[[Dear Sister, I saw an exchange between you and another hermit on a list for hermits. (I am not one but I aspire to be.) He is non-canonical and you are canonical. Near the end of the discussion he said that you and he have completely different conceptions of hermit. I wondered what the differences are between his notion of a hermit and your own.]]
I wanted to take a second shot at this question because what I did not do was state my own notion of what a hermit is. Instead I compared canon 603 with Giustiniani's conception. Obviously, since I am a canon 603 hermit, and also a Camaldolese Oblate, I live according to the canon and it defines eremitical life for me --- though in a way influenced by Camaldolese spirituality and writers like Giustiniani. However, it is important to be clear about my own understanding of what several of the foundation elements of that canon actually mean. I've written about these for almost fourteen years here, so I will only give a summary in this post.
My own conception of the Christian hermit is a person living the truth that in Christ we are each authentic persons only to the extent we are grounded in and completed by God. We know this is true for every person without exception and we wish to live the truth of this in a way which witnesses as clearly and vividly as possible to the nature of authentic humanity from, in and with God in Christ in the power of the Spirit. God loves us with an eternal love and we know we and everyone is incomplete without that love. This is, perhaps, the most important reasons we live the silence of solitude and one of the reasons hermits have always resonated with the refrain "God Alone is Sufficient." This is also the reason we live lives of assiduous prayer and penance; in this way we open ourselves to allowing God to work in our lives, indeed in our very selves. as widely and profoundly as a human being can possibly do (and be).
Canon 603 also requires "stricter separation from the world, "World" (cf Handbook for Canons 573-
746) is defined as all that is resistant to Christ, all that resists him, all that offers completion and meaning apart from him and the life in and of God he offers to everyone. It does not mean everything outside the hermitage door. It means everything in my heart which separates me from God. In this too hermits seek to be known by and come to know God alone. They honor and delight in God's creation. They sing its praises, love it with a chaste and compelling love, recognize its goodness and capacity to mediate the very presence of God, and in all the ways appropriate and possible for one living witness to the message that God Alone is Sufficient for us, they will serve it by proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ --- with our lives and solitude, and (if we are called to it) in other, limited ways as well so long as they do not contradict the essential solitariness of our lives.
Canon 603 is an ecclesial vocation. This means the church is the immediate context for this life, not only as it is for any lay person in the church, but in the sense that the Church herself has discerned this vocation, mediated God's own call to the hermit, admitted her to profession and consecration, and commissioned her to live eremitical life in the name of the church. The hermit's solitude is always a unique form of community. She never is an individualist nor does she live in isolation, but always constrained to some extent by the rights, obligations, and appropriate expectations of those faithful who look to her for some sign that God really is present and active in our lives, completing us and making those lives meaningful. And so she lives vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She has superiors who serve her in the ministry of authority --- a ministry of love which helps assure she lives God's call as fully and faithfully as she is capable without threat from anyone who says the hermit life is nonsense and meaningless or insist she follow the crowd, accept their values facilely, and so forth. Instead, the limits and constraints associated with canonical standing constitute a paradoxical realm of profound freedom with and in God which the hermit is called to explore and live into more and more deeply every day of her life.
So, those are the essential ways I see the hermit life. I don't know how the person you first referred to envisions it, but this is the way I think resonates with Paul Giustiniani's vision of the life, and certainly reflects the Camaldolese ideal of the triple good: solitude, community, and evangelization or martyrdom. I hope this succeeds to do what my earlier post failed to do. God bless.
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