What Kinds of Sacrifices are Required by c 603 (Solitary Eremitical Life)?

[[Dear Sister, I wondered what kinds of sacrifices are required by c 603. Is it all about prayer and fasting or is it something more like living in poverty and substandard housing. I think you can tell from my question that I am doubtful about what it might mean, and I hoped you could answer my questions. For instance, do you sacrifice your health in the name of penance? Do you sleep on boards and refuse to talk to people about anything but God, or maybe about anything at all? It's true, I don't understand what some people embrace in the name of sacrifice or penance, but you write about the freedom of canon 603 and the beauty of the life it defines. How do these two things go together? Sacrifices and beauty don't seem to go together to me. What kinds of sacrifices are required by c 603?]]

Thanks for your questions --- and for your humor!! We all enter adulthood with a plethora of opportunities before us and potentialities within us. Over time we make choices as we come to know our own hearts and the will of the God who dwells there. Those choices gradually close off or narrow external possibilities regarding what we do with our lives and open us to the single choice that will define us, potentially for the rest of our lives. When we make this choice wisely, discerningly, it will also open within us a richness of opportunities for achieving the deepest and truest potentialities within ourselves. It will not allow us to live all of our gifts, and certainly not in the extensive or exclusive ways we had once imagined we might do, but it will allow us to become fully human and provides ways to express our giftedness in spite of real limitations.

All of that is true for eremitical life itself, and for life under c 603 in particular. Solitary eremitical life requires that one renounce or let go of most forms of community living, even though I write about it as a unique form of community the accent is as much on unique as on community and most folks are simply not called to achieve fullness of humanity in this expression of "living together alone". So, the first sacrifice we make is that of more ordinary forms of community, dreams of community-building**, creating families, etc. The "silence of solitude" required by the canon points to both this renunciation and the goal and gift it is to the church and world. We make this sacrifice because we believe that God calls us to realize the fullness of authentic humanity in this uncommon context where we can be "alone with the Alone", as it is sometimes described.

Other sacrifices are entailed by making such a radical choice and commitment. In terms of eremitical life, for instance, one will never be able to become (or remain) a college professor or teacher, a fulltime minister or hospital chaplain. One will need to relinquish any dreams of becoming a professional violinist or playing (except occasionally) in a symphony orchestra, for example. (Fill these examples with your own dreams, gifts, serious interests, and other careers.) And there are a host of smaller sacrifices from mode of dress to the simplicity with which one lives, to the freedom one has to do what one wants when one wants to do that thing, to the ability to keep up in one's field by participating in extensive reading, colloquies, workshops, etc, to traveling, calling friends or family whenever one wants or even just going out to dinner with friends except very occasionally, to having new things on a regular basis. Examples could be multiplied of course (and many of these hold for all religious, not just for solitary hermits)!! Even so, because of some of your questions regarding health, etc., I want to emphasize again, we make these sacrifices because we sincerely believe this is the way God has called us to the fullness of authentic humanity in Him.

The other side of sacrifices like these are the commitments the life involves. A commitment to grow more and more profoundly in the truth of who one is most deeply in relationship with God in the silence of solitude is the essential commitment required of the consecrated hermit. (Again, commitment to doing so outside a community of hermits is part of the c 603 commitment.) The vows are the means or framework for the journey one is taking; they are the means to an end, not an end or vocation in themselves. (Every state in Christian life requires some commitment to the evangelical counsels; public vows, for instance, give others the right to expect one lives these in a paradigmatic way, a way which is capable of challenging and inspiring others in any state of life --- not because the vows themselves are the end, but because they help make possible receiving and vividly witnessing to the abundance, richness, and redemptive capacity of a solitary relationship with God.) Each sacrifice puts the onus on being the person we can be for others. We give who we are, not what we have (though we also are ready to give what we have because it demonstrates or witnesses to who we are and are called to be). 

I identify authentic freedom as the power to become the person God calls me to be. I recognize there is no lasting happiness or meaningfulness in any other notion of freedom because every other notion of freedom will eventually cease to be convincing (and leave us bereft of hope) as it crashes against the limits of temporal existence. If one defines freedom in terms of doing what one wants, for instance --- and this means in terms of wealth, health, youth, success, achievements, power, or even simple will, the moment debilitating chronic illness hits, for instance, or actual impoverishment, one's so-called freedom is gone, or at least severely cramped.  But this is not the case when one understands freedom as Christian theology does. There, the more I become myself, my deepest, truest self, the more truly free I am, and this freedom can increase in spite of limitations of all sorts. The vows represent sets of limits, constraints, and penultimate commitments which serve this greater freedom. Renunciation in this calculus assists us with and is necessary as part of our vocations, but is not identical with embracing our vocation per se.

All of this means that I do not sacrifice my health, for instance, in the name of penance. Though an indispensable element in my calling, penance is not my vocation.  Fullness of life achieved in union with God through assiduous prayer and penance in the silence of solitude is my vocation. No, I don't sleep on boards --- though my mattress sits on top of the bed frame's slats, if that counts! And ordinarily I speak to anyone who wants to speak to me about anything they want to talk about --- with the general exception of telemarketers whom I give a couple of chances to listen to me and then hang up on without apology. Yes, my life is about prayer, and whatever penance helps to regularize, extend, and even intensify my prayer life, but substandard housing or penance for penance's sake? No, not at all! Nor is religious poverty about actual impoverishment. I live comfortably --- (though it's true, my furniture is usually at least second hand or DIY pressboard stuff; the exception is a couple of pieces of bedroom furniture friends bought me new more than forty years ago. The mattress I now have is newer than that, but came to me when a local retreat house was closing and disposing of furnishings. The Sister making the gift went around to all the rooms and lay on the mattresses to find the best one --- an image I found both funny and very touching; it is an image I still appreciate because she chose very well!) --- and, generally speaking, I have what I need to live my commitment to God and to be brought to the fullness of humanity to which God calls me.

** A c 603 hermit can and usually does belong to a parish and she will ordinarily be an integral part of this faith community and participate in community-building as a member. Similarly, she can be an oblate with a Benedictine House, for example, and participate in some degree of community-building among oblates. But c 603 is not meant for use by communities of hermits; it is about solitary eremitical life and is meant for those who have discerned this very rare vocation.

I sincerely hope this helps!!