The Way of Paradox
from The Eremic Life
by Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam
The hermit's life is full of different paradoxes and apparent contradictions. Some of them may surprise the hermit himself and even cause a certain uneasiness in him not to mention others who look at his life from "outside", To many people who look at this way of life and want to be impartial observers of it, the eremitic experience of the desert seems to be an absurdity.
We have already mentioned. . . that the basic motive for choosing a solitary and silent life in a hermitage consists in an existential longing to meet and talk to God. The hermit chooses silence in order to enter fully into a dialogue; he chooses solitude in order to meet closely a personal presence. The way of the desert is thus not a stray and arid path, it does not lead to the negation of all the values of the world and of other people. Just the opposite: it is the way of mutual presence, dialogue, and friendship that shines where two freedoms and two hearts, divine and human, meet. The dialogue between hermit and God means that two persons truly entrust themselves to each other in love, because unconditional trust is a necessary condition of every authentic dialogue.
For the hermit the gift of faith determines not merely the choice of the way of life, but also an elementary personal dynamism that enables him to go on and finish his journey successfully. The gift of faith makes it possible for us to open our hearts so that we are still better and better prepared to accept God, who wants to entrust Himself to us. Where faith is a dialogue, with two personal mysteries calling upon each other, God is the one who initiates the meeting, and the human respondent should only be obedient.
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