Feast of St Paul of Thebes: Hermit

It seems to me it's rare to get feast days for hermits but today is one of those! Since the only thing I really know of St Paul (ca. 228- ca.342), often identified as the first hermit in the Catholic Church or Christian Tradition, is what is found in writings attributed to St Antony (also a hermit) I am going to borrow here from those (credit to Give Us This Day).

[[ According to his biographer, St Jerome, this Paul, known as "the Hermit," deserves recognition as the first desert monk. Apparently, he stumbled on this vocation by accident. Jerome relates that Paul was a rich young man of Thebes whose parents died when he was sixteen. when a storm of persecution swept over the Chruch in Egypt, he decided to ride out troubles from the seclusion of a cave in the wilderness. But by the time it was safe to return he had come to love his solitary life and decided to stay.

Nearly a hundred years passed, and many others had discovered the singular attractions of the ascetic life. The greatest of these, St Antony, heard there was someone in the desert whose lifetime of solitude surpassed his own. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Antony found his way to the cave of Paul, where the two immediately recognized each other as kindred spirits and fell into a warm embrace.

While Paul asked for news of the world, a raven arrived with a loaf of bread for their meal. He observed matter-of-factly that he had thus been sustained during his many years. Feeling that his end was near, Paul greeted Antony's arrival as heaven-sent to prepare for his burial. He sent Antony off to fetch a cloak, but when Antony returned, he found Paul's lifeless body kneeling in prayer.]]

The actual account is embroidered with a number of details including the fact that Antony saw Paul ascending to heaven before he arrived to find his body posed in prayer, or that there were two lions there, digging Paul's grave. I recognize the ways such stories are made to reflect holiness and the extraordinary nature of the life lived, but in this case I like the story without the embroidery. It is very simply told, and the bare facts are extraordinary and striking all by themselves. We don't need lions or visions, I don't think. We simply need to hear the facts: viz., a young man, wealthy by all accounts, is orphaned during the persecutions in the early Church and hides himself in a cave to remain safe. In his seclusion he discovered something he may not have expected, namely, the silence of solitude, i.e., life with God alone. He allowed that very specific eremitical solitude to speak to him and, in fact, to seduce him, and he remained a lover of God in the silence of solitude for the rest of his days while God provided for him faithfully.

Given today's pandemic and its requirements of increased isolation and quiet, I admit I wondered how many people will, like Paul, accidentally stumble across their life calling to the silence of solitude and embrace eremitical life. Beyond that, once the pandemic is simply endemic, how many will continue in this calling and more, how many will manage a faithfulness of something approaching nearly 100 years? Like Paul, I never set out to be a hermit, but circumstances brought me to this vocation, and I am grateful to God for the gift! May he, St Antony, St Romuald, and, of course, St Paul of Thebes help all hermits to continue to be faithful to and grow in their calling, whatever the form or state of life in which it is lived!!