are not so extreme as these "hermits" never actually embrace the silence of solitude or put God at the center of their lives in the way desert spirituality requires and witnesses to. They may even be admitted to profession and consecration but then live a relatively isolated and mediocre life filled with distractions, failed commitments (vows, Rule), and rejected grace. Instead, some replace solitude with active ministry so that they simply cannot witness to the transformative capacity of the God who comes in silence and solitude. Their lives thus do not show evidence of the incredibly creative and dynamic love of God who redeems in this way but it is harder to recognize these counterfeits. In such cases, the silence of solitude is not only not the context of their lives but it is neither their goal nor the charism they bring to church and world. Whatever the picture they have never been hermits in the essential sense.

Even so, all of these lives do help us to see what is necessary for the discernment of authentic eremitical vocations and too what it means to say that someone is a hermit in some essential sense. Especially they underscore the critical importance that one experiences God's redemptive intimacy in the silence of solitude and that one's life is made profoundly meaningful, compassionate, and hope-filled in this way.

Does God Love Us Because We are Pathetic?

[[Does God love us because we are pathetic? Would that even be love? I think it might be pity, but it's not love. Someone said they asked God why he loved them and the answer God gave was because they are so pathetic. I can't see that as love, myself. Thanks!]]

Thanks for the question! It reminds me of a question from the NT we will hear this week, namely, "What is man that you are mindful of him?"* I tend to agree with you on this, but I think the statement you are reflecting on raises more questions besides. I don't think God regards anyone in this particular way. My sense is that God sees us as we are, of course, and that means he sees us with all of our potentialities, struggles, accomplishments, failures, etc. He knows us intimately, better than we know ourselves, and he does not see us as pathetic (which is a human judgment) but rather as precious (a function of Divine love and delight). I think that is true whether we have sinned seriously, made terrible mistakes, or whatever. That does not mean that God sugarcoats things, or engages in some sort of denial about us. Rather, he sees the truth of who we are, the entire truth and of course, the deepest truth, and he loves us because we are his own and are made for him. Besides, love is the only thing that can truly call us to become the persons we are made to be.

God, after all, is Love-in-act. That is what and who God is as well as what it means for God to do what God does. I remember once being bothered by this thought because it seemed to me that perhaps God could not do anything BUT love me if he was Love-in-Act. I thought of this as some sort of coercive situation or as though God was limited and unfree in some important sense. It seemed to me that I could not trust such a God or his love if he could do nothing else. Eventually, I worked through the theology of it and realized that this was truly the fullness of Divine Freedom, not a limitation of it. I came to some of this realization because of the narrative in Genesis where human beings choose to know good and evil, that knowing good and evil does not represent knowing more than only knowing good does. 

In this story, the satan suggests that God knows more than these innocents because he "knows" both good and evil, but knowing in the intimate, almost sexual, sense the Scripture uses the term makes knowing both good AND evil a reference to knowing less, and more importantly, it means knowing good less well, less fully and intimately. That is, it implies a divided heart and mind, a heart and mind given over to both good and evil. But God ONLY knows the good in the intimate OT sense of the verb "knows". And God, precisely as God, loves what God knows in such a profound way. This is not a limitation in God; it is the fullness of Divinity and of authentic Freedom. It is the rest of reality that "knows" (not just knows about) both good and evil that is limited and limiting because such reality is always less than it is meant and created to be; it knows God and the whole of God's creation less well than it was made to do.

I would suggest that whatever this person heard about being pathetic, they were not hearing the voice of God. The voice of their own self-understanding, their own lack of self-esteem perhaps, their own woundedness and shame, yes, but not the voice of God.  While I don't think God is blind to evil, I do believe that he does not know it in the way we do --- at least not apart from the Christ Event. He is profoundly aware of the choices we make and the reasons and circumstances driving those choices. Again he knows us far better than we know ourselves. God knows us and that we know evil and God loves us in a way that redeems and frees us from that knowledge. He, quite literally, loves us beyond any evil. The notion that God judges us only in light of our sin or weakness and limitations is a serious theological mistake I believe. 

The Old Testament shows us God renouncing such a way of judging us or our world when it speaks of God's decision never to destroy the world as occurred in the narrative of the great flood. The OT tells the story of God changing his mind, but as in other stories in the OT, this is really a way of revealing a very different God to the hearers of this story than they could have imagined. (It is simpler to reveal a God who supposedly changes his mind than it is to develop the theology of a completely different God out of whole cloth; it is simpler for people to accept as well!)  In the New Testament, the central image of God's judgment seems to me to be that of harvest and this develops OT images like that of gleaning in the book of Ruth, for instance. God sees and summons the good, the true, and the holy out of the ambiguity of sinful existence and calls these to abundant life in himself. Moreover, he does so clearly and inevitably. That is the way of Divine judgment, the way of God's love and mercy.  It demonstrates the way God sees us, precious, full of potential and fruitfulness.

It is also a sacramental way of seeing reality. We Catholic Christians look at ordinary limited and even flawed matter and, because we are part of a highly sacramental and incarnational faith, are capable of seeing the extraordinary nature of the most ordinary reality. We can imagine wheat and grapes becoming bread and wine which in turn can become the very Body and Blood of our Lord. Oil can be used to consecrate, strengthen, and heal us; water can become a means of washing away brokenness and godlessness while initiating us into the very life of God, and a few simple words in absolution or blessing, or a brief Scriptural passage** can raise us to greater wholeness and holiness as they feed some of our very deepest needs. God, in Christ, teaches us to see in this way, and I believe he especially asks us, in the power of the Spirit, to see ourselves this way, as both ordinary and extraordinary and at least potential incarnations of God. Again, we are precious, full of potential and fruitfulness --- or, in the words of Scripture, we are imago dei, the very image of God.

Recently I was told a story about someone concerned about disappointing God. It's a common belief and I have heard (or entertained) the same concern many times. My immediate thought in response was that God could never be disappointed in us, though I thought he could be disappointed FOR us. When I reflected on my experience of that I realized it is because my own experience of God (especially in prayer and in the people who represent God to me) always has God seeing me in terms of deep truth, essential beauty, and indestructible potential. God is not naive. God, like others in my life, "sees everything" but God loves me beyond all of that (which means he both sees me more deeply and loves me into more abundant life). Even more, God continues to love in that way as I come more and more to allow my life to be defined in terms of this love! I continue to believe that God can be disappointed for me, but not in me; I especially can never believe the God I know loves me or any of us because we are pathetic.

*  Hebrews 2:5 

** I am thinking of Rom 8:31-37, but there are innumerable others --- ordinary words made extraordinary in God.

When Concern for the Temporal is also Engagement with the Eternal (reprise from 2015)

[[Dear Sister, you write a lot about temporal things, laws, requirements, the contents of a lay hermit's prayer space, habits, titles, and things like that. One blogger has opined that hermits grow beyond such concerns as they become more spiritual. She wrote recently: "How long did this hermit remain more or less in place, discussing or thinking about--or maybe thinking it had the responsibility to write about temporal matters such as what does a hermit wear, or eat, or daily routine, or title, or rule of life or what prayers, or what degree of solitude, and what does its hermitage look like? . . .Do we outgrow, or should we outgrow, the temporal aspects of our lives as we progress in life, and spiral more upward--or deeper in--and seek the spiritual aspects that our souls truly desire and actually need?"

Before I ask my questions I wanted to say I am grateful to you for your blog. I think it is probably helpful to people considering becoming hermits and for those of us with questions about spirituality generally. I also love that you share things like what gives you pleasure or post videos of your orchestra. Those posts reveal a lot about yourself and I personally enjoy that. My question is whether you see yourself growing out of a concern with temporal things or writing about these things? The other blogger thought these reflected a newly-wed stage of life; she also suggested that the concern with the temporal had a link with the US as opposed to other countries. I guess her blog readers come more from other countries and are not as interested in some of the questions you deal with. I don't see how she could know what countries your questions come from though.]]

Thanks very much for your comments and questions. No one ever asked me about what gives me pleasure before; I am sure at least some think there is nothing edifying about the experience of pleasure! As though the mere experience of pleasure implies one is a hedonist! Others have asked me to say more about my everyday life but I have not been able to do that; these questions seemed sort of invasive and also were a little hard to imagine what to say. Anyway, I enjoyed that question and I hope one of the things it indicates is the profound happiness associated with this vocation. Every aspect of it can be a source of real joy and yes, "pleasure" or gratification because it all reflects life with God and the quality of that. To some extent that anticipates your questions!.

I may have told this story before, but I was once working with a hermit candidate in another diocese and he asked me how I balanced "hermit things" and "worldly things" in my life. When I asked him what he meant by worldly things he listed things like grocery shopping, doing the dishes and laundry, scrubbing floors, cleaning the bathroom and things like that. When I asked about "hermit things" he referred to prayer, lectio divina, Office, Mass, and things like that. In other words, he had divided the world neatly into two classes of things, one having to do with what most folks call "worldly" or "temporal" and those most folks refer to as "spiritual" or "eternal." What I had to try and make clear to this candidate was that to the extent he really was a hermit, everything he did every day were hermit things, everything he did or was called to do was to be an expression of the eternal life he shared in by virtue of his baptism and new life in Christ.  A neat division into spiritual and temporal simply doesn't work with our God. The incarnation rules that out.

Instead we belong to a Sacramental world in which the most ordinary and ephemeral can become the mediator of the divinely extraordinary and eternal. We see this every day in our own worship as wine wheat, water, oil, and wax among other things mediate the life and light of God to us. Even more, we belong to a world which heaven has begun to interpenetrate completely. It is a world in which God is meant to be all in all, a world which itself is meant to exist in and through God alone. This involves God revealing (Him)self in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place --- transforming (hallowing) them utterly with his presence. The descent and self emptying of God in creation and the incarnation is balanced or  (one stage of it anyway) completed by the Ascension of the Risen Jesus into the very life of God. As we heard earlier this week, Christ goes to God to prepare a place for us, a place for the human and "temporal" in the very life of God (Him)self. And of course, we look forward, at some point to a life in/on a new heaven and earth where God is all in all.

It is the place of disciples of Christ to proclaim the way the event of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection has changed our world and our destiny. Christians recognize that every part of our world and our lives can glorify God. That is, every part of our world and lives can reveal God to others. So, you see, I think the simplistic division of reality into temporal and spiritual is actually anti-Christian and I have said this in the past. Therefore, I don't think we outgrow our concern with the temporal dimensions of our lives. Instead, unless we refuse to allow this to occur through our all-too-human ways of seeing and thinking, they come more and more to reflect the presence of God and are consecrated or made holy (hallowed) by that presence and our awareness of it.  Because my own vocation is a public one I feel a responsibility to share about elements of that vocation about which people raise questions. Moreover, many of the questions I have dealt with recently are related to becoming a hermit, discerning the distinction between legitimate hermits and counterfeits, fielding concerns about distortions in spirituality which can be harmful to people, etc. I think these are important.

Especially these questions lead to or are part of important discussions of truthfulness, personal integrity, pretense, shame, the dialogical and ecclesial nature of the eremitical vocation, the capacity of one's relationship with God to transform the deficiencies of her life into actual gifts, the nature of symbols, our faith as essentially Sacramental, the universal call to holiness and the sanctity of ALL vocations, the importance of lay eremitical life as well as of canonical or consecrated eremitical life, ministerial vs contemplative vocations, and any number of other topics. What may seem to be superficial matters,  or matters far removed from the "spiritual" or "eternal" tend from my perspective as a theologian, a contemplative, and a Benedictine, to open unto far deeper issues. This is because they are part of an organic whole where the whole is essentially sacramental.

However, there is another perspective that I should mention. The blogger you are citing is a privately dedicated lay hermit. She is certainly called to be responsible for her vocation but not in quite the same way I am for mine. She does not share the same rights (title, habit, publicly ecclesial eremitical life) nor is she publicly responsible for things like the quality of her rule, the importance and nature of a horarium, the place of legitimate superiors and the nature of obedience, the degrees and types of solitude one is called to embrace, degrees and kinds of work allowed, forms of prayer advised, approaches to penance, the charism of the life, etc. Because of this, she may not see these things or their depth and significance in the same way I do. That is hardly surprising.

Of course, this blogger has every right to disagree, to weigh in on issues and give her own perspective on them, especially if she does so honestly as a woman living a privately dedicated lay eremitical life rather than a "consecrated Catholic Hermit" or "professed religious". If she so chooses she is completely free to speak only of the things she considers spiritual matters and leave all those other things up to those for whom they are more meaningful and part of a deeply incarnational spiritual life and perspective. What she is less free to do is speak with impunity about canon 603, its nature and associated rights and obligations as though she is as knowledgeable about such things as someone living them. When she does this she opens herself to discussion, debate and even correction by those (canonists, hermits, historians, theologians) who are both more experienced and more knowledgeable than she is. Granted, some of what she seems to be dismissing as "temporal" rather than "eternal," for instance are certainly things an experienced hermit does not worry about and she is correct that some of them (like habits and titles) are usually of more concern to beginners or "wannabes".

However, they are also matters that point beyond themselves to the ecclesial nature and dimension of the vocation; thus some canonical hermits honor these with their lives. Other matters are never superficial. The hermit's Rule, will help the Church hierarchy to discern vocations to the eremitical life under canon 603 while the task of writing one can aid in a hermit's formation as well as her diocese's discernment of her readiness for temporary or perpetual profession. Beyond profession, it will be part of governing and inspiring her life day in and day out for the remainder of her life. She will live in dialogue with it and with God through it so long as she lives. My own Rule is something I make notes in, reflect on, and revise as my own understanding grows and life circumstances change. Among other things, it helps me to discern the wisdom of increased active ministry or greater reclusion, review the overall shape of my life, it also reflects the nature of my prayer and growth in this, and can even reflect the quality of my physical health and call attention to problems I might not be aware of otherwise.

Another matter that is never merely superficial is the way a hermitage or one's prayer space looks. Here appearance and function are profoundly related. Canonical hermits are publicly responsible for simple lives of religious poverty, obedience and celibate love in the silence of solitude. God is the center of their lives and their living space should reflect all of these things. What is as important --- since few people will actually come into hermit's living or prayer space --- is that a hermitage with too much "stuff" can be an obstacle to the life a hermit is called to live. I have been doing Spring cleaning off and on these past two weeks or so and that means getting rid of the accumulation of a year and more. This accumulation occurs partly because I don't drive and cannot simply take stuff to used book stores, thrift stores, the salvation Army, etc. Papers and books especially accumulate. Once the "stuff" is gone, even though the place was neat anyway, the feeling is simply much different. I personally feel lighter, happier, more able to "breathe", work and pray.

Further, the way my hermitage looks tends to be a good barometer of how well I am living my life. For me the richness and vitality of one's inner life is reflected in simplicity, beauty, light, and order. The opposite of these things can say that I am struggling --- sometimes spiritually, sometimes physically, and sometimes both; they may also cause me to struggle. On the other hand some specific forms of clutter and accumulation are associated with productive work and are a sign of the vitality of my inner life. In any case these "superficial" or "temporal" matters are a clue and key to attending to the state of my inner life with God and with others. I think a lot of people experience something similar. Again, we are talking about an organic whole in which inner and outer are intimately related and mutually influential.

The simple fact is that in our incarnational faith concern for and engagement with the temporal is how we are engaged with the Eternal and the ordinary way the Eternal is mediated to us. Resurrected life is Bodily existence and though we can hardly imagine what this means we must continue to hold these two things together in our understanding just as we hold the temporal and the spiritual together in our appreciation of reality as sacramental.

Feast of the Baptism of Jesus (reprise)

   Of all the feasts we celebrate, Sunday's feast of the baptism of Jesus is one of the most difficult for us to understand. We are used to thinking of baptism as a solution to original sin instead of the means of our initiation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or our adoption as daughters and sons of God and heirs to his Kingdom, or again, as a consecration to God's very life and service. When viewed this way, and especially when we recall that John's baptism was one of repentance for sin, how do we make sense of a sinless Jesus submitting to it?

I think two points need to be made here. First, Jesus grew into his vocation. His Sonship was real and completely unique but not completely developed or historically embodied from the moment of his conception; rather it was something he embraced more and more fully over his lifetime. Secondly, his Sonship was the expression of solidarity with us and his fulfillment of the will of his Father to be God-with-us. Jesus will incarnate the Logos of God definitively in space and time, but this event we call the incarnation encompasses and is only realized fully in his life, death, and resurrection -- not in his nativity. Only in allowing himself to be completely transparent to this Word, only in "dying to self," and definitively setting aside all other possible destinies does Jesus come to fully embody and express the Logos of God in a way which expresses his solidarity with us as well.

It is probably the image of Baptism-as-consecration and commissioning then which is most helpful to us in understanding Jesus' submission to John's baptism. Here the man Jesus is set apart as the one in whom God will truly "hallow his name." (That is, in Jesus' weakness and self-emptying God's powerful presence (Name) will make all things Holy and a sacrament of God's presence.) Here, in an act of manifest commitment, Jesus' humanity is placed completely at the service of the living God and of those to whom God is committed. Here his experience as one set apart or consecrated by and for God establishes God as completely united with us and our human condition. This solidarity is reflected in his statement to John that together they must fulfill the will of God. And here too Jesus anticipates the death and resurrection he will suffer for the sake of both human and Divine destinies which, in him, will be reconciled and inextricably wed to one another. His baptism establishes the pattern not only of his humanity, but that of all authentic humanity. So too does it reveal the nature of true Divinity, for ours is a God who becomes completely subject to our sinful reality in order to free us for his own entirely holy one.

I suspect that even at the end of the Christmas season we are still scandalized by the incarnation. (Recent conversations on CV's and secularity make me even surer of this!) We still stumble over the intelligibility of this baptism, and the propriety of it especially. Our inability to fathom Jesus' own baptism, and our tendency to be shocked by it because of Jesus' identity,  just as JohnBp was probably shocked, says we are not comfortable, even now, with a God who enters exhaustively into our reality. We remain uncomfortable with a Jesus who is tempted like us in ALL THINGS and matures into his identity as the incarnation of God's only begotten Son.

We are puzzled by one who is holy as God is holy and, as the creed affirms, "true God from true God" and who, evenso, is consecrated to and by the one he calls Abba --- and commissioned to the service of this Abba's Kingdom and people. A God who wholly identifies with us, takes on our sinfulness (our estrangement from God and from our deepest selves), and comes to us in smallness, weakness, submission and self-emptying is really not a God we are comfortable with --- despite three weeks of Christmas celebrations and reflections, and a prior four weeks of preparation -- is it? In fact, none of this was comfortable for Jews or early Christians either. The Jewish leadership was upset by JnBp's baptisms generally because they took place outside the Temple precincts and structures (that is, in the realm we literally call profane). Early Christians (Jewish and otherwise) were embarrassed by Jesus' baptism by John --- as Matt's added explanation of the reasons for it in vv 14-15 indicate. They were concerned that perhaps it indicated Jesus' inferiority to John the Baptist and they wondered if maybe it meant that Jesus had sinned prior to his baptism. And perhaps this embarrassment is as it should be. Perhaps the scandal attached to this baptism signals to us we are beginning to get things right theologically.

After all, Sunday's feast tells us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a ritual washing, consecration, and commissioning by God which is similar to our own baptismal consecration. The difference is that Jesus freely accepts life in a world under the sway of sin in his baptism just as he wholeheartedly embraces a public vocation to proclaim God's sovereignty. The story of the desert temptation or testing that follows this underscores this acceptance. His public life begins with an event that prefigures his end as well. There is a real dying-to-self involved here, not because Jesus has a false self that must die -- as each of us has --- but because in these events his life is placed completely at the disposal of his God, his Abba, in profoundest solidarity with us. Loving another, affirming the being of another in a way that subordinates one's own being to theirs --- putting one's own life at their disposal and surrendering all other life possibilities always entails a death of sorts -- and a kind of rising to new life as well. The dynamics present on the cross are present here too; here we see only somewhat less clearly a complete and obedient (that is open and responsive) submission to the will of God, and an unfathomable subjection to that which human sinfulness makes necessary precisely so that God's love may be exhaustively present and genuinely sovereign here as well.

In God Alone (Reprise)

 

This may be a different and more challenging version of this chant than some are used to. The instruments improvising over the chant sometimes, even often, seem to miss the mark. And yet, under it all, grounding and giving coherence to every note --- if only we have the patience and trust to hear it --- is the profoundly stabilizing refrain or antiphon, [[ In God alone my soul can find rest and peace, In God my peace and joy, Only in God my soul can find its rest. Find its rest and peace.]]  As I listened this morning I found myself hanging onto the antiphon with a kind of fierceness during parts of this as I waited (and sometimes yearned intensely) for the improvising instrument to come to rest solidly again in the ground of the antiphon --- especially in the longer original recording.

So it is with us I think. We sing our lives improvising around this "theme" --- this internal antiphonal truth that sounds in our hearts; sometimes we seem to have journeyed so far as to have stopped listening and lost touch with it altogether --- though in our music-making we seek it still! And then, with patience, trust, and perseverance in our hearkening, we reconnect more clearly and come once again to that place of rest in God who alone makes sense of the whole of our lives --- even those bits which seemed to or may truly have lost touch with the Divine chant or "theme" grounding them.

For whatever else, the chant continues faithfully, unfailingly in a way that both shapes the improvisational journey and allows the player to finally come home once again despite the far and even foreign places to which they have traveled in the meantime: dissonances are resolved and the harmony of the whole is enriched with musical "stretches" and surprises that, rather than troubling or disturbing us, now delight and even move us with awe.

As we move into this Jubilee year of Hope I thought reprising this reflection would be appropriate. Hope is always rooted in truth and a kind of certainty or knowing, not in mere wishfulness, and the ever-present One we know as Emmanuel is the reality that is the ground and source of all of our hope. Despite the ups and down, the disappointments and struggle of our lives we need to stay in touch with that ground and source, just as the singers or instrumentalists hold firm to the chant that gives coherence to their improvistation. In this way we become the people of hope God calls  us to become and our world so desperately needs.

An Invitation to Explore "Ponam in Deserto Viam"

 [[Dear Sister Laurel, I am reading Ponam in Deserto Viam. I went back to the beginning for a closer read and wondered if you would be willing to answer some questions as I go through this little book of guidelines? For instance, in the first chapter, the author refers to Benedictinism and then moves to a consideration of hermits in the Eastern Church. He points to the Novelle of Justinian and says that hermits were no longer allowed unless they were dependent on a community. Then the text says it became recognized that it was necessary for hermit candidates to undergo a trial period under a spiritual abba or amma. What struck me in this was how similar what you are doing or writing about with the ecclesial nature of this vocation or the process of discernment and formation you have spoken of here is to this pattern in the Eastern and maybe the Western Church. When you speak about ecclesial vocations are you drawing on Ponam and what happened in the East with solitary hermits? I am sure I am going to have other questions as I keep reading; are you open to answering these for me?]]

Sure, we can try to work through Ponam in this way; it would be interesting and I am sure others will have questions (and likely insights to offer) as well. I have been asked several times over the past couple of years if I would write about Ponam; probably it is a good time to do that, and even more, to ask for contributions from c 603 hermits or those in formal discernment and formation processes with their dioceses!! 

What I have written about the ecclesial nature of this vocation was not drawn from Ponam;  it was a topic I first raised with Archbishop (then Bishop) Vigneron when I first met with him regarding my vocation on the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 2005. What I have written about a discernment and formation process is drawn from my own experience with c 603 and the task of writing my own Rule, but also from the example of the Desert Abbas and Ammas and, to a lesser degree, from the contemporary practice and theology of the Eastern Church ---  I did not know about the novels of Justinian in the 6th Century until reading Ponam myself, but the (later) Western Church has similar transitions regarding solitary hermits and their relationship with the Church. Giustiniani's comments on solitary hermits might be an example of this even though this was rooted in the Church's requirements on reception of the sacraments.

So, let me invite those who are interested, to read and contribute questions, observations, and insights into Ponam in Deserto Viam to do that. I think one way forward is for me to start by answering questions (whenever I get these) and then, over time if a true conversation eventuates, add relevant observations and insights from other readers. Suggestions are also very welcome! Please let me know if you are interested.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025!!!

Of course, the new year begins with Advent for us Christians, but there is no doubt that the changing of the date on the 1st of January reminds us of the way the newness of time creeps up on us and the old slips away as well. We mark a transition by marking this day, a transition from unfulfilled promises, perhaps, to a time of new possibilities and potentiality. We will spend a bit of time getting used to writing a new date on our journal pages (or our checks!) and perhaps we will also recognize that living is about negotiating this ongoing never-ending transition well. Though we may have landed in a new year, and though we may quickly become used to writing that new number whenever necessary, we must not forget that time continues to move around, in, and through us, and we do the same with it. There is no real stopping place in time and no actual destination; there is only the journey.

So, today I renew my commitment to this journey and to valuing the journey over the destination. I am grateful (SO grateful!!) for those who accompany me, and who allow me to accompany them as well! I pray for and celebrate all of you. Meanwhile, we move into a Jubilee Year of Hope in the Church! This focus is rich and sustaining, and also very challenging because it promises not just times of light and increased life, but of darkness and loss as well. Resurrection is real and grounds our hope, but we don't experience resurrection without suffering and death. Someone reminded me that a year of hope also means a year of courage, so I pray that we each may find all the courage we need to negotiate this piece of our journey and live it well!! I am also reminded that David Whyte says the following about courage:

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we care deeply about. . .. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made. (Consolations, excerpt pp 49-50)

May the blessings of our God touch each and all of us with his sustaining love and empower us with his presence as Emmanuel!! All good wishes for a genuinely happy new year!

Does God want the Hermit "All for himself"?

[[Sister Laurel, do you believe that God wants you all for himself?  Is that why God called you to be a hermit? One online hermit says that she is not meant to be involved in parishes or any form of ministry and especially not c 603 or any "temporal church" reality because God wanted her all for himself. That seems to me to be a strange way of seeing God or any Christian vocation, but I can't really argue against it. I mean can't God want us all for himself, can't he do whatever he wants? And if he is love itself, then couldn't he want an exclusive relationship like this? Do you see your vocation in these terms? Is that what c 603 says??]] (redacted)

Thanks for your questions. I think they are important.  I see them as especially important theologically, that is, in what we are saying about God in this assertion. When we suggest that God wants someone all for himself it gives us a picture of God that is distorted.  While it is true that we are each called to live as someone belonging entirely to God, we must recognize that in Christian theology such belonging is part of giving our lives entirely for the sake of others. Both of these things are true at the same time. It is a significant paradox where one belongs entirely to God so that one may give oneself entirely to all that is precious to God in the way God desires. But this is not precisely the same as God wanting someone just or all for himself. That characterization of God sounds selfish to me; it seems terribly self-serving (both of God and of the hermit making the claim) and that is certainly not the God Jesus reveals to us.

Canon 603 defines this (solitary hermit) life as one of stricter separation from the world, assiduous prayer and penance, and the silence of solitude. Certainly, this is embraced so that God might be the One he has willed for eternity to be, and yes, it is for the hermit's essential well-being as imago dei. As such, the vocation is about union with God, no doubt. But the canon itself says it is not only for the praise of God but for the salvation of the world. In other words, we give ourselves entirely to God so that this relationship, 1) reveals the nature of God to others, and 2) is fruitful in the way any Christian vocation is meant to be. Eremitical life is not a selfish one and the God who calls one to this life is not a selfish God, but a God who gives himself exhaustively to us and others through us, at every moment.

I can understand why you are having trouble arguing against this notion of God wanting someone for himself alone! I am also having trouble saying what is so profoundly disturbing about this notion (and it is disturbing enough to make me feel somewhat nauseous at the thought). It has, I think, something really fundamental,  "ass-backward," as one relative of mine might once have put things!! Thinking back many years now, I have heard Sisters explaining their vocation to children by saying that God "wanted them for himself" as they talk about why they have embraced celibacy rather than marriage as they were consecrated to be the "Spouse of Christ". But while this explanation captures something of the special sense of being loved by God carried by the vocation, it is not accurate when taken at face value. 

This is because neither Jesus nor the One he called Abba want the Sister for themselves alone. God calls this Sister to this relationship because he wants the Sister's life for the sake of others and the missioning to others that being God's own both allows and requires if God is truly to be Emmanuel!! We can reasonably talk about being God's own, for instance, and I have written here that we are called to our vocations for God's sake as well as for our own and for the sake of all we touch ministerially. I recognize that this is, to some extent, pretty provocative language, but it falls far short of suggesting that God calls persons to reclusive eremitical vocations because he wants them all for himself!! I suppose I just can't get other seriously flawed notions of God out of my mind here; it reminds me of child sacrifice or throwing people over parapets or into pits of flames, or cutting their hearts out as part of sacrificing them to a god who desires such things. It is an essentially pagan notion of God, barely one step removed from blood sacrifice made to satisfy the anger or blood lust of a tyrannical god.

I promise I will think about this more (in fact, I am likely not to be able to cease thinking about it!), and hopefully, I will be able to say more about what is wrong with this notion, or at least say it more coherently. As you capture in asking the question, there is something slippery about the assertion and we don't want to deny God anything God truly wills or desires. But the idea that God could want someone just for himself alone is perverse when we are dealing with the God of Jesus Christ who reveals himself as self-emptying love-in-act. After all, God is not a human person-writ-large nor does "he" need or desire us in the way other human beings need or desire one another. He is "Wholly Other" and yet loves us exhaustively so that he (and we) may be given to (may love and serve) others in a similarly exhaustive way. 

That is the pattern or paradigm the Christ Event established as the very definition of both humanity and divinity. In fact, in the history of Theology Jesus has been called "The Man for Others", the one whose life is lived exhaustively for the other, first God, and then all of us. God creates him for this and empowers that kenosis in him (remember that the very essence of love is kenosis or self-emptying); it is who he calls us to be as well, even when we are also called to live that fundamental generosity as hermits or recluses.

On the Essential Hiddenness of the Diocesan Hermit (Reprise from 2008)

[[Okay, so why would one want people to know they are a hermit unless they want notoriety or recognition of that? You have referred to the essential hiddenness of the vocation, but you also write that people in your parish might think you are just a contemplative sister without the cowl and other trappings. So, what do you really want, to be hidden or to be known? Isn't this, along with the emphasis on active participation in the parish, kind of hypocritical or at least inconsistent?]]

First, let me point out I referred to "merely" a contemplative sister (with merely in quotes) so that, hopefully, I indicated that I think very highly of such a vocation. My point was simply that that is not all I am. I also think it is desirable to have others recognize at least the general nature of a vocation that someone was called to out of their midst and on their behalf (as happens in the call at the beginning of the rite of perpetual profession). However, that aside for the moment, the eremitical vocation is both ancient and relatively new in the church. The existence of hermits remains quite rare, and despite a modest increase in numbers (and a larger increase in those who have climbed on what is a faddist bandwagon but will never actually be true hermits [see note at bottom]), it will, I suspect, always remain quite rare.

What is not rare in today's world though, is the alienation, estrangement, and isolation that affects and afflicts so many --- especially the single elderly, the chronically ill and disabled, the isolated poor living in the unnatural solitudes of blighted urban areas, those working day in and day out in an "ordinariness" which leads to the questioning of their own value or that of their lives, etc. It is to these people especially I think the hermit can speak specially and powerfully, for the hermit says with her life that isolation can be transformed with the grace of God into something far more meaningful and fruitful, namely a solitude which witnesses with special vividness to the Gospel of God in Christ.

By the way, recognition is not necessarily a bad thing. What God does in our midst deserves to be made known in one way or another. This does not necessarily conflict with what I have called the essential hiddenness of the vocation either (which is defined by Canon Law as a greater or stricter separation from the world, rather than as absolute separation or reclusion). The identity of the canonical hermit is a public one in the legal sense of that term. So, the canonical hermit lives out the witness of the core of her vocation, namely that God alone is sufficient for us, that he will always work to bring life out of death, light out of darkness, meaning out of meaninglessness, and wholeness out of brokenness. She says this with her life, and this is the case whether she has been brought to eremitic life through illness (or other challenges) herself or not. She also clearly says that any person is made for communion with God, that God lives at the heart of each person and wills to love them exhaustively, just as he wills them to return this love as exhaustively as they can. To live a serious prayer life, and in fact to be God's own prayers in this world is the essential vocation of every person, and the hermit lives as a reminder of this. I personally believe my life bears witness to much of this, and I seek to do so more profoundly and extensively.

As for what I want, well that is fairly simple and straightforward: I want to do what God wills for me, by living my Rule of Life, the Camaldolese charism, the unique charism of the diocesan hermit, according to the discernment I come to with the help of my director, pastor, Bishop, and others. The Camaldolese charism is particularly significant here since it involves a three-fold set of dimensions or "goods": 1) the cenobitic (communal), 2) the eremitical (solitary), and 3) the evangelical (the dimension of proclaiming or witnessing to the Gospel whether this be through hospitality, spiritual direction, writing, painting, etc). The Camaldolese charism itself justifies my limited active participation in the life of my parish community, but so does, I believe, the charism of diocesan eremitism. While it is true my life is lived with and for God alone, that is expressed in a concrete commitment to those he cherishes, particularly my diocese and parish. On the other hand, what is also true is that the majority of this commitment is lived out "in cell," not in direct participation in the events and activities of the parish. My limited participation enlivens and concretizes what happens within the hermitage, while what happens in the hermitage deepens and universalizes what is celebrated in the events and activities of the parish.

While it is common to think and question in sort of black and white, either/or terms and queries, the truth is that quite often Christian discipleship (of which eremitism is one expression) must be lived out in paradoxical ways, not either/or, but both/and. As I have said before, one must be careful not to fool oneself --- and we are all more than a little capable of rationalizing behavior that runs counter to that we are truly called to --- but once one determines the Holy Spirit is behind a certain impulse, etc, one must go with that. By the way, perhaps you are envisioning more than what I envision when I use the phrase "active participation" in the parish. I have described these other places so I won't do that again here, but I will say that it is not an "emphasis" in my life (real though it may be) and is truly minimal when I consider what is actually possible for me.

This brings us back to the question of the nature of the hiddenness which is the hermit's. What is this essential hiddenness I have spoken of, and others have also written about? Well, it has to do with who I really am, where my "real work" takes place, and just what that separates me from. For instance, despite your reading of my blog, you really have very little sense of my day-to-day life. People who see me daily at Mass or at an occasional parish event do not see me in the hermitage, tend not to be able to imagine what the shape of my days are like, etc. The hermit's life really is essentially hidden, and most specifically, hidden in the cell where the largest part of her life actually takes place. It is hidden in God, hidden in prayer, hidden from the eyes of those who might want to see inside, hidden even from the Church who commissions the hermit to withdraw (from the Gk, anachoresis) in this way.

Yes, she can list the various things she does: Office, lectio, quiet prayer, personal work, ordinary chores, study, writing, and direction, but really, what does this actually reveal? As far as I can tell, it leaves the essential mystery of the life intact. No, the life is one of essential hiddenness even if one does not remain completely anonymous, leaves the hermitage on occasion, wears a recognizable habit, or participates in the occasional parish or other activity. (And of course, non-parishioners don't know any of this at all; they see a sister -- no more nor less.) As you can tell, I don't think there is necessarily any real contradiction or hypocrisy involved so long as one is very clear where one's real life and ministry lie and does not allow that to be compromised. I hope this helps clarify matters.

[note: my reference to the faddist bandwagon was not directed to non-canonical hermits who live a truly eremitical life. The church clearly recognizes these hermits as a serious eremitical expression. It is directed, however, to those persons who think they can be hermits "on the weekends," or something similar. There are many "wannabes" out there in this as in any field or vocation, but most will never really embrace true solitude, nor will they therefore be able to witness to those people who cannot CHOOSE their (physical) solitude but need to hear it can be transformed with God's grace.]

Feast of the Holy Family (Reprise)

Today's Feast has not always been one with which I could resonate well because I grew up in what would euphemistically be called a "dysfunctional" family in which love was a difficult and sometimes difficult-to-find reality. Thus, the symbol of the Holy Family was one I was sure I did not understand and might never really come close to understanding. On the other hand,  both then and now, I have had many really profound experiences of  "family" in a broader and less formal sense including families who "adopted me" (again, in an informal but real sense), in music groups, with friends throughout school, via parish communities, and with Sisters with whom I lived in community or otherwise shared the values and bonds of religious life. 

In all of these, I learned the importance and challenge of loving and being loved into wholeness, that is, loving and being loved in a way that allowed my deepest potential as a person to be realized. And yet, that wasn't always an easy thing to allow! It took and still takes the focused work I associate with spiritual direction, the deep and intense silence of prayer, and the community in all its forms that grounds and renders meaningful and coherent the eremitical solitude that represents the context, charism, and goal of my own life with God. Luke's infancy narrative gives an account of Mary's single powerful "Fiat!" and notes, "She pondered all these things in her heart," which points to a process extending far beyond that single "Fiat". Coming to be the bearer of Light and Life God wills us each to be in Christ takes innumerable "Yesses" -- and not a few no's as well! The pondering we do in our hearts is not always peace-filled, and the Magnificat we learn to sing with our lives may be more compelling for the dissonances and darkness that continue to mark it in various ways.

 (Reprise) Christmas is a season of Joy not because there is no darkness, no sin, no oppression, or death, but because it reminds us that God has made of our humanity a sacrament of (his) own life and light in spite of the continuing presence of these other realities. History has become the sanctuary of the transcendent and eternal God. Our God is now Emmanuel (God-with-us) and we, the littlest and the least have been ennobled (and revealed as made noble!) beyond anything we might otherwise have imagined. In and through Christ we too are called to be Emmanuel for our world, in and through the Christ Event we are each made to be temples of the Holy Spirit. As Advent reminded us, we live in "in-between" times, a time of already but not-yet. There is work to be done, and suffering we will still experience. But the light and joy of Christmas is real and something which will inspire and empower all that still needs to be done: caring for, loving (!) the least and littlest so they truly know they are the dwelling places of God; opposing the Herods of this world in whatever effective way we can so the Kingdom of God may be more fully realized by divine grace through time; allowing the joy and potential of the Christ's nativity in our world and ourselves to grow to its proper fullness of grace and stature as we embrace authentic humanity and holiness.

My very best wishes to all on this Feast of the Holy Family and my special thanks to the Sisters of the Holy Family (Fremont, CA) for the charism embodied by the members of their congregation and the mission they embrace so selflessly. As they mark the renewal of their vows on this feast we celebrate that they have been and remain a light to the littlest and the least amongst us, to the lost, the abandoned and rejected, to the homeless or those who are otherwise without families, and to all those who have found in them a compassionate Presence capable in Christ of healing the wounds occasioned by the sin and death at work in our world and sometimes in our own families. I locate them at the crossroads of Mercy and Grace and know I am not alone in this. Special blessings to Holy Family Sisters Marietta, Dorothy, Annie, Sandra Ann, Michaela, and Elaine.

The Jubilee Year of Hope and Year of Hope Logo

The Jubilee Year of Hope Logo

My Director sent me this today and I thought I would share it. We are approaching the Jubilee year of Hope, and I couldn't think of a better theme to focus ourselves on given the state of our world and the promise the Christ Event provides for that world! Being hopeful is not the same as wishing for things. Being hopeful rests, with all of its uncertainty and risk, upon a strong ground of certainty. In Christianity this strong ground is the Christ Event, all it achieved, and all it continues to achieve as we move forward to the day when heaven and earth completely interpenetrate one another and God is all in all. It is for this reason that I love the above logo used the cross as symbol of our faith, as sail, and as anchor in times of great storm. It reminds me a bit of the Carthusian logo with its Cross standing still and stable over a changing, turning world and under a canopy of seven stars (For St Bruno and his companions, founders of the congregation).

With Christ's nativity the story of heaven's interpenetration of earth begins a new and definitive chapter in God's story and the story of God's creation. That child's humble birth will lead inexorably through Jesus' life, ministry, passion and death. In our daily readings of this season, we do not linger in the daily readings over the nativity because everything in the story tends toward and follows from the cross of Christ. So it is with Christian life and especially with Christian hope. The Cross is that still, solid, stable point grounding and guiding our ability to hope at all. As we celebrate this season of joy and move into this new Jubilee year, let us do so with an awareness of the way the Christ Event allows us to be a People of Hope. God knows, our world needs us in this way!

 

Defining terms: Bandaid Solution and the Christ Event

 Hi Sister, you wrote that the Christ Event is not a bandaid solution to human sin. That raised two questions for me, 1) What is the Christ Event? and 2) what do you mean by bandaid solution? I figure it has something to do with God willing the Christ Event from the beginning, but are you saying God did not send Jesus to deal with human sin? Thanks!

Thanks for the questions, and Merry Christmas! You are very much on the right track with your sense of what I meant when I spoke of a bandaid solution. First though, the term "Christ Event". Generally, the term means the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus as God's Christ. In this sense, it is synonymous with the term Incarnation since it takes the entire life, death, resurrection, and ascension for Jesus to fully incarnate the Word of God. This doesn't happen with Mary's fiat; instead, it is something that is realized only over time as Jesus, in the words of Luke, "grows in grace and stature" as the human one who is entirely transparent to the God he reveals definitively to us. I said in the post you asked about that our God reveals himself as the One who willed not to remain alone and was in search of a counterpart. The Christ Event points to all of those events in Jesus' life where he says yes to truly being the counterpart of the One he called Abba. One thing I should note is the importance of the term "event" in this. Theologians recognize that myriads of things occur throughout one's life only some of which have profound significance. When these rise to this level of significance, we speak of them as "events" and no longer as mere occurrences.

"Bandaid solution" is a way of saying Jesus' mission and the incarnation of the Word of God was about more than dealing with the problem of human sinfulness. It recognizes that as serious as the problem of human sin is, there is a deeper, more encompassing purpose to the Christ Event and to the will of God revealed there. It is a way of saying had mankind never sinned at all, God would still have sent Jesus to renew creation and to invite us to share in his true humanity. Within an evolutionary view of the world and the processes of creation, a creation that is ongoing, the Christ Event represents a moment in all of that that changes and even transfigures creation by making God personally present in space and time. Moreover, all Creation has been made for this Event and all it brings. This transfiguration is the deeper and inclusive purpose of God in the Christ Event; it is not simply a "bandaid solution" God threw on after the fact of human sin. It invites each of us to be remade in light of that Event, to become a new creation in Christ, and to be people who, in a conscious and focused way, live with, for, and from the One who is Emmanuel. We are those called to steward creation to its fulfillment with and for the One we know in Christ as "God with Us".

Gaudete, Christus est Natus. . .!!

Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus Ex Maria virgine, gaudete! 

Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, Rejoice!

Tempus adest gratiæ Hoc quod optabamus, Carmina lætitiæ Devote reddamus. 

Deus homo factus est Natura mirante, Mundus renovatus est A Christo regnante. 

Ezechielis porta Clausa pertransitur, Unde lux est orta Salus invenitur.
Ergo nostra contio Psallat iam in lustro; Benedicat Domino: Salus Regi nostro.

The time of grace has come— What we have wished for; Songs of joy Let us give back faithfully. 

God has become man, With nature marvelling, The world has been renewed By the reigning Christ. 

The closed gate of Ezekiel Is passed through, Whence the light is risen; Salvation has been found. Therefore, let our assembly Now sing in brightness Let it bless the Lord: Salvation to our King.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!!!

A thread runs throughout the entire history of creation revealing that the will of God is to be Emmanuel, God With Us. Unfortunately, too often the way we have told this story is with a narrative of God beginning with Plan A (a perfect creation) which then requires God to come up with a Plan B when humanity sins and somehow screws up that creation. In this Plan B, the Christ Event is perceived as a kind of bandaid solution to human sin, a way of forgiving it and appeasing an infinitely offended God. I have even heard a version of this story where the theologian imagining the situation had a kind of heavenly conference occur between the three members of the Trinity to decide who would "go to earth" to resolve the problem!

Fortunately, we have now come to understand our world in evolutionary terms, and this means that the Christ Event is not Plan B, the way God deals with the unexpected and imperfect that are the result of human sin. Instead, it is what God willed from the beginning, a kind of evolutionary moment where a new creation begins in Christ. Sin is real, of course, and the Christ Event deals with sin and the godless death associated with it, but even more fundamentally, the Christ Event is part of this creation's evolution toward fullness and a new heaven and new earth where God is all in all. When scholars read Genesis and the story of the Garden of Eden today, we tend to read it as an account of our future and what we have been made for; it is the story of this played off against the way and reasons we refuse that future every day, rather than being an account of some primordial past. In this reading, the story becomes one of walking with God in a unique intimacy (or choosing to reject such intimacy out of self-consciousness and a sense of self-centered unworthiness). It too is manifestly the story of God as Emmanuel, God With Us and represents the most original will of God to not remain alone but to create as the sovereign God in search of a counterpart.

In creation, God is revealed as Emmanuel the One who wills to be God with us and the history of humankind is about learning that this is the God we are called to allow to love us fully as Emmanuel. In Jesus' life, and death, God is definitively revealed as Emmanuel, God With Us, and thus demonstrates his choice to assume a personal place in our lives and in and with his creation. In Jesus' resurrection and ascension, God reveals himself as the One who makes space within his own life for embodied (not disembodied!) human existence. Heaven and earth have begun more and more to interpenetrate one another. When we attend to the prospect of a second coming, it is within the context of a new heaven and new earth where God is not separated from earthly reality, but instead,as noted earlier, has become all in all. (Can we even begin to imagine what this phrase means??!!) 

At every moment of this extended narrative, our attention is drawn to God's eternal will to reveal himself (to make himself known and real in space and time) as Emmanuel, the One who is with us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place, the One who will allow nothing at all including sin and godless death to separate us from the Love-in-Act he is. We certainly see and celebrate all of these themes on today's Feast of Jesus' Nativity.  My sincerest prayer is that we can celebrate this God and (his) presence with us today and every day. I believe this is what it means to act, pray, and live in the name (the powerful self) of God. It is a name and power we must not forget, the name and power of redemption from bondage, of genuine Freedom and human wholeness, of promise and fulfillment for the whole of Creation --- the Name and power of Emmanuel, God With Us.

Why Not Profess Groups of Hermits Together?

[[ Sister, I wondered why we don't see little groups of three hermits when hermits are professed, for example. The trio you showed in your earlier post from the Diocese of Fort Wayne must be pretty unusual.  Why don't dioceses profess multiple hermits together? I guess there aren't that many, right?]]

Yes, hermits are a pretty rare phenomenon and for that reason alone we aren't going to see solitary (or diocesan) hermits professed together very often. But I think there are more significant reasons that have to do with the discernment and formation of solitary hermits. It takes time for individuals to discern such vocations and this is a really individual process. The same is true of formation and finding one's own stride in this calling. One person may have a background that allows her to move toward vows relatively quickly while another has a background that does not. Similarly, and even more importantly, the differences in strengths and weaknesses make it important to allow for a really individualized discernment and formation process that includes gaining enough experience to write a liveable Rule. Because this process is highly individualized, it will differ from one hermit candidate to another. 

Finally, c 603 is meant for solitary eremitical vocations; a c 603 hermit is required to live her life in the silence of solitude whether or not there is anyone else living this life alongside her. Too often lauras of hermits die out or are otherwise a failure. When this happens, the c 603 hermit is required to continue living her own Rule. This is quite unlike what happens when a community or congregation fails or is suppressed, for instance. In such cases, those professed as part of this congregation or community will cease to be bound by vows as soon as the institute ceases to be viable (unless other arrangements are made canonically).  With c 603 hermits, even those coming together in lauras, their individual Rules remain binding in law should the laura fail in some way. Thus, dioceses profess and consecrate c 603 hermits one at a time.

This solitary quality forever colors the hermit's life and reminds her/him and those to whom s/he witnesses or ministers of the ecclesial nature of c 603 life. At the same time, one piece of this life is the communal (diocesan, parish) context; the solitary profession of c 603 hermits happens within such a context at a parish church or diocesan cathedral. The community is reminded then, that they too are partly responsible for the viability of this vocation. There may be other reasons I have not mentioned, but these are the main ones I can think of, so I hope this is helpful! Meanwhile, on this eve of the fourth Sunday of Advent, let me wish you all good wishes for a wonderful Christmas!