20 November 2024
Henri Nouwen on Loneliness
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 8:59 PM
Labels: Henri Nouwen on loneliness, loneliness, redemption of isolation, solitude vs escapism, solitude vs isolation, Wounded Healer
19 November 2024
On Canon 603 being "Entrenched" and "Being Approved" Under c 603
Thanks for your questions. I have answered most of these in other articles so I ask that you read some of those for more comprehensive answers. The labels I add at the bottom of this article should lead you to further material pertinent to your questions. First of all, while the implementation of c 603 has become greater over the past 41 years, it has not become entrenched if that implies it is more valid now than it was when it was first promulgated in 1983. As I am sure you will understand, having a canon law that allows for consecrated solitary hermits, does not mean that every person that applies should be automatically consecrated. Moreover, having such a law means dioceses need to learn more about the vocation, appropriate candidates, or the varied forms of solitude that exist apart from eremitical solitude, and other things as well if they are to implement c 603 in their diocese. As I have written for more than a decade and a half, c 603 involves both dioceses and candidates in a fairly steep learning curve. Even so, c 603 has been the norm for eremitical life, and especially solitary eremitical life, from the day it was promulgated.
This also means, however, that it is an added form of eremitical life; it does not supplant earlier forms of life that are non-canonical or lived in the lay state (the baptized state). If you should desire to continue living eremitical life in this way, you are certainly welcome to do that. As a baptized Catholic, you are free to do that. If you want, you can (and I believe you should) use c 603.1 as a guide and norm for the nature of that life, but c 603.2 will not apply to you. (If you write a Rule of Life, don't expect it to be approved by your Bishop and diocese, but doing this is extremely helpful in living a healthy and faithful eremitical life. You can certainly have your spiritual director read it and help you live it.) If this is your choice, you will not be a consecrated hermit nor someone living eremitical life in the name of the Church, but you will still be living a life according to your baptismal consecration that is an exemplar for others in the Church.If you decide to petition for profession and consecration under c 603, and assuming that you are canonically free to do so, then yes, you will need to go through a discernment and formation process. Remember that you are not merely seeking to be "approved" by a diocesan bishop, but instead, you are petitioning to be initiated into the consecrated state of life which requires public profession and a second consecration. Just as people petition (seek, postulare) admission to religious life and profession and consecration therein, you will be doing the same with solitary eremitical life. It takes time, and so it should!! You must understand the canon, have a vision of your life that is consonant with that, write a Rule that demonstrates how you will embody this canon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, etc. All of that takes time and formation, even if you have lived as a non-canonical or lay hermit for 15 years. If the diocesan staff discern that you are a good candidate for consecration under c 603, they will approve you for a mutual discernment and formation process. This does not mean you will be admitted to profession and consecration, but it is a good step toward that.
The diocese cannot simply "approve you" in a way that makes you a c 603 hermit any more than a religious can merely transfer to c 603 standing. You must be prepared for profession and consecration because the consecrated state is different than the lay state. It is never about merely signing a piece of paper (though there are certainly a few of those you will have to sign before your perpetual profession!). Instead, one will need to be created a canon 603 hermit by making public profession(s) and accepting the canonical obligations associated with this life. Consecration is part of the rite of perpetual profession.After some posts from the past couple of months, let me assure you that the non-canonical or lay hermit vocation still exists in the Church and is something I believe has a greater representation than c 603. I believe, as I have said many times, there will always be more hermits in the lay or non-canonical state than there will be in the consecrated state. Let me also assure you that being "non-canonical" does NOT mean being illegal. It simply means not bound by the canons that bind consecrated ("canonical") hermits. One does remain bound by the canons applying to the laity so in that sense one is bound by canon law. Some hermits live their lives under c 603 and other canons additional to those binding a lay person. We call those hermits "canonical". Others live their lives without additional canons; we call those non-canonical. Both are legal in differing ways. Oh, one final point on something I mentioned above, namely canonical freedom: if you have been married, and if you have been divorced but without getting a decree of nullity, then you are not free canonically to take on another canonical or "life vocation". (If, on the other hand, your spouse has died, then yes, you are likely canonically free to try for c 603 standing.) Your diocese will tell you this when they see your Sacramental record.
I'm sorry to reiterate all of this, but your questions are reminiscent of someone who has heard or espoused the opposite of a lot of this, so I wanted to be sure and spell it out again. The information on living as a hermit in the non-canonical or lay state is particularly important because it is important to understand that eremitical life can be lived in lay, consecrated and clerical states. As lay persons, we are free to live very many vocational paths, but if we want to do so in the consecrated state or do whatever it is in the name of the Church, the Church must discern and form us (or make sure we are adequately formed) in the vocation herself and then admit us to profession and consecration. Please note that neither have I been making any of this up since beginning this blog in 2007. I am merely exploring what the Church established the moment she promulgated c 603 in 1983. Your questions help me do that as so many others have done since my own eremitical consecration under this canon in 2007. Whichever choice you make, you are in for an adventure!! May God bless your eremitical life!Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 5:11 PM
Labels: canonical approval vs canonical standing, Canonical as Normative, canonical eremitical life, canonical freedom, esteeming the lay state, illegal v illicit hermits
17 November 2024
"Waiting in the Tabernacle of the Hermitage" by Sister Rachel Denton, Er Dio
1. Who made you?
God made me.
2. Why did God make you?
God made me to know God, love God and serve God in this world, and to be happy with God for ever in the next.
3. To whose image and likeness did God make you?
God made me to God’s own image and likeness. 1
As we draw towards the end of this Year-of-Covid, I have been curious to notice the priorities of the Church in supporting her members and the wider populace. Within local parish communities there has been much evidence of ongoing support for each other and for the most needy, finding innovative ways to celebrate and to support. But the ecclesial headlines appear to have focused quite specifically on the re-opening of church buildings for private prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and thenceforward for the physical participation of the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist.
When I was consecrated as a canonical hermit, I was offered the privilege of having the Blessed Sacrament reserved within my hermitage. I gave the invitation much prayerful consideration, but eventually decided against it. My understanding and experience of hermitage is that the whole of the hermitage is sacred space; the whole of the hermitage is tabernacle, the place where the hermit meets Christ. Hermitage is, for the hermit, the sacred space of God-with-us. This understanding and experience is a step beyond the foothills of the God-is-everywhere theme of childhood lessons. This is the confidence that, by God’s grace, simply to embrace and live out my humanity in the place and circumstance I find myself, is the fullest possible expression of my relationship with God during my life on this earth.
Deep within the paragraphs of Vita Consecrata (an encyclical on the consecrated life which is adopted by canonical hermits on their profession) there is hidden a quite audacious phrase. It describes Jesus’ life on earth, his humanity, as the expression of his relationship as the Only-Begotten Son with the Father and with the Holy Spirit 2 .
We have been taught, perhaps too often, that Jesus’s humanity is a belittling, a humbling of his deity, as if it were second-best, dragging him down to our own “wretched” state. But if we ponder the statement above prayerfully, we can perhaps begin to trust that being human is, in and from the beginning, the most perfect way that Christ participates in being God – that Christ being the Word, Christ being human is the event of God speaking; as the encyclical states, it is “the expression” of Christ’s love within the Trinity. In the desire to most fully express the love of the Trinitarian Godhead, in the Word being spoken, Christ wondrously brought about, for Christ-self, the state of being human. Christ is human first, before anybody else was even imagined, right from the beginning!
And for ourselves, being human is Christ creating us upwards into the ecstasy of the Trinity. Christ’s undiminished humanity is the ecstatic love that we, and all of creation (because it is all spoken), are invited to share in our living today. Each one of us is created in the image of Christ’s humanity – in the image of the fullness of this unbounded expression of Trinitarian love. As a hermit, I witness that I am called to make manifest Trinitarian love, through my own humanity – of Christ – in my daily life; that the call to being human in Christ, and in imitation of Jesus, makes manifest in me, too, the fullness of our relationship, in Christ, in the Trinity.
So how does that work in practice? The heartbeat of my hermitage is its sacred ordinariness. It is an experience, in silence and solitude, of total immersion in the humdrum of daily life. A hermit is one who has, perhaps, become so overwhelmed by the immensity of the privilege of sharing Jesus’ humanity that she chooses to spend her whole life contemplating the mystery and manifestation of that gift in the most simple and ordinary form of living. A hermit lives out the mystery of the Incarnation in her own body, her own blood. A hermit says, “Christ, from the beginning of time, and in the fullness of time, chose being Jesus, being human, as the best way of expressing the love of the Trinity. Living in Christ, under the action of the Holy Spirit, and totally dedicated to God who is supremely loved 3, I will now do likewise”.
Because of the relentless ordinariness of her life, there is very little of worth that can be written about a hermit and her hermitage which cannot be written about every individual and community on the earth. That participation in the mystery of Christ’s humanity in Jesus is the focused privilege of the hermitage, but it is the lodestone of every human life. The hermit inhabits the tabernacle of her hermitage, but all people wait and attend in the tabernacle of the world. Christ is close to us when we are kneeling directly in front of the Blessed Sacrament in a church, but just as close when we are sitting in the pews at the back, or standing at the boundary wall outside locked doors, or at any moment in any place when we attend inwardly to the presence of God.
Lockdown in the hermitage was not a time of greater separation, but a time of dwelling deeper within the mystery. Now, as the churches tentatively regroup and are re-inhabited, as people kneel directly in front of the tabernacle, and celebrate Eucharist together in each other’s company, we are able to express more publicly again the community which is Christ’s self-manifestation and revelation to the world. In this time of Advent, of waiting, of expectation, and from the solitude and silence of my hermitage, I like to stand with the Church and the whole of humanity, bereaved, grieving and masked, together-yet-apart before the altar of God.
God is with us.
1. Opening phrases of the penny catechism.
2. Pope John Paul II, 1996, Vita Consecrata. 18
3. Code of Canon Law: Part III Institutes of consecrated life.
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 9:42 AM
Labels: Christology from below, Extraordinary Ordinariness, Sister Rachel Denton Er Dio, Tabernacle of the Hermitage
16 November 2024
Why I do Christology "From Below"
Great question. Thanks. I suppose my response goes back to one of the first theology classes I ever had. This was an undergraduate Introduction to New Testament and made an impression I have never left behind. The professor asked us who Jesus was or is and he let us answer in all of the ways we thought not just described, and identified Jesus, but also how we most honored him. I said something about Jesus being the Son of God and John (Dwyer) smiled, nodded, and said, "Okay, bearing that in mind, tell me who God is!"( After all, if the best, truest, or even the highest thing we can say about Jesus is that he is the Son of God, we really should be able to say who God is apart from Jesus.) But of course, Jesus is the One who reveals God exhaustively to us; he shows us who God is in ways that transcend any of the partial revelations we have in the Hebrew Scriptures or in other religions. Moreover, he makes the Creating, Saving God present in space and time in ways not achieved except fragmentarily in the Law, Prophets, Judges, and others. (Remember to reveal in this usage means not only making visible and making known, but also to make real in space and time.)
So, the question, I think, is really how does Jesus do that, and then, what does this mean about his humanity? First, I believe Jesus reveals both who God is and what it means to be truly human. He does both in exhaustive and definitive ways and paradoxically, he does both at the very same time. I believe that this is a major part what the Christological Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, for instance, were trying to say in the categories of that day and age. Secondly, I recognize that Christology can be done either "from above" or from below"; one (as in the Gospel of John) starts with Jesus' divinity, the other (as in the Gospel of Mark or the Letters of Paul) with Jesus' humanity. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each must address these if people are truly to understand who Jesus and the One he called Abba are for us. One of the weaknesses, I believe, in all Christology from above is that in starting with Jesus as God, it fails to truly "get to" much less adequately esteem Jesus' humanity; nor does it really see Jesus' humanity as a true model for our own. I believe it also may prevent us from treating our earth with the reverence and responsible stewardship we are called to, but I will wait to make that argument.Doing Christology (and all theology in light of this) "from below" not only shows us the depth of God's kenotic (self-emptying) love, it also reveals how truly we who are called to authentic human life fall short of or "miss the mark" of that very goal. When we do theology beginning with Jesus' humanity it is very much easier to see that to be truly human means to live in an indescribably intimate relationship with God (we cannot be truly human alone!!) and it means to become entirely transparent to the Love-in-Act of the God who wills to be Emmanuel, God-With-Us. What I have said about eremitical hiddenness and extraordinary ordinariness (cf Hiddenness and Extraordinary Ordinariness, and Essential Hiddenness) is meant to indicate that whenever our reality is allowed to become all that it is created to be, meaning whenever God is allowed to be God-With-Us in and through us, nothing at all is "ordinary", or, maybe better, the extraordinary everyday reality we so easily denigrate, demean, and diminish, is really and truly extraordinary, even sacramental. We, like Jesus, are called to make God really and truly present in this world. Jesus reveals this is the very nature of what it means to be human just as he reveals God as Emmanuel!
I realize this is not a complete answer to the implications of your questions, and certainly it is no Christological treatise, but to be honest, I just don't have the energy or the motivation to even try to write such a thing, and certainly not on this blog! I do not deny the aim of what the Christological Councils wanted to affirm about Christ and his relationship to the One he called Abba, Father; certainly I have studied these Councils (and the language they used!) but even so, I neither speak, live, nor understand reality in terms of the language (words and categories of thought and understanding) that were used in those Councils. Further, I believe that that language itself, despite the brilliance of those wielding it, fell far short ("missed the mark") and could only have fallen far short of capturing or expressing the paradoxes of the Christ Event fully and definitively revealed on the Cross!Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 7:59 PM
Labels: Christology from Above, Christology from below, Come Have Breakfast, Elizabeth Johnson, Eremitical Hiddenness, Essential Hiddenness, Extraordinary Ordinariness
On Composing One's Intended Vows under Canon 603
Thanks for your questions. Over the years I have put up this vow or that one, yes, but I don't know if these will be helpful to you. You see, each vow was an expression of my understanding of the way God was calling me to live the Evangelical Counsels, especially as a consecrated solitary hermit, and each of these understandings was covered in my Rule before I included the vows themselves. This means I wrote about the values and praxis involved in such a vow in a way that made sense of each one before I made these vows as a hermit. Each vow presupposes a whole theology, and it may not be a theology you and I share or that you are even necessarily familiar with. For instance, the vow of obedience I just put up and that you have read, presupposes a theology of human beings as language events with the Creator God as author. Yes, the vow of obedience involves attentive listening, which is true of obedience in the New Testament and Benedictine senses, but my own vow formula contextualizes that in a way that might not be helpful to you and may not speak to your own lived experience. The same is true with my other vows.
With that in mind, I encourage you to begin writing about your own understanding of what such a vow means. Write about that, whether it is from what you read, previous vows you have lived, or the way you live in and from God's presence every day in the present. Also write about how you have experienced God in terms of each vow or Gospel value, and especially what it means to truly live that today in our contemporary world. I say this because each vow reflects a foundational Gospel value that Jesus encourages us to live with him and in him. If your diocese admits you to profession and eventual consecration, you are called upon to let all of this be true in whatever vows you compose or propose to live. Much of what you write may work in your Rule as you spell out the way a particular vow calls you to live within the context of c 603; most of it will never find its way into your vows in any explicit sense. However, it will all shape and qualify the way your vows are written and lived in your own life. You will return to your Rule again and again in prayer and reflection over the years, and hopefully will be inspired to move ever more deeply into the vows themselves by what your Rule captures of that sacred story.What I want you to hear from all of this is that writing a Rule, a liveable Rule that reflects the will of God in your life is not an easy thing to do. In the work I do with candidates, the writing of such a Rule guides the discernment and formation process. (It also guides conversations with the diocesan formation team.) Especially, it is not just one thing in a finite list of things the diocese or you need to check off on the way to being professed and consecrated. It is meant to be something each c 603 hermit commits to living for the rest of his/her life because it reflects the unique way God has called this person throughout all of the years preceding this moment and calls them now into the future in this specific desert life and ecclesial context.I sincerely hope this is helpful!
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 2:31 PM
Labels: content of vows, evangelical counsels, liveable Rule -- writing a, writing a liveable Rule
15 November 2024
A Contemplative Moment: Vulnerability (Reprise)
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 3:18 AM
Labels: A Contemplative Moment, David Whyte, Vulnerability
14 November 2024
"While Heaven is Important it's not the End of the World!"
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 7:30 PM
Labels: Heaven, Tom (NT) Wright
13 November 2024
God Hates Only by Loving the True and Really Real into Existence
Good questions, so thanks for that! My sense of the difference between the two is that saying no to sin and evil, and disliking or even hating these (meaning disliking completely with one's whole self), does not disparage or denigrate the person involved in the sin or evil. God does whatever God does with love and that means with respect. So, while God may hate sin and evil, he loves his creation, especially including those who do and are therefore diminished by the sin. When we imagine God sneering at someone or something, it seems to me that we are coloring the images with our own emotions and feelings. Let me say that that, of course, is not unusual, but part of discernment (or preparing for discernment) is working with and through the feelings and emotions that color the way we perceive things so we can appreciate the situation in a more objective (and perhaps more Godlike) way. Feelings can cause us to react to things rather than respond to them. But God, who possesses himself perfectly and without distortion or diminution, for that reason responds with, and as, a perfect self-gift. That means the One who is Love-in-act never simply reacts, and so too, never sneers at nor denigrates even as (he) pronounces awesome judgments.
When we speak about having our responses touched with sin or evil (and this can certainly include various attitudes!), for instance, we are speaking about one being in some sense or another, in bondage to, tied to, or hampered by something that prevents us from truly being the person God has called us to be. It may be anger, fear, resentment, grief, or any number of things caused by woundedness, trauma, etc., that bind us, but these bonds will distort our responses to make them more reactive than they (or we) are meant to be. When that happens, our "no" to something we may (perhaps rightly) not approve of, becomes tinged with the colors of our own wounds and personal distortions. A simple "no" may become personal denigration, and a simple statement of disagreement morphs into a sneer. I hope you see what I mean.
Does God hate sinners? Well, certainly the way our Bible translations go, some have them saying that God hates sinners. (cf Ps 5:5) But what is being said really? First, it is important to recognize that in Scripture often "hate" is used as a semitism, that is, a Semitic idiosyncratic form of speech that may not translate so directly into our own language. Thus, when we are told that in "coming to Jesus we must hate our father and mother, brother and sister. . ." (Luke 14:26), hatred really means to love less or, better, to love them in a secondary place. Secondly, there is a paradox involved in this as well, namely, that those who love God more than they love others (i.e., those who put love of God first!!) will discover they are empowered to know and love those others even better than they had before putting God first.So, when we speak about God hating a sinner we must see things similarly. First, because we are sinners capable of becoming righteous, we each have a true and false self. The true self is the "righteous" self, the one who is as God created them to be, the self that is full of God-given potential and possibility and is a true response to God's love and call. The false self is the self that falls short of all of that, the one that wants to create themselves rather than receiving personhood as a gift of God, that self that is in bondage to false gods and disvalues that are unworthy of being chosen, those less than truly real selves who are distorted in all of the ways the true self can become distorted. In terms of the Semitism explained above, God loves the false self less than the true self. That is, God always puts the true self first and loves it into existence. God empowers the true self and allows that true Self whom he loves with all his heart to replace the false and distorted self. I think it is important to remember that God loves things into existence so they can replace the untrue and less real. In this way, God's "hatred" really is about loving something better and wanting more for the partial and/or distorted reality to be replaced.
At every point, when we speak of God responding to reality we are speaking about God being true to it and to himself. We are speaking about God's love, about God always being Love-in-Act. We are also speaking, then, about God respecting the truth he sees so clearly even amid great distortions and partial reality. When I wrote that God NEVER denigrates or sneers at anything or anyone it was as a piece of this larger theology of God as creator and redeemer through unconditional, eternal, and (I believe) inescapable love. Love is the way God both creates AND destroys in a single act. Meanwhile, to love in the way God does, also means seeing as God does, looking and seeing the deep potential for life and love that resides deep within everything that exists. The fact is, seeing in this way simply does not allow for approaching reality in a way that leads to denigration or sneering.We might also answer the question of whether God hates the sinner by asking someone to look at the crucifix and then see what they say. Paul's answer was simple: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. (Rom 5:6) This is a love that creates even as it destroys (and no, I am not speaking about the destruction of Jesus, but of sin and death as God begins to create a new heaven and new earth with Jesus' resurrection). It is a love that does not sneer at or denigrate those who crucified Jesus but instead takes both sinful and true humanity with the utmost respect and seriousness. I think that sometimes when the word hate is used in our Scriptures, it indicates respect (which is NOT necessarily the same as approval), as well as utmost seriousness. In any case, whether we perceive this in terms of creation or destruction, God's judgment is always essentially creative and an outworking of God's unfathomable love for the true and really real.
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 1:29 PM
More on Ecclesiality and My Rule of Life
Wow! New question! Thank you. I was well aware of the ecclesial dimension of my consecration and I still had growing to do in that awareness!! Still do, of course, because my theology of Church is evolving and that will change the way I see the ecclesial dimension of my consecration. My own growth in this vocation will also change the way I perceive and approach this dimension of my calling. I remember in my first conversation with Abp Vigneron, talking about how surprised I was that the ecclesiality of the vocation was not discussed much -- though it was a central element protecting the vocation from individualism and charges of selfishness and self-centeredness. Yes, I wrote this dimension into my Rule in several places, not with specific references to the ecclesiality of the consecrated vocation or state, but with references to serving the Church itself, that is, serving the People of God, in various ways so that they might truly be the People God calls them to be. The most focused sense of the ecclesiality of my own vocation, I think, was my vow of obedience. It reads as follows:
However, were I to rewrite portions of my Rule today (and I do rewrite parts of it every five to eight years or so when needed due to growth or significant changes in my life), I believe one of the things I might do is add a specific section on the ecclesial nature of the consecrated vocation and cite a portion of Vita Consecrata as a key to the section. What I would also describe therein would be the various ways I recognize the ecclesiality of consecrated solitary eremitical life. For instance, I would note its importance in my vow of obedience, and in other significant sections of the life and Rule. You see, more than a list of do's and don'ts, my Rule is primarily a vision of this life that helps inspire me to live it faithfully. To have a vision of the life along with its personal, historical, and ecclesial significance, allows me to look at everything I am and do (or consider doing!) from this perspective and then evaluate it for the way it fits or fails to fit this vision. The do's and don'ts follow directly on this vision built on the terms of the canon and the way God is (and has long been) at work in my life for the sake of my true self and the lives of others.
Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 12:28 AM
Labels: canon 603 as an ecclesial vocation, vow of obedience
11 November 2024
On God's Mediated Presence and Whether God Sneers
Thanks for the questions. They are good ones, and important as well. As a matter of openness and clarity, let me say that you are apparently referring to videos on Joyful Hermit Speaks or Joyful Christian Hermit Speaks (You Tube) and not to any other online hermit site. Yes, I have seen at least 2 videos that retell this same story. I believe the roots of this dream stem from the fact that God consecrated me and others as c 603 hermits and consecrates all members of the consecrated state in the Roman Catholic Church in mediated acts defined and governed by canon law. In the case of c 603 hermits, it is the bishop that acts to mediate God's consecration, just as priests act as mediators of God's consecration of bread and wine during Eucharist, or God's forgiveness during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, for example. The Church is a Sacramental Church and that means she uses Sacraments and sacramentals to mediate God's grace and blessings (both involve God's presence) in many ways.
There are certain things about the story that trouble me as well. The main thing is the way the dream has God speaking in what Joyful has stressed and explicitly mimicked is a denigrating tone that disparages a central way almost everything spiritual or sacramental in the Church works, namely through God's mediated presence. First of all, let me point out that God's presence is no less real because it is mediated through the hands of a "sacred minister". While I have no idea of whether or not Joyful was consecrated in any sense at all, it was supposed to have happened through a liturgical rite where the priest blessed and incensed her. I hope she recognizes that all of that depends on some sort of mediation or symbolic representation. I also, therefore, hope she understands that c 603 hermits pray in the same way as any other person prays and God comes to us directly (that is in a relatively unmediated way) as well as in mediated ways: in the Scriptures or Eucharist, etc., along with, in, and through the hands and hearts of those who work with us or with whom we work, and really, in and through any person who reveals (mediates) God's presence to us.The description of God essentially disdaining a valued vocation in the Roman Catholic Church to which God calls people from all over the world because of its mediated nature, boggles the mind. To suggest that God disapproves of a particular canon law that finally, after 20 centuries, establishes as a state of perfection, a vocation God has been calling people to for all that time without sufficient regard by the Church, is even more mind-boggling. ALL vocations in the Church (priesthood, religious life, consecrated virginity, laity, etc. are established in law (that is, they are defined and administered by law to protect and govern what is recognized as a gift of God to the Church), no matter the state of life of the one with that vocation.Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 11:26 PM
Labels: Does God Sneer?, Joyful Christian Hermit Speaks, Joyful hermit speaks, Mediated Presence
On the Importance and Relative Flexibility of Norms
Thanks for your questions! I am afraid I am not very positive about what often goes by the name of "common sense"! I think that more often than not, I would call it common nonsense! I remember when I was inviting people to my consecration, I met one of the residents in the complex (a Catholic) in the hallway and told her what would be happening at the parish church. She looked a little puzzled so I thought I would start at the beginning and asked her if she knew what a hermit was. She responded, "Sure, it's someone who wants to escape. . ." and at that point her voice trailed off. Another time I was introduced to someone as a hermit. Her immediate response was, "Why aren't you home in your cave?" and then she realized what she had said when the usual social filters fell away, and she flushed with embarrassment.
In more serious examples, I have often written over the years that eremitical life, contrary to popular opinion, not individualistic or isolationist, and that solitude, precisely because it is a matter of being alone with God through Christ in the power of the Spirit, is very much a communal reality that includes all grounded in God. There is nothing "common sense" about that. Most people I have spoken to are surprised when they hear this, or when they hear that the life is not a selfish one given over to self-centered pursuits and concerns, or when they learn that one is withdrawing from things in order to be more closely and truly related to them. You can hear the paradoxical nature of so much of this, and that is definitely not what most folks call "common sense"!I agree that generally speaking if a life seems to be unhealthy for someone, that means this is not their vocation. However, it is possible for someone to try to live something they have understood in an ill-defined way or are living in unhealthy ways which, if changed might make the life far more lifegiving and healthful for the person. In such an instance, the person might discover a true vocation. Consider what happens if hermit wannabes lived penance in the ways some have conceived it in past centuries with tons of fasting and corporal mortification. Let's say the person has diabetes or some sort of GI problem; what would happen to their health under such a penitential regimen? Some of us recognize that a regular medication regimen and a careful eating plan could well constitute a piece of sound penitential practice, but you can imagine what some who are truly unschooled or literalistic in their approach to this might replace the healthy praxis with!
Moreover, some approaches to penance treat it as synonymous with punishment and link it to shame and guilt as well. This is a serious misunderstanding or constellation of misunderstandings and with such an approach to penances (or ascesis), one's understanding of God can be completed skewed and with that, any possibility of getting eremitical life right or having it be lifegiving. But penance is not about punishment, and it is not to be connected necessarily with guilt or shame, much less foster these!! When an element of the spiritual life, whether eremitic or non-eremitical, is built into the life, that life will become unhealthy, whether the person really has this vocation or not. This is because such skewed notions of penance or other central elements of c 603, for instance, do distort our senses of our self and the God who calls us to wholeness -- if we can even recognize what wholeness is!Each of the central elements of c 603 and so, of solitary eremitical life as the Church understands it, can be distorted because of ignorance or skewed theologies. When this occurs, they will lead to further skewing and other elements will become distorted as will the witness value of the life. This means that it will not serve others in the way it is meant to serve, namely, as a model of a life centered on Christ in relation to a God whose love is unconditional and whose mercy is gratuitous. Whether we are looking at an overly literalistic and individualistic notion of solitude, a distorted notion of prayer rooted in tendencies to measure things in terms of human achievement, a notion of hiddenness that is mainly defined by externals, we may end up with a distorted understanding of contemporary eremitical life, and that is apt to be singularly unhealthy.
There is an interplay between local Church and hermit or hermit candidate in the way the central elements of c 603 are to be defined. The hermit or hermit candidate lives the elements as she feels called to do and the local Church (through the formation team and mentor) evaluates this in relation to other hermits, the eremitical tradition, the needs and insights of the Local Church, etc. There are essential senses that all hermits tend to agree on and there are variations of these individuals may feel called to live instead. The local Church evaluates all of this and discerns whether the entire life may honestly be called eremitical and healthily eremitical. The idea is to get a unified and healthy vision and praxis of how this person will live this vocation if it is agreed this is what she is called to live in the Name of the Church. The normative elements of c 603 are important and one must live them with integrity; at the same time that does not require slavish fidelity to a dictionary definition of a particular word or value, Instead, genuine faithfulness may require relative flexibility within an ecclesially accepted field of meaning.Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 8:16 PM
Labels: common sense meanings of hermit life?, discerning c 603 vocations, normative elements of c 603, writing a liveable Rule
Being a Work in Progress and Having no Regrets
Thanks for your questions. No, I never said I devoted my life to c 603 as canon or felt called to do so. You see, it is not true. Yes, there is no doubt that over time this blog has taken on a focus and that focus is c 603 and the life this made canonical in the Church, but this blog is only one piece of my life, and it is important for whoever made the comments you heard to realize that. For instance, I do spiritual direction regularly, and my daily life is given over to prayer, some study, and Scripture. I also teach Scripture in my parish, and though we only meet once a week, it does take time to prep a class! Additionally, I spend time mentoring candidates for c 603 profession, and while I usually will not work with more than two candidates at a time, it still takes time and requires additional reflection and prayer. Finally, I do some recreational stuff. Since I am not playing violin due to a broken left wrist (not to worry; it happened several years ago now), I am learning to play cello instead and I also color with colored pencils (cf works in progress and completed in this article).
Yes, one focus of my study and reflection is c 603 itself, but I am also reading about consecrated life, discernment and formation of vocations to the consecrated life, and of course, more generally the nature of eremitical life itself. As I have noted before, a small group of c 603 hermits is reading Cornelius Wencel's book Eremitic Life together, and though we have all read it before (sometimes several times!), in looking at it together we are able to explore and share the various ways God has worked in us and called us to this vocation. We all have different interests, different schedules, different gifts and limitations, but we all are grateful to God for this canon and desire to live it with and for God and for the Church. Having said all that, let me point out something far more important and maybe more pertinent, namely, that in concerning myself with c 603 here and elsewhere, I am concerning myself with lives, eremitical and non-eremitical lives that are precious to God, and to something that has the potential anyway, to positively touch many more people in the years to come, well into the future of the Church.I had not the slightest inkling that a developing focus of my life would be c 603 itself, nor that I would ever work with and even mentor other c 603 candidates and hermits. I would certainly have told you that you were crazy if you had suggested these things to me. The same is true with virtual lauras. Of course, I had only had email for a few years when I was consecrated. Skype was, at least for me, in the future and ZOOM was in the far future. There was no way to have imagined, much less worked to implement such ideas!! In the days after consecration, Sister Nerina and I tried to form the Network of Diocesan Hermits; we succeeded to some extent, and in some ways, what is happening now is the natural outgrowth of that idea, surprising as that is to me. The reason I renewed my petition with the Diocese of Oakland before Bp John Cummins retired was because I knew I had something to offer the Church both because of disability and giftedness made significantly rich in a contemplative and eremitical context. I also thought this because of my theological education and work in hospital chaplaincy though I was not sure exactly how these would become important in an eremitical life.
Today, I simply marvel at what God is doing in and with my life. That is particularly true of my own personal work in spiritual direction and the way that has allowed God to bring so much together so it all makes a truly awesome sense. I really could not have done this simply with my own planning and energy or disability. And, like the picture to the left, while it is not precisely what I originally envisioned, nor, at various points was I happy with its progress (at other points, I loved what was happening), in the end I was happy with it and think perhaps that will be true when I hand my own life back to God for the final exhaustive and irrevocable time.Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 1:14 AM
10 November 2024
Three Vocational States, Two Hierarchical Ones
I had never heard this before. I wish I had known this; it is so much more positive than what I have heard said about women religious and habits over the years, and maybe said myself in those early days when it was so shocking and disappointing!!This is a completely new way of seeing what happened!! Did Vatican II tell religious to do this, because I was under the impression that the Vatican didn't like it much when women religious threw off the habit? Some still wear a habit though, so why is that? And what does one do with the three states of life, lay, consecrated, and clerical?]]
Great questions! Thanks for following up and also for sharing your own feelings and perspective from those "early days"! Yes, women religious read the documents of Vatican II and recognized that one major emphasis of the Council was the empowerment of the laity to truly see themselves as central to the ministry of the Church and not as second or third-class persons with no real vocation! Laity were not simply to be ministered to, they were called to minister themselves to the whole world they penetrated daily in their work, schooling, recreational activities, family life, etc. Because both priests and religious or consecrated persons were called to embrace a greater separation from the world in the arenas of finance, power, and relationships, the Church recognized that the laity were called to secular lives and to be Church there, where only they could truly go and be.At the same time the Church began to let go of her tendency to demean vocations she considered secular and even secularity itself. This was an even huger step and really hard to make, but the Church has been about doing that for the past @60 years. One thing about the everyday world theology was beginning to appreciate better and which also helped with all of this, was the recognition that our ultimate destination is not heaven, but a new heaven and earth and also, that this new creation began to be accomplished through Jesus' life, death, resurrection and ascension. With God's revealed will to be Emmanuel (God With Us), it was already happening that heaven had begun to interpenetrate earth and that Jesus was, through his resurrection and ascension, Lord of this new world. Once the strict distinction between heaven and earth was mitigated in this way every vocation became a call to minister as part of the coming of God's Kingdom here! The secular was no longer to be disparaged, but to be embraced as the place God was laying claim to and recreating. And of course, the secular realm was exactly the place most people of the laity were called to minister with their lives, not as second-class citizens in the Church, but as laity-as-Church for whom this was their proper sphere of life and expertise. Vatican II's universal call to holiness truly only makes sense in light of this insight into what the Christ Event occasioned in our world.
The Vatican did not tell women religious to throw off their habits, no, but it did tell us to update and renew our congregations in light of their original charisms. At the very least it meant the modification of habits, but for many, their original charism meant to let go of the habit altogether. They were still consecrated women with ecclesial vocations, and public commitments to image Christ in their professions of the Evangelical Counsels. Thus, they served in the ways I have spoken about recently to both priests and the rest of the laity. (Men religious were sometimes drawn from the priesthood and like the women, were called to serve both other priests and the laity in their consecrations and professions of the Evangelical Counsels). Similarly, they would continue ministering to the lost and least in the ways they always had as well as in new ways too.What I can say about those of us who continue to wear habits is that those I know who do, associate it with their consecrated life as eschatological signs, signs of the inbreaking of God's presence in the world. For some, they may have discerned the habit was part of their original charism (this would especially be true for monastics). The right to wear a habit was never taken away from them and, in fact, is extended to them during the rite of profession and consecration. Most wear habits as a sign of material poverty as well. I do that. Additionally, I wear one as a reminder and sign of stricter separation from the world and a reminder that eremitism was the origin of monastic life. Finally, I recognize that bishops gave the tunic to hermits living in their dioceses or who came there desiring to preach or minister otherwise. Thus, the habit can be seen as an original part of the hermit's calling. For those in the religious state, in some situations wearing a habit is still significantly helpful and truly meaningful, especially when it is not used to signal special prestige or worldy values.
We still recognize three vocational states in the Roman Catholic Church, lay, consecrated, and clerical. It is simply that the term lay may be used in terms of either a state of life or as a reference to its hierarchical place in the Church. With public profession and consecration, a person enters the consecrated state of life. They may be drawn from either the lay or clerical states to do that. The Consecrated state of life does not constitute a third level in the Church's hierarchy, however, so consecrated hermits are also either lay or clerical. At the same time, they do still constitute ecclesial vocations that serve the Church in the ways I have described recently.Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 2:21 PM
Labels: Senses of the Term Lay or Laity, Vatican II and the Universal Call to Holiness
08 November 2024
A Simple Change in Language, A Profound Spiritual Lesson (Reprised From 19. August.2024)
Marsha died this morning at @7:00 EST, at the IHM Motherhouse Campus in Monroe, MI. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with her for many years and particularly during these last weeks and months. Marsha was under hospice care, met with me weekly or oftener (recently), and was accompanied in close friendship and sisterhood by many IHM Sisters and Associates. They surrounded her when she died as is the IHM custom and as Marsha had always wanted. I am reprising this piece today and have redacted it slightly to bring out important truths; I have also used Marsha's name throughout.
Original Piece:
One of the persons I accompany in Spiritual direction (Marsha West) is actively dying. We met today for only a half hour, and during that half hour, we focused on a lesson that is fundamental to spirituality and maintaining one's focus on God, even in the presence of terrible pain and weakness. I learned it from my own Director and try to pass it on to those I work with. It's a "simple" lesson with far reaching consequences, and yet, it is not one that is easy to do! I am hoping I can share here, what it is and something of why it is so important. The lesson is this. When you are speaking of what you feel -- especially if the feelings are multiple or at least seem antithetical, or when you are speaking of what is true and what you feel, please do NOT use the word BUT to link the clauses. Use AND instead! Let me give you an example.Posted by Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, Er. Dio. at 8:12 PM
Labels: But vs And, Marsha West