Follow up on Canon 603 and Freedom

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I just read your recent post on freedom vs license. I thought the examples you used re playing the violin or playing as an elite athlete on a basketball team were an excellent way to illustrate the distinction between these two ideas. I would have thought that canon 603 limited hermit freedom. While I don't know a lot about canon law I have always had the sense that it curtails freedom. What is it about canon 603 that makes it different from the rest of canon law? Does it really result in freedom for the hermit?]]

Thanks for your comments and questions. This will build on the post on freedom and license On Questions of Freedom and License so please bear the examples there in mind. Maybe this will surprise some folks but I suppose I have always felt the same way about canon law as you. I think I feel that way still with the exception of canon 603. I have lived as perpetually professed under this canon for over a dozen years now and I have experienced it as a source of great freedom throughout that time. Neither has anyone who might have done so (chancery personnel, bishop, delegate) interfered with that freedom by imposing requirements on me beyond my Rule or the canon itself. What makes canon 603 different to my mind are two things: 1) the essential elements are left undefined; they are mysteries to be explored and embraced, and 2) these elements are combined with a Rule the hermit writes herself based on her own lived experience. I think the way these two things come together in the power of the Holy Spirit is the key to a hermit being really and authentically free. They are also the thing which sets this apart from most other canons.

Regarding the essential elements, these have meaning in light of the  lived tradition and the lived life experience of the hermit. For instance, when I first read the canon (@ December 1983) I misread it as calling for, "silence and solitude," rather than "the silence of solitude" and lived those first realities mainly in terms of external silence and physical solitude, Only a while later did I come to see the canon said "the silence of solitude", a Carthusian  reality which is much richer than the sum of its parts; only much later had I moved from seeing this as just an environment in which the hermit lives to also seeing it as a symbol of the goal of life with God. Even later still I came to see this same essential term as a description of the charism (gift quality) of the solitary eremitical vocation, which, when understood by chancery personnel, could prevent problems in professing or dismissing candidates for profession. It took time to live into and truly understand this mystery. Something similar happened with the terms assiduous prayer and penance, stricter separation from the world, and living this vocation for the salvation of the world.

Each term was and is absolutely central to the vocation, and yet the Church did not define them; some might have thought the meaning of these terms to be self-evident, or they might have given dictionary definitions and thought these sufficient. Either alternative would be a serious mistake. Though one is not free to create an entirely new meaning for these terms, each one embodies a whole world and constitutes an invitation to discover and explore this world of Divine power, presence, and love. Each also reflects a long and varied history of eremitical tradition and freedom and each one will call one to make choices pertinent to one's life circumstances and God's personal call to wholeness and holiness in light of these elements. Those who wrote the canon knew this, I believe; those who professed me expected me to come to deeper and deeper understanding of these mysteries as well as those of the evangelical counsels (which are themselves geared towards freedom) and live (and live into) them ever more deeply. The call to embrace and explore these mysteries was and is both a right and an obligation whose fulfillment was extended to me as well as empowered by the grace of profession and consecration. The bottom line here is that I was truly free to do this in whatever ways and according to whatever timetable worked best for me. Moreover, as I did this, as I entered more deeply into each mystery (and thus, into the world of God's love they opened to me), my own freedom to be the person God called me to be would increase.

A part of this deepening freedom and faithfulness involved the writing of a Rule the Church received  and officially approved with a Bishop's decree. This too is a non-negotiable part of the canon like the others mentioned above. The Rule was written and rewritten on the basis of my own lived experience and codified a particular vision of eremitical life which drew not only from my life experiences (including now the inner work I am doing with my Director), but from Camaldolese and Cistercian spirituality, as well as from the substance of the canon itself. Additional sources were the lives and spirituality of hermits through the centuries, but especially the Carthusians and the Desert Ammas and Abbas, and the Camaldolese St Romuald and St Peter Damian. The living out of this Rule has asked me everyday to grow in understanding, freedom, wholeness, and holiness. The writing  of this blog too has been a source of growth and deepening freedom. Canon 603 is at least indirectly responsible for my taking this project on and continuing it.

Another part of my experience of freedom with regard to canon 603 has been the Church's public commissioning of me to live this life. When everything around me and (sometimes) even within me seems to militate against the silence of solitude, I can remind myself of the mutual discernment process the chancery and I negotiated, the prayers for my vocation I know people offered and still offer, and my assurance that these things indicate the granting of a very real freedom with regard to the pressures acting against eremitical life. Canonical standing and God's own consecration which was mediated by the Church, results in freedom to resist other self-definitions and affirm the deep truth of self in God. What I want to stress in all of this is the degree of freedom c 603 and the Church herself gives me to discern various things within this eremitical context  I would not be free to undertake from outside it. When I fail in one way or another I don't  need to worry whether my own initial discernment of this vocation was accurate; the Church has weighed in on things and tips the scales towards an affirmation of this vocation and a renewed commitment to persevere. Finally, a central piece of the way c 603 has afforded me real freedom is the intense work I have undertaken with my Director. I would not have been free to undertake this in the way we have done it had it not been for canon 603 and the public commissioning associated with it. Likewise, as I have written recently, the ministry of authority which is a significant part of a canonical vow of obedience has been incredibly freeing as well.

I think it is important to understand that the freedom I have discovered and come to live more and more is not the freedom to be anything or just anyone at all. However, through canon 603 I have been made more truly free to be myself. There are constraints, of course and the ability to use certain gifts and talents is among these. Still. the rich sources of freedom which make up life under canon 603 are inspired by the Holy Spirit and they have led me deeper and deeper into the heart of eremitical life which in turn has made me even more free as hermit and as a human being. Canon 603, with its combination of essential or defining elements and a Rule I necessarily wrote myself with its dependence on my own lived experience and vision of eremitical life, created a realm of God-given space which I can explore and in which I could hearken to the voice and Word of God as I become the person God calls me to be. Remember that in Catholic theology freedom is the power to be the persons we are called to be. What canon 603 does in my life (and, I would argue, in the life of anyone truly called to this vocation) is to ensure me the invitations, space, and tools to become myself as I explore the heights and depths of life in communion with God.

To summarize then: I think that, generally speaking, Canon Law is meant to protect various realities in the Church. This always involves setting parameters or limitations --- but parameters and limitations which also define a realm of freedom. Again, one is not free to be anything at all but, if one is called by God to this, one is certainly free to be themselves as a hermit who lives this life in the name of the Church. Even so, I believe canon 603 is truly unique in combining the hermit's own Rule and other non-negotiable elements in a way which allows the hermit to explore the depths and heights of the mystery we identify as solitary eremitical life and thus, life with and in the God who inspires and empowers it. I find the canon to be genuinely beautiful in the way it is composed; it creates the necessary space for the Holy Spirit to work if one really has an eremitical vocation. (This is one reason its non-negotiable elements are built into the lives of non-canonical or lay hermits' lives as well.) I would not have thought these things were I looking at the canon from the outside in. But I have now lived this life for some time and things look differently from "within" or under canon 603 itself.