[[Thanks for your answer. I meant to ask you more specifically about how you view the relation of chronic illness and your eremitical vocation. I guess I let my questions get away from me. Do you see a vocation to chronic illness as prophetic? How does it fit with everything you wrote in your last post to me?]]
Thanks for following up. I should have made the linkage between chronic illness and eremitical life clear in my answer since it was there in your question. In any case, let me give you a brief answer now.
I see chronic illness as something that sharpens everything else I said about allowing God to be God. Sometimes the love we know as God will heal us, sometimes not. But nonetheless God makes of our lives something meaningful and full if we allow this. Eremitical life is a call that allows us to serve others "simply" by being one who is completed by God, and by proclaiming the call to authentic humanity a covenantal reality. We are meant to be persons of hope, prophets embodying the Good News. To be prophetic is to speak God's Word into the present situation. We (those who are chronically ill) may or may not be able to minister in the ways most folks do and expect, but we are certainly able to allow God to love us and bring us to fulfillment through our weakness and in spite of our illness. That is the will of God we will proclaim with our lives -- and yes, in this we will be prophetic. I came to the notion of chronic illness as possible vocation before I came to an appreciation of eremitism. Only then did I see that the two could fit together with chronic illness sharpening the witness of eremitical life. I hope this is helpful.
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