John Climacus and the Ladder of Divine Ascent

Sister Susan sent this on to me this evening, and I thought it was excellent even in its brevity. It echoes a lot of what I have described in speaking of deepening union with God. What Climacus describes in his Ladder of Divine Ascent is a process of divinization leading to profound stillness,  greater consciousness,  and presence, both one's own complete presence and the presence of and to God. I was especially struck by the use of the idea of transparency to the reality of God and the Communion marked in that way. As Christ was entirely transparent to God, so we are called to be transparent to, and thus, mediators of the Divine, and intercessors between  the divine and the human. This is certainly the very vocation of the hermit as exemplar of God's call to every human being. Enjoy.

Bernard of Clairvaux and the Four Stages of Love

Hi Sister, I was looking for a piece you wrote on the four stages of love under Bernard of Clairvaux but couldn't find it. Did you remove it? (Response: Hi there. No, it is right where it has always been since 2015, but I had it under Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, not Bernard of Clairvaux. My bad!! Here it is! I have also updated the labels under which it is located.) 

[[Dear Sister, so often we love God for what he can give us. Is loving God for his own sake the highest form of love? St Bernard says this, right?]]

Hi there,
         Thanks for the question. You are absolutely correct that, according to St Bernard of Clairveaux and many others as well, love of God for God's own sake is a higher form of love than love of God for the sake of our own needs --- that is, for the sake of the gifts and blessings God gives us. However, according to St Bernard, loving God for God's own sake is actually the third of four levels or stages of love, not the fourth. This will certainly seem to run counter to common sense, but the highest form or "fourth level" of love, according to Bernard, is love of self for God's own sake! It is quite difficult, though to love ourselves simply because we are loved by God, simply because we are empowered by God in this way. It is difficult and paradoxical because it is a form of self-love in which we are wholly empowered by God and forgetful of self! Paul expressed the paradox in this way, "I, yet not I, but Christ in me."

The prerequisite for this is the third level of love, that's for sure. We will only be able to forget (and truly love!) ourselves in the way that is necessary if we can love God simply because it is what God is worthy of, and moreover, if it is that which Love-in-act itself empowers. We have to become practiced and strong in this intimate form of love of God if we are ever able to love ourselves and others in the way God loves us! In other words, we must love God in this way (the third level) before we can love ourselves and others in God (the fourth level of love)!  The importance of this fourth stage and the way it follows the third cannot be overstated. Maybe it would be helpful to recall the first two stages of love, the two more immature form,s before saying more about this.

First and Second Stages of Love:

The first form is one we all recognize. It is love of self for one's own sake. Sometimes called selfish love, it is all about what one needs and desires. This is the earliest form of love we know, the love of infants and children who love others for the gifts they give, the blessings they bring. This form of love is often not really a form of self-love at all; the better word is narcissism. It can and ordinarily does grow into more authentic and mature love for the sake of the other, just as children ordinarily come to love their parents despite not being able or desiring to get anything from them in return. The second form of love is love of God for the gifts and blessings which come from God. This is a higher form of love than the first because it includes a real love of God, despite this being offered for the sake of the kindness, correction, empowerment, et,c which God gives to us. We are loving God here but at the same time, we are looking for God to help us in our sinfulness and immaturity, our lack of self-discipline and frailties of all sorts. There is a little forgetfulness of self involved here (we are no longer as narcissistic as we were as infants), though, of course, we can and ordinarily do grow in this form of love just as we do in the first one.

Third and Fourth Stages:

The third level of love is, as mentioned above, love of God for God's own self or God's own sake. This is an intimate form of love where we recognize God's infinite worthiness of our love. Those who sit in quiet prayer despite no expectations of mystical "experiences", no sense of God's presence beyond a faith commitment to this Divine truth, these persons know this level of love. Those who attend Mass regularly not merely for what they get out of the liturgy, nor because the Church requires this of them, and not merely as an opportunity to put their petitions before God, but simply because this is an act of worship of the One who is worthy of such time, attention, and love, they also know this level of love. 

I think these examples could be multiplied many times over. However, this level of love is not the same as union with God --- though there is certainly communion with God, which empowers this particular level of self-forgetfulness and generosity (for genuine worship always involves self-forgetfulness and generosity). This form of love, like those earlier stages also mentioned, is also capable of growth and increasing degrees of maturity or perfection. Over time, one's heart is purified, and eventually one reaches union with God, where one loves self and all else only in the power of God, who is Love-in-act. When this occurs, one has entered or reached the fourth level of love. One has truly "put on the mind of Christ."

The fourth level is described by Bernard as loving oneself for God's own sake. It means loving oneself as God loves one and in the way God does, but doing so as an act of worship of God alone. In short, it means letting God alone act in and through you -- which is really the highest form of worship. Here one truly loves oneself but does so with a kind or degree of self-forgetfulness one had not known earlier. One certainly does not despise oneself. Instea,d one embraces a humility which is absolutely honest and loving precisely because one sees and knows oneself as God does.

Even the subtlest forms of self-hatred are healed in this form of love. One sees oneself as God sees us, and we find we are truly loveable, precious, and a delight in God's eyes. One takes care of oneself and one's legitimate needs, but one does so precisely so that one may further spend oneself as God wills and empowers. This means one may certainly give one's life for others in the way Jesus did in his passion and death, but it also means spending oneself for others in ALL the ways God wills in a daily (continued) dying to self --- as Jesus and his true followers do every day of their lives. Take a look at how radically different the first stage of love is from this one! Both are ways of loving self, but the first stage is self-centered and protective; it is lived at the expense of others. The fourth stage is other-centered and kenotic; it is love of self lived for the sake of others, whatever the God-willed cost to oneself --- just as Jesus' life was lived.

Fourth Stage Love as Corrective to Spiritual Individualism and False Mysticism:

I don't recall if St Bernard spoke of this specifically (though from the Cistercians I know, and the relatively little I know of the Cistercian Reform, it would not surprise me that it was a motivating insight of Bernard's own life and efforts at monastic reform) but seeing this as the necessary stage of love coming after love of God for God's own sake is an important corrective to forms of monastic practice and prayer which focus on despising the world outside the monastery or a mysticism which focuses on a "Me-and-God alone" relationship which is individualistic and exclusionary or exclusivist. 

Union with God means we love both ourselves, others, and the whole of creation with God's own love. Union with God empowers this kind of love and the selfless giving of self our world both needs and is made for. It allows God to love in and through us as exhaustively as God desires to do. It is not so much a spillover of our love of God, but a stage of love which love of God for God's own sake makes possible. It is precisely the way Christ loved, the love God calls us each to, and thus, the very apex of what having a covenant nature (as all human beings do) is all about.

Had the stages of love stopped at "loving God for God's own sake" we might never have been able to understand why Christ ever "came down from the mountain" or left any of those solitary prayer periods with God that so characterized his identity in order to spend himself for the sake of others; neither might we understand what moves the Triune God (a community of such love) to continually create and redeem as God constantly does. But being moved so is the very nature of union with God, the very character of God's Mediator, and the Trinity itself. Union with God leads naturally to a divine love which goes out of itself to and for the other.

Had St Bernard not written so wonderfully and in a way which runs counter to common sense that loving God for God's own sake was "only" the third stage of love, we might be tempted to adopt forms of spirituality which are really thinly veiled forms of selfishness or not-so thinly veiled forms of self-hatred. We also might be tempted to denigrate representatives of active as opposed to contemplative forms of life (or eremitical vs coenobitical) for choosing a "lower" form of love. This has certainly been done in the past by even the very best theologians, and I recognize it as a significant temptation today.

I should also note that the significance of the fourth stage of love fits very well into the new cosmic consciousness I have mentioned recently because it does not allow spirituality to ever be an individualistic or privatistic matter. (Need I say yet again that this is especially true for hermits?!) We must be ultimately concerned with God's own will, God's own projects and plans for reality; moreover, we must do so ONLY as God's own Life/Love in us makes possible. Union with God empowers something our world needs from each and all of us so very badly, something we were each made for and are called to by God as we participate in moving the drama of an evolutionary and unfinished universe forward, namely "love of self (and others and all reality) for God's own sake"!

P.S., What should probably be emphasized, I think, is that these four stages are somewhat like Kohlberg's ego stages. It is not so much that one stage of love is completely left behind as another is entered, so much as it is the case that the earlier stage is integrated into the higher stage of love and transformed or transfigured in the process. For instance, as I understand it, we do not cease to care for our everyday needs or seek assistance as required, but securing our own needs (and desires!!) are not the driving force of our lives. Moreover, integration means one meets one's own needs in appropriate ways while one's desires are tempered and moderated by higher stages of love.

Similarly, when we have reached higher stages of love, we do not cease to ask God to help us with our needs or to count on God's blessings and gifts, but this is no longer the defining form of love motivating our prayer or our approach to reality. And of course, as noted above, we do not consider love of self something "base" to be despised and outgrown or simply rejected. Instead, our love of self is healed and transfigured by God's own love; it becomes something we do for God's own sake, and that makes all the difference! Thus, as we become more and more certain of, filled with, and moved by God's own Self (Love-in-Act) we become more and more secure, less needy,  anxious, or fearful of loss and death, and more willing and even grateful for chances to generously spend ourselves for others. The paradox here includes the fact that in the third and fourth stages of love, our own profoundest needs are also met, but without the self-seeking found in the first two stages. ("Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.")

Becoming All Fire (Reprised)

 In the apothegmata (sayings) of the Desert Fathers and Mothers there is a famous story. It was rooted in the personal experience of these original Christian hermits but it resonated with a line from today's reading from Paul's second letter to Timothy:  [[For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.]] A young monk, Abba Lot, came to an elder, Abba Joseph, and affirmed that he had done all that he knew to do; everyday he did a little fasting, praying and meditating. He maintained hesychia (stillness) and purged his thoughts to the best of his ability. He wondered what else he should be doing. The story concludes, [[Standing up, the elder stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire; and he said to him, "If you are willing, you can become all flame!"]]

I suspect most of us have experienced the formal laying on of hands that occurs during the reception of some sacrament or other. If we are not ordained we would still have experienced this at confirmation and during the reception of the anointing of the sick. Some of us who were baptized as adults may have experienced this during our initiation into the Church. In every case the laying on of hands signifies the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mediation of a kind of vocational event, a call to discipleship in and of the love and presence of God in Christ. (The sacrament of anointing has been called a vocational sacrament to be sick in the Church, a call to proclaim the Gospel of God's wholeness and holiness in and through the weakness and even the relative brokenness of illness. cf. James Empereur, Prophetic Anointing) And of course there are all the other ways God lays hands on us as "his" love comforts, heals, and commissions us to God's  service. I wonder if we realize the invitation these occasions represent, the invitation not merely to be touched and enlightened in so many ways by the love and presence of God, but to be so wholly transformed by him so that we become "all flame"!

This is another way of describing the coming of the Reign of God among us. In today's readings the Kingdom of God is not so much a place as it is an event. Jesus described it this way: [[Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.]] (Matt 11:4-5) And we know that beyond this, the coming of this mysterious event often involved the healing of those with inexplicable illnesses and forms of unfreedom or outright bondage, victims of the demonic in human hearts and the world at large. According to tomorrow's readings the seeds of  this event are planted deep within us, a potential harvest which is natural to us and whose fullness we cannot even imagine. With every encounter with Jesus, every encounter with the Word of God, every direct or mediated experience of the love of God, this human and vocational potential is summoned or drawn to fruition.

One of the privileged ways this encounter occurs just as it did in Jesus' time is through Jesus' parables. These are stories which quietly draw us more and more into the world Jesus calls home, the world of friendship with God, the countercultural world whose values and life we call prophetic. I have written about parables here before --- about their power to summon us out of this world, to empower us to leave our baggage behind and to embrace the newfound freedom of an enlarged and hallowed humanity. It is a world which, through the narrative power of the Word made flesh, transforms and commissions us to return to that same world we left and act as Christ-for-others --- in the world but not of it. Jesus says, "the Kingdom of God is like. . ." and our minds and hearts alert to the promise and  challenge of a reality we cannot explain, a mystery we cannot comprehend unless, until, and to the extent it takes complete hold of us.

This gradual but continual process of call, encounter, response, and missioning is the way the event we know as the Kingdom of God comes, first to us and then to others we meet and minister to, then to the whole of creation. And it is what the Gospel writers are calling us to today. May we each find ourselves grasped and shaken, comforted, healed and commissioned, disoriented and re-oriented by the Word of God that comes to us in Christ. And may we each come to know and believe the truth of our own potential and call --- that we are not merely meant to be touched here and there by the fire of God's love and presence, but that we are made, called, and commissioned to "become all flame" in and through that love. Amen.

Advent: Shaping our Lives in terms of the Future (reprised from 2015)

So many things have changed in Theology today in light of the scientific discoveries on the nature of the cosmos. We used, for instance, to read Genesis as though it referred only to past events, a state of perfect blessedness that had been lost and which one day would be regained in another realm we called heaven. Similarly, our enmeshment in and subjection to death was treated as the result of a "fall" from perfection. Today, more and more we are reading the Scriptures, writing, and preaching with a new focus and perspective --- that of an unfinished universe that one day will reach perfection or fulfillment in God, the day when God will be all in all. At the same time then we human beings are called to a fulfillment that lies before us and it is possible to read Genesis as a powerful myth reminding us of all we are called to --- and all our world is meant for as well. Our identity as imago dei would then be something we are in the process of moving towards, something we are allowing or at least are called to allow God to transfigure us into day by day.

Sin, a Situation of Enmeshment in the Past and that which is resistant to the Future God Wills and Represents

The situation of enmeshment, incompleteness, falseness, distortion, or sin in which we find ourselves is not a fiction that can be dismissed by a non-literalist reading of the Genesis narratives. It is as real as ever, and Genesis narratives, especially when read as myths ** conveying profound truths, explain how it is we each collude with death in all its forms as we lead one another into greater and greater enmeshment in everything we identify as sin. In light of the unfinished developing nature of our universe, I think it is especially important to remember that hamartia (sin) is most fundamentally defined as "missing the mark" or "falling short". We miss the mark or fall short of being the persons God has created us to be in any number of ways. 

In attempts to become what we are meant to be, in attempts to become more genuinely human, we choose gods of all sorts who themselves fall short of true divinity and make us even less complete or true than we were before we embraced them. In acts of forgetfulness and carelessness, fear, insecurity, and woundedness, we choose to embrace the past rather than the future and therefore to be someone other than the one God calls us to be. But too, we are summoned into and embrace the future as we become Advent persons, persons of the Eschaton for whom the words holiness and Saint actually fit. Our God is working constantly to bring us to freedom and fulfillment, truth and authentic humanity; his Word is active in our world and in our own hearts and each one of us is called to incarnate that Word just as fully as possible.

If we now read Genesis in a way different from what we were once used to and comfortable with, so too do we approach the Nativity of Jesus in somewhat different ways as well. Advent reminds us that the Word is at work in our world looking for those who will allow it to bear fruit in their lives. It reminds us that God's plans for us and our world are something we can hardly imagine yet --- and with the Gospel readings from next week, something we may find profoundly disturbing or even offensive. It is part of our past, but even more, it is the future by which we are called to measure ourselves.

Authentic humanity has been born into our world and we will celebrate that at Christmas, but at the same time, it is waiting to be born in us and in every person we know so that God's plans for the fulfillment of reality may be brought to fruition. The Annunciation is an invitation to enter an unimaginable future we should each experience here and now while Mary's fiat is an acceptance of this invitation we too should each offer --- and offer many times over this period of Advent! Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus who will, throughout his life and death, incarnate the Word of God more and more definitively. But Christmas is not only in the past; it lies ahead of us as well.

Embracing the Future: Christ Brought to Full Stature

Ephesians speaks of Christ one day "coming to full stature". We speak of the Christ Event which includes not only Jesus' life and death but his resurrection and ascension as well. We are participants in this Event because we have been baptized into his death and resurrection. Thus, while part of this Event is in the past it continues in the present as well. WE are the Body of Christ and it is we who are responsible for helping to usher in the Kingdom of God, WE who are called to incarnate the Risen Christ here and now. It is only right that we celebrate Advent as a season in which we begin to look not primarily at the past but instead to the present and future. Even more, as was the case with the Annunciation when Mary began to shape her life in light of the future the angel announced to her: "You shall be overshadowed by the Most High and bear a Son and he shall be called Emmanuel," we too are called to begin to shape our lives less in terms of the past than in terms of the future which Christ's death and resurrection proclaims, the world in which in us Christ comes to full stature.

Advent reminds us it is not enough to be freed of serious sin. Baptism and the Sacraments do that, of course, but that does not make us all we are called to be, all that God dreams and wills for us.  We cannot shape our lives merely in terms of freedom from serious sin or restored innocence. It is not enough to look to the past to what we once were. Instead, we are called to truly become a new creation, (an) imago dei, those in whom the Word of God finds its full expression. Christ is the model of this new life, the first fruits of this new creation. He is the incarnation of our absolute future made real here and now in a proleptic way, the One in whom all reality has been redeemed and imbued with true hope and profound promise. Christ variously announces to us who we shall be, "I call you friends." He invites us to be his disciples, his own brothers and sisters, salt and light to the nations, Sons and Daughters of God, and citizens of the Kingdom; in him, we are called to be expressions of the Logos and commissioned to bear lasting fruit. We too are to be overshadowed by the Most High. Advent asks us to begin shaping our lives according to this vision, not that of who we once were, but of who we are created to become. In our embracing this future lies the hope of our entire world.

Readings of Genesis Sharpened by the New Cosmology

By the way, in light of the new ways Theologians read Genesis, one of the newer shifts in that reading is to understand Adam and Eve and the story of the Garden as a narrative describing the ultimate future of our world as well as (and sometimes instead of) some primordial history. That reading has been around for a while but it has been honed considerably in light of our sense of an unfinished, yet-to-be-perfected universe. The future reality described in the myth** will be a place where human beings are completed in their relationships with one another, with God, and with creation itself. As in Jesus' language to his followers, this future is defined in terms of friendship. If this is correct, then sin is most fundamentally a matter of refusing to embrace this future. That means refusing to commit to God and God's plans for his Creation, refusing to embrace our truest self --- an identity shaped in terms of this reality in which God is all in all. Sin is a matter of refusing to be made new and remaining bound by the past. And of course, that definition of sin is really not all that different from the one we are so familiar with. Our own "falling short" or "missing the mark" (hamartia) though is a matter of falling short when measured according to our future, not the past.

** It is important to understand that myths are not fictions but rather narratives or stories that convey deep truths that can be adequately described in no other way than through narrative. While the more superficial details of the stories (myths) may be untrue (e.g., there is no such thing as a talking snake or a literal tree that is the source of life and death!), their deeper truths are just that, profoundly true (talking snakes are a good way to externalize Eve's (and our own) insatiable tendency to theologize, for instance, or to describe the temptations she (and we) struggle(d) with).cf: More on Stories and the Tower of Babel or Myths, Parables, and Narrative Theology

Does a Particular Spirituality Work Best for Hermits?

 [[Hi Sister Laurel, If I wanted to become a hermit is there a particular spirituality that works best for that?]]

 Hi yourself. It's a good question, but I would think that any well-known (I want to say "mainline") spirituality would work with eremitical life. All of the main ones have had hermits or can support eremitical lives because all of them put God first and have a strong sense of ecclesial faithfulness. Since there is no contradiction between life as a hermit and a commitment to the faith (ecclesial) community, even those most associated with active ministry can work well for a hermit. (Think of the unique eremitical expression associated with Franciscanism!) I think most of us gravitate to one form of spirituality or another, not because that's the one that "should" be embraced by hermits, but because they (and their representatives) resonate most personally with us. They will also support contemplative life as a way of loving others and building the Church.

I would encourage you to read widely until you feel yourself drawn to a particular spirituality, and then do a deeper dive into it to see where it leads. If more than one spirituality speaks to you, explore these more fully. See who they call you personally to be and the ways they humanize (deify or divinize) you and your life. Spend time reflecting on their representatives and founders, and what they were trying to live and why. You may want to visit houses formed in specific spiritual streams and get a sense of the living tradition that interests you. Have conversations with these representatives and pray about it all. 

In this way, I believe you will discover the spirituality (or spiritualities) that resonate(s) most creatively with you and your own call, whether that is eremitic life or not. My own journey began as a Franciscan and moved into Benedictinism and Camaldolese Benedictinism. Only later did I find myself drawn to Cistercian spirituality (also a form of Benedictinism that focuses on the monastery as a "School of Love"). Today, as I return to John of the Cross and other Carmelite writers, I recognize that these have all influenced my spirituality and, while I am a Camaldolese Oblate for whom the "threefold good"** is central in inspiring and informing the way I live out c 603, my hermit life is enriched by all of these streams.

** The Camaldolese triple good or triplex bonum is solitude, community, and evangelization.

1st Sunday of Advent: Godspell Movie

 

My sincerest wishes for a joyful and fruitful Advent to everyone who reads here! If you can't watch the entire movie, please check out at least the first 12-15 minutes, including the scene in the fountain and the face painting scene. The scene in the fountain is one of the happiest "calls to newness" I can ever remember seeing. It captures the spirit of Advent with its focus on the coming of God into our midst and the newness of life that results, and is perfect for the first Sunday of Advent. For all of us, day by day, we come (or are brought) closer to Jesus and to the fullness of the truly human life we are made for. And day by day, we proclaim the Way of the Lord in our world.

Touching the Wounds of Christ: Proclaiming a Power Made Perfect in Weakness (Reprise)

This post was first reprised in 04/2016. I reread it as part of my preparation for Lent and for writing a post that follows up one I posted earlier today or very late last night (03.March.2024). It also reflects a book I am reading for Lent this year, namely, The Wood Between the Worlds, A Poetic Theology of the Cross. It is a book about the way God uses Jesus' passion and death to reconcile this world with himself, thus transfiguring this world and the way we are called to perceive it.

Thus, considering the questions that follow and what I have written recently about eremitical life, I find a night and day difference between those whose illness is a sign of "the world's" power and those whose illness has truly been transfigured into a sacrament of the presence of God. Most of us with chronic illnesses or disabilities find ourselves between both of these worlds -- at least part of the time. Lent seems to me to be a good time to focus especially on the kinds of choices that allow us to stand firmly in the light of God's love so that even our illnesses and disabilities are transfigured and we come to know ourselves as precious and a delight to God. All of this is reflected in the following post.

_____________________________________________________

[[Dear Sister, if a person is chronically ill then isn't their illness a sign that "the world" of sin and death are still operating in [i.e., dominating] their lives?  . . . I have always thought that to become a religious one needed to be in good health. Has that also changed with canon 603? I don't mean that someone has to be perfect to become a nun or hermit but shouldn't they at least be in good health? Wouldn't that say more about the "heavenliness" of their vocation than illness? ]] (Combination of queries posed in several emails)

As I read these various questions one image kept recurring to me, namely, that of Thomas reaching out to touch the wounds of the risen Christ. I also kept thinking of a line from a homily my pastor (John Kasper, OSFS) gave about 7 years ago which focused on Carravagio's painting of this image; the line was,  "There's Another World in There!" It was taken in part from the artist and writer Jan Richardson's reflections on this painting and on the nature of the Incarnation. Richardson wrote:

[[The gospel writers want to make sure we know that the risen Christ was no ghost, no ethereal spirit. He was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with us, with our human condition, did not end with his death. . . Perhaps that’s what is so striking about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns us with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us. The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a  union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.]] Living into the Resurrection

Into the Wound, Jan L Richardson

My response then must really begin with a series of questions to you. Are the Risen Christ's wounds a sign that sin and death are still "operating in" him or are they a sign that God has been victorious over these --- and victorious not via an act of force but through one of radical vulnerability, compassion, and solidarity? Are his wounds really a passage to "another world" or are they signs of his bondage to and defeat by the one which contends with him and the Love he represents? Do you believe that our world is at least potentially sacramental or that heaven (eternal life in the sovereign love of God) and this world interpenetrate one another as a result of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection or are they entirely separate from and opposed to one another? Even as I ask these questions I am aware that they may be answered in more than one way. In our own lives too, we may find that the wounds and scars of illness and brokenness witness more to the world of sin and death than they do to that of redemption and eternal life. They may represent a prison more than they represent a passage to another world.

Or not.

When I write about discerning an eremitical vocation and the importance of the critical transition that must be made from being a lone pious person living physical silence and solitude to essentially being a hermit living "the silence of solitude," I am speaking of a person who has moved from the prison of illness to illness as passage to another world through the redemptive grace of God. We cannot empower or accomplish such a transition ourselves. The transfiguration of our lives is the work of God. At the same time, the scars of our lives will remain precisely as an invitation to others to see the power of God at work in our weakness and in God's own kenosis (self-emptying). These scars become signs of God's powerful presence in our lives while the illness or woundedness become Sacraments of that same presence and power, vivid witnesses to the One who loves us in our brokenness and yet works continuously to bring life, wholeness, and meaning out of  death, brokenness, and absurdity.

To become a hermit (especially to be publicly professed as a Catholic hermit) someone suffering from chronic illness has to have made this transition. Their lives may involve suffering but the suffering has become a sacrament which attests less to itself  (and certainly not to an obsession with pain) but to the God who is a Creator-redeemer God. What you tend to see as an obstacle to living a meaningful profoundly prophetic religious or eremitical life seems to me to be a symbol of the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It also seems to me to remind us of the nature of "heavenliness" in light of the Ascension. Remember that one side of the salvation event we call the Christ is God's descent so that our world may be redeemed and entirely transformed into a new creation. But the other side of this Event is the Ascension where God takes scarred humanity and even death itself up into his own life --- thus changing the very nature of heaven (the sovereign life of God shared with others) in the process.

Far from being an inadequate witness to "heavenliness" our wounds can be the most perfect witness to God's sovereign life shared with us. Our God has embraced the wounds and scars of the world as his very own and not been demeaned, much less destroyed in the process. Conversely, for Christians, the marks of the crucifixion, as well therefore as our own illnesses, weaknesses and various forms of brokenness, are (or are meant to become) the quintessential symbols of a heaven which embraces our own lives and world to make them new. When this transformation occurs in the life of a chronically ill individual seeking to live eremitical life it is the difference between a life of one imprisoned in physical isolation, silence, and solitude, to that of one which breathes and sings "the silence of solitude." It is this song, this prayer, this magnificat that Canon 603 describes so well and consecrated life in all its forms itself represents.

Bowl patched with Gold

We Christians do not hide our woundedness then. We are not ashamed at the way life has marked and marred, bent and broken, spindled and mutilated us. But neither are woundedness or brokenness themselves the things we witness to. Instead it is the Sacrament God has made of our lives, the Love that does justice and makes whole that is the source of our beauty and our boasting. Jan Richardson also reminds us of this truth when she recalls Sue Bender's observations on seeing a mended Japanese bowl. [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]  So too with our own lives: as Paul also said, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves."  (2 Cor 4:7) It is the mended cracks, the wounds which were once prisons, the shards of a broken life now reconstituted entirely by the grace of God which reveal the very presence of heaven to those we meet.

Once Again on Bishop Remi de Roo and the Origins of C 603

[[ Dear Sister, were the original hermits under Bp Remi de Roo unhappy with life in their monasteries? Were they disgruntled because of Vatican II in some way? Were they fighting against their superiors? There's a story being posted by another hermit claiming Bp de Roo was a dissenting Bp and was unhappy with Vatican II, and the group of women hermits that came under him were pushing him to lobby for them to become hermits when their superiors didn't want for them to become hermits. The story continues that they wanted to force the church to give them prestige and status of some kind and got Bishop de Roo to lobby for that under canon law. I read your version of the story and wondered if maybe you had put a good spin on things because you liked Bp de Roo. Do hermits really want status and prestige and to be respected?]]

The way I have told the story in the past is the way I understand it to have taken place. Monks (please note), long in solemn vows, found themselves called to greater silence and solitude than their monastic life allowed, and their proper law (i.e., the law proper to a specific Order or monastery) did not allow them to live as hermits. If they wanted to do that, they had to leave their vows, be secularized, find an appropriate living situation, and embrace eremitic life outside their monasteries. No one was disgruntled; no one was contending with his superior. No one wanted to leave his vows or monastic life. However, they had discovered a divine call to eremitical solitude after long years of disciplined lives of prayer in the monastery and desired to follow that call. (Remember that eremitic life was often considered the goal or height of monastic life.) 

Unfortunately, because the proper law of their monasteries had no provision for this, they either had to dismiss what they felt was a divine call or leave their monastery and embrace eremitic life outside it. But Canon law (universal law)  had no provision either! (This is decades before C 603.) Thus, they moved from the relative security of the monastery and their long commitment to God in that life to lives as hermits in the larger world in order to pursue the even greater solitude God called them to.

In what I consider risky acts of real faith, courage, and sacrifice, these men sought the dispensation of their solemn vows** and release from the consecrated state from the Vatican; trusting God alone, they left their monasteries -- their homes for decades in some cases -- and began living as hermits. Eventually (@1965), about a dozen such men came together under Bishop Remi de Roo as their Bishop Protector and set up (or joined) a laura (colony of hermits) in British Columbia. This was no quest for status or prestige. It was an extension and even an intensification of their monastic vocation to seek God! Because of his experience with these men, Bishop de Roo found eremitical life edifying (i.e., capable of building up the church) and a gift from God; for that reason, he made an intervention at Vatican Council II seeking to have the eremitical life recognized as a state of perfection. (We now use the terms state of consecrated life or consecrated state.) He outlined about eight or ten reasons the Church should recognize eremitic life in this way. 

Nothing happened at VII itself, but the council made the reform of the current Code of Canon Law necessary, and work began on that. When the Revised Code was published or promulgated in October of 1983 (almost 20 years later), the Church Fathers had included c 603 dedicated to the solitary eremitical life. Even later, CICLSAL, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (now Dicastery, DICLSAL), allowed for solitary hermits to join together in lauras, though these were not to rise to the level of a juridical community. (There are other limitations on these lauras or lavras, many of which were developed by the Bishops of Spain for hermits there. For instance, a lavra could not have more than three c 603 hermits.)

I have written about the Church recognizing the vocation and holding it in regard. In doing so, neither I nor anyone knowledgeable about the situation that I am aware of has suggested that hermits themselves desired, much less lobbied for, prestige or status (beyond desiring standing (status) in canon law appropriate to an ecclesial vocation!), nor that they sought to "force" the Church into anything. Should hermits be respected? Of course, just as we respect any person, vocation, or the One who is their source. In any case, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be respected. It is a universal human need and one of the most fundamental ways we truly love ourselves and one another. There are outmoded ways of thinking about humility that pair it with humiliation and treat it as though it is identical with a terrible self-image and corresponding denigration of self. Genuine humility, however, is about a loving and honest self-knowledge and self-valuation, especially as this is reflected in the infinite love of God, who delights in each of us.

Bishop Remi de Roo, I believe, was the youngest bishop at Vatican II. He attended all four sessions and found his life completely turned on its head by the changes made there. Far from disagreeing with it, he was energized by it and completely on board with the movement and reform in the Church that resulted. As far as I can tell, he spent the remainder of his life trying to implement Vatican II consistently as he experienced the Holy Spirit calling him and the Church to do. (When I met him a few years ago, he was doing a presentation with my former bishop, who had also attended VII, and Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian, speaking about Vatican II and, as I recall, its continued implementation.) Despite his eventually resolved diocesan financial difficulties, he worked for justice throughout his tenure as bishop. This included efforts to accomplish both the greater involvement of the laity and the correlative decrease in clericalization in his local Church, support for the ordination of women, and the development and maintenance of a strong and sensitive relationship with the indigenous people of Canada. 

____________________________________________

** One exception to the need to seek a dispensation and the secularization experienced by most of these monks was Dom Jacques Winnandy, who, with Brother (later, Father) Lionel Pare in 1964, was allowed by his Abbey to start a laura*** of hermits. Formerly an Abbot at Clervaux (Belgium), he came to, and lived in, British Columbia as an elder of the laura until 1972, when he returned to a hermitage near his own Clervaux Abbey. He lived as a hermit there for another 25 years until about six months before his death at Clervaux Abbey. (Source of above picture: Brandt, M. Charles. "A monk of the Diaspora." The New Catholic Times: 5 Jan 2003.) 

*** A laura established today under c 603 does not and must not rise to the level of a juridical community. These hermits (in 1965) lived individually, but under an elder as part of the Hermits of St John the Baptist. Again, Bp Remi de Roo became their Bishop Protector and was edified by their lives.

Happy Thanksgiving!

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes. . .

e.e. cummings

1894-1962

My sincerest wishes to all for a wonderful Thanksgiving, especially for the ability to find something to be truly grateful for! All my best,

Sister Laurel, Er Dio

Personally Important Resonances of the Word Hermit

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered what you like best about the vocation called "hermit". I am not asking what kinds of things you do every day that you like, but what does the word "hermit" mean that you think is really important or meaningful. Is there anything about this term that is especially important in our contemporary world? I was reading some of what you wrote about stereotypes and about not being understood except by other hermits or contemplatives and I wondered if maybe you would call yourself something else instead of hermit. But then I wondered if this word points to something especially important, maybe, because of several things you also said, even something you would call indispensable for the Church in this time and place?]]

This is such a completely great question!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to read here and to write about that. I am certain this is a completely new question here, and while I have written and written about the word "hermit" (or eremite, from ερεμος, meaning "desert" dweller), I don't believe I have ever written about why or how the word itself (which includes @ 2000 years of tradition in the Christian Church alone) specifically resonates for me. So thanks for this chance! 

A couple of things come immediately to mind that really resonate with me and are especially important. The first is the idea of wilderness or desert, and the way that involves not just marginalization and a unique solitude, but a traditional implication of engagement and even battle. The second thing that speaks to me strongly with the word "hermit" is the way it can mean individual while strongly countering individualism. Linked to this is the fact that while stereotypes of hermits (and those who mistakenly embrace such stereotypes as their model of the hermit life) include misanthropes and personally unhealthy folks of all sorts, authentic hermits are associated with wholeness and strong relationships with (and related commitments to) one's deepest Self, one's God, and also with others (both Church and World). One significant word that bridges both of these and helps explain them is "ecclesial". 

Wilderness or Desert Dweller:

Rachel Denton, Er Dio

Recently, I wrote that it was in the hermit's marginalization that s/he was enabled to reveal the truth that nothing at all could separate us from the love of God. I wrote: [[A hermit lives her life in solitude with God for the sake of others, including all Christian ministers, servants, and shepherds, precisely to make clear the foundational truth all apostolic ministry is based on, namely, that every person is made for and called to union with God, and thus, that every person carries within themselves the spark of divinity and a unique capacity to image God, to be entirely transparent to God in our world. Everything in the hermit life marginalizes the hermit in ways intended to help her/him witness to this foundational truth, as no law, dogma, or doctrine can ever do. . . . In the hermit, marginalization serves the truth that in the risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, nothing at all can separate us from the love of God. In this way, the hermit witnesses to the nature and heart of the Church as it mediates the presence within our world of the God we know as Emmanuel and the way to the fullness of life that also represents Emmanuel.]]

The hermit's vocation (call) is countercultural, yet it is lived in solidarity with those seeking both life (greater fullness of being) and meaning in the innumerable ways, both valid and invalid, that such seeking is carried out. To let go of discrete gifts, to vow the evangelical counsels and embrace a life of loving simplicity without inappropriate ambition, and so forth, is a call to a voluntary marginalization mirroring the ways so many in our society are unwillingly marginalized, even as it is also lived in the very center of the Church and in solidarity with all to witness to God's inexhaustible and inescapable love (cf Rom 8). Modern deserts include illness, poverty, traumatic injuries of all sorts, racism and other forms of inequity and exclusion, etc. The hermit embraces marginalization beyond that which she naturally experiences, and journeys to the depths of her yearning for fullness of being and meaning, and there discovers the truth of the Gospel, namely, that in Christ there is nothing whatsoever that can separate us from the love of God (Rom 8). As DICLSAL's guidebook on the c 603 vocation reminds us, "hermits become sentinels of hope" that our world badly needs.

The word hermit automatically conjures up all of this, especially through the image of the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived as they did not only out of personal integrity and their sense of following Christ more closely, but who did so for the sake of the institutional Church they paradoxically distanced themselves "from" in important ways by moving out into the desert. Thus, again, marginalization serves a deeper belonging to and representation of the authentic heart of the Church in a way that served the Church by calling her to faithfulness to her own deepest vocation and nature. In the Church, the term "hermit" will always resonate with a chosen marginalization precisely so one can truly stand in solidarity with and minister to others --- both the Church and the larger world.

At the same time, the desert was the place of engagement and even battle. While one went into the desert to be alone, this aloneness was always qualified by the words "with" as well as "for". One went into the desert to be alone with God. The desert solitude was precisely the place where one's needs and vulnerability were clarified and intensified, and one could meet and rest in God in a more radical way. This is more of the paradoxical nature of the desert or wilderness the Jewish people knew so well. So is the battle with demons, which so marked life in the desert. Hermits met within themselves (and otherwise) the presence of the demonic, and they did battle with this, often as it resided in the hermits' own hearts and minds. Thomas Merton speaks of this in terms of getting rid of the illusions and pretenses that so characterize life elsewhere so that one can truly be oneself.

Eremites as Individuals Rejecting Individualism:

Stereotypes of the hermit tend to absolutize solitude, and some will read the Desert Fathers and Mothers'' withdrawal from the institutional Church as similarly absolute and a model to be followed today. Likewise, some might understand the prayer lives of hermits as elitist, a strange mystical giftedness very few have or are called to by God. And similarly, people might be intimidated by hermits, believe they cannot be spoken with, invited to share a meal occasionally, or enjoy the same kinds of conversation we might have with anyone else. All of this would be a mistake. Inauthentic hermits might be tempted to leave the Church behind, not in the sense the Desert Abbas and Ammas did when they went to the desert as those reflecting the heart of the Church in order to witness to the Church's truest nature, to love it and help shape it in greater faithfulness to its true Lord, but because they believe they are called to a higher, more truly "spiritual" calling, one allergic to the temporality and materiality of the world God made completely his own in the Incarnation. While this might work for Platonists and Gnostics, it is not Christian.

Such so-called hermits might forget that eremitical solitude means being alone with God for the sake of and in the midst of others, that is, that this kind of solitude consists of two poles, physical solitude and koinonia or community, separation and solidarity. The authentic hermit lives a life characterized by the relative tension between these, not in some form of solitary (isolated) splendor as though they neither need nor are related to the institutional Church or the larger world it participates in and penetrates as leaven in dough! They may be representatives of the contemporary phenomenon of "cocooning," or rugged individualists committed to living off the grid. They may be pseudo-mystics focused only on their own holiness. Or, they may be folks who use the term "hermit" to validate and justify various relational and other failures in life when they simply cannot live, work, or play well with others. Certainly, stereotypes apparently rooted in historical reality portray hermits this way.

As the Church understands the term, however, hermits are desert dwellers who give their lives in seeking God, and doing so for the sake of God, the Church, the larger world, and their truest self. They do this as an integral part of the Church known as the Mystical Body of Christ. This is the historical Church, the Church that mediates the presence of God in Christ to and within this world in Word and Sacrament, in print, speech, oil, water, stone, wood, wax, wheat, wine, glass, paint, and so forth. This is the Church in which heaven (the very life of God shared with others) is incarnational, not as a Gnostic reality marked by absolute dualisms, but as one that recognizes the sanctity, and so, the sacramentality, of all of existence given over to and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the Church that witnesses to the new heaven and new earth coming to be even now in our world. And hermits in this Church, whether canonical or non-canonical, live at its heart.

The lives of these disciples are highly individual without being individualistic. Canonical hermits live according to a vision and plan they write under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the supervision of the Church (via diocesan personnel). Their journey to God is truly hidden from everyone and shared with very, very few. However, it is empowered by the Church's life and worship, her Word and Sacrament, her people and leadership. The authentic hermit shares all of this with others whose life is shaped and empowered by the same realities, even if this does not look exactly the same as it does for others. 

The central elements of eremitic life within the Church are not absolutes embraced for their own sake. Solitude involves physical isolation, yes, and at the same time, it provides the space for profound solidarity with others. Stricter separation from the world involves some, even substantial, separation from the world of God's good creation, but "stricter" is not about absolute separation (even from that which is not of God). It refers instead to a separation that is stricter than that lived by other religious men and women, and which is lived so that one may see reality more clearly and love it more truly. Something very similar is true of assiduous prayer and penance, and the Evangelical counsels; these serve a highly individual life while protecting its ecclesiality as life lived for the sake of others.

Pope Francis at Vespers with Camaldolese

The word hermit, therefore, does not make me think of individualism --- except as a betrayal of the vocation. It is not about escape from, but a unique kind of engagement with and on behalf of. And that is particularly important in our contemporary world and culture, where individualism and "me first" attitudes and behaviors are epidemic, eviscerating everything from helping and service careers and vocations, to the dangerous and threatening behaviors of greedy politicians and oligarchs of every stripe, to a failure to stand up to injustice until it touches us directly. Individualism is rampant in our world, and I find it wonderfully and highly ironic that it is the hermit (and in this case, I will say the canonical hermit with her specifically ecclesial vocation and additional institutional (canonical) ties to Church and world) who stands as a radical countercultural witness to being oneself precisely without (i.e., by not!) falling into individualism.

These are the most immediate resonances or meanings the word hermit carries for me. Thanks again for the question. It took several days, but I loved doing it!

Moving from Fear to Love: Ours is not a God Who Punishes Evil

 Partly because of the recent Feast of Christ the King, I have been asked to repost this from July 1, 2013, and am happy to do that. 

Today's readings speak to us in profound and very challenging ways, I think. The first, which I am going to focus on here, is from Genesis 18 and recounts a dialogue between Abraham (the Father of Faith and one whose faith is counted as righteousness) and God over whether God will indeed destroy Sodom if a number of righteous people can be found there. You remember it no doubt: God has heard rumors of the tremendous evil of this city and determines he will find out for himself. If things are as bad as he has heard, then he will destroy the city and everyone therein.

Abraham, the representative of true faith, in a remarkably frank conversation with God, asks a series of questions: What if you find fifty righteous persons, will you destroy everyone? "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?" (Remember that when God destroys evil, innocence is also destroyed; the world, after all, is ambiguous, and that is true of each and all of us as well.) How about 45? What about 30? 20? and so forth. In each case, God answers that he would not destroy the whole city if x or y righteous men were found therein, and even if only 10 righteous persons are found there. But what is the author of Genesis really trying to say here? Is he revealing a God of vengeance whose justice is retributive and who punishes us for our evil? Is he revealing a God with whom we are called to bargain or remonstrate, a God who will be swayed by our superior reason,  or who may be cajoled into changing his mind if the case made is eloquent enough? Is he revealing a fickle and capricious God who is moved hither and yon like a reed blowing in the wind?

I think reading the text in this way would be a profound mistake. It would then become a variation on the idea that the God of Israel revealed in the OT is essentially different than the God of Christians, that, in fact, he is a God of vengeance, whereas the God revealed by Jesus Christ is a God of mercy. But this story is not an attempt to paint a picture of a God of vengeance or retributive justice being reminded by a reasonable and faithful human being of “the bigger picture”! Instead I think the author is recounting the history of Israel and her own coming to know and reveal the real God; this history is captured or personified in Abraham's dialogue with God as more and more clearly he establishes that Yahweh is not the God who punishes evil (evil is its own punishment and carries its own consequences) nor the one who is wed to an abstract notion of justice which he upholds at the expense of the innocent. Instead, Abraham's dialogue gradually reveals to us a God that Israel herself slowly comes to know more fully only through her repeated experiences of God's faithfulness, mercy, and compassion. In this dialogue, it is not God’s mind that is changed, but Abraham’s (Israel's) as, with questions of increasing wonder and disbelief, he tries to establish and plumb the depths of God’s mercy. It is a God for whom the concrete life of the least and the lost is more important than the most common and convincing principle of justice, while the presence of the slightest bit of good is more compelling than a world full of evil. It is the God we come to know in authentic faith.

When we compare the OT and NT side by side what we really see are not two essentially different Gods, but many stories of the movement in history from distorted, inadequate, or partial images and faith to more adequate and fuller images of God and forms of faith; it is the movement from fragmentary, distorted, and partial revelations of a punitive God to the exhaustive revelation of the God of mercy in the Christ Event. The OT is the record of a People coming to be from members of many different cultures and religions --- and doing so as its members outgrow their original theologies and related anthropologies under the influence of repeated experiences of Yahweh's faithfulness, mercy, and compassion. The OT is a history of the progressive (and often inconsistent) purification of Israel's minds and hearts regarding who God is and what constitutes true religion. It is through this purification that they mature as God's own People and persons of true faith. In today's story especially we are listening to Israel slowly relinquish belief in the God who punishes evil and evil doers, the God whose justice is at war with (his) mercy and whose compassion conflicts with his need for retribution or vindication; she does this only in so far as she affirms her own deepest experiences of God and, in an attempt to resolve it, pushes the tension between these two "theological worlds" to the limits of her imagination and narrative capacity.

She has done this in other stories, too. There is the story of the flood where retributive justice wars with compassion and eventually, in an act of radical humility and self-emptying, God "repents" and promises never to destroy the world in this way again. There is the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, where Abraham's hand is stayed by God just as he is ready to plunge the knife into Isaac's chest, and where a different and acceptable sacrifice is provided by God. While this story foreshadows God's own gift of Jesus and Jesus' own sacrifice, it also originally served to proclaim an end to human sacrifice because the God of Israel was NOT a God who required retribution for evil. The God of Israel was different and had a different way of doing justice. He called for Israel to embrace a different religious practice so that they could know and serve him intimately as a light to the Nations. It is no wonder that idolatry looms so large in the failures outlined by Israel. The struggle between false gods and ideas of god and Israel's most profound experience of God's own actions in her life characterized her on every level of her existence --- personal, historical, individual, corporate.

In many ways, this struggle and story reprise our own as well. After getting his disciples in touch with who it is OTHERS say that he is, it is not surprising that Jesus' most critical question to them is, "And you, who do YOU say that I am?" This tension and movement between what we have been told of God and who we actually know in light of our own experiences of his faithfulness, compassion, and mercy is a dominant thread in our own spiritual journeys as well.

In particular, letting go of our belief in the God who punishes evil (or sends evil to punish us!!!), our belief in the God who is the focus of a theology of fear in order to exhaustively embrace the God revealed on the Cross, the God who asserts his rights (i.e., does justice) by loving unconditionally, who sets everything right and fulfills it through forgiveness and mercy, is not an easy task. Everything militates against this; whether it is family history, grade school catechetics, punitive nuns, theologically unsophisticated preaching and writing on hell, judgment, or our own super egos, this is one bit of idolatry, one bit of "worldliness" or pagan theology that is hard to shake.

Our inability to really believe in the power of the love of God may be the real face of unbelief in our own lives and in our Church today. Like Israel, however (and, through the exhaustive revelation of God in Christ), we can do it only by allowing the non-punitive God who is Love-in-Act to truly be our Lord and Master. Each day we are called on to discern both who others say that God is, and who we ourselves say that he is. Each day, we are called on to allow our own hearts and minds to be purified by the God of Jesus Christ as we experience him. Each day we are called on to become Christians who believe more and more firmly and completely in the loving God he reveals and no other --- not the God who punishes evil but the One who submits entirely to it himself, transforms and redeems it with his presence, and thus (in time) loves the world into wholeness.

Once Again, On States of Life and the meaning of Non-Canonical

[[Dear Sister Laurel, it seems to me that an important point of misunderstanding in the video someone recently linked you to is a failure to see the difference between consecration by God and consecration that initiates one into a "consecrated state". I think you have referred to this several times, but have you ever made the explanation explicit?  Also, if non-canonical means something is not normative is it correct to say that non-canonical means not-legal or illegal? ]]

Here is the piece I wrote (or rather, reprised) a year ago, in October. The most recent one before this was written in 2019, so I have been getting questions about this topic and responding for some time. I'll respond to your question about the meaning of non-canonical below this in Part II.

[[Hi Sister, I was reading the Catechism and canon 603 because I was trying to understand the idea of a "stable state of life" or a "stable way of living". You have said more on this --- though indirectly ---than I could find elsewhere online. Could you please define what constitutes a "stable state of life" in Roman Catholic theology? How does it apply to your life as opposed to that of a lay hermit? Thanks.]]

Great question. I don't know why I haven't ever thought to write about this; a stable (or permanent) state of life is a core element in understanding the distinction between consecrated eremitical life and lay (or non-canonical) eremitical life. I am very grateful you asked this. I checked it out online, and as you said, while it was part of every accurate definition of consecrated life (including consecrated eremitical life) there isn't much written about it that I could find. So let me try to make explicit what has been implicit in my writings on this and related topics.

Stable in this context means lasting, solid, established, and (relatively) secure. The necessary noun "state" means ä fixed and permanent mode of life, established (in and by the Church) to acquire or practice a certain virtue (e.g., perfection in the Christian Life, holiness, the evangelical counsels within religious life, etc). Implicit in these definitions when the two words are combined, is the sense that such a stable state signifies a recognized way God is working in the Church: ecclesial approval and mediation of God's call, canonical standing (standing in law), appropriate oversite, support, freedom, governance (legitimate superiors), and a formal (legitimate or canonical) commitment (say, to God via the evangelical counsels, for instance) by the one assuming the rights and obligations of the given state of life constitute this state as stable. The elements required for something to be considered a stable state of life tend toward structuring and extending to the individual life the elements necessary to truly pursue the given vocation in the name of the Church (and so, as a recognized representative of the vocation) with which the Church is entrusted. The Church recognizes several such states: Baptized or Lay, Married, Consecrated (Religious, Hermits, and Virgins), and Ordained. All require public commitments, whether Sacramental (Marriage and ordination) or via canonical profession and consecration (Religious, consecrated hermits, consecrated virgins).

When we begin to think about what makes a state of life in the Church a stable state, we begin to understand why it is that private vows, per se, never constitute the means to initiation into the consecrated state of life. They can be a significant part of the stable state of life we know as the baptized or lay state however, and they serve as significant (meaningful) specifications of one's baptismal consecration in this way. But in this case, it is one's baptismal consecration into the lay state which defines one's stable state of life; private vows are expressions of that particular consecration, but do not initiate one into it. Hence, my references in many places to "lay hermits" --- hermits who live their vows in the baptized or lay state alone. In any case, private commitments, though often witnessed by a priest or spiritual director, are not actually received in the name of the Church or overseen by anyone in a formal or canonical way. There are no additional public rights or obligations, nor approved Rule the living out of which the Church as a whole is responsible for governing and supervising. Neither is there any process of mutual discernment by which one may be evaluated as to their capacity and suitability to assume the public rights and obligations of a given state (here I am thinking of the consecrated state), nor of methodical formation with such commitments.

 Moreover, private vows are easily dispensed precisely because of their private nature. In other words one may make private vow as a hermit (whether with serious thought or on a relative whim) one day and days later (perhaps rightly, perhaps not) decide one has made a mistake or circumstances may change which make the vows inconvenient or an obstacle to a greater or more fundamental call from God re one's lay state. The vows can be dispensed by one's pastor. Because of the lack of oversight, etc.. other problems can creep in. If the person does not decide they have made a mistake, an individual living a private dedication to eremitical life, for instance, may decide to substitute their own private notions of eremitical spirituality, or live inconsistently given conditions of health, education, training, economics, etc. Even for the most sincere and well-intentioned individual, in a private commitment there is no authority to whom the individual is canonically answerable, no canonical (normative) constraints or ecclesial vision to which one has committed oneself to make sure the hermit in this case can make, has made, is keeping, and continues to (be empowered to) keep through the years an appropriate and maturing commitment which the Church herself could recognize as consistent with the eremitical tradition and as rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Canonical standing provides a context that is stable.

Remember that consecrated persons act (live this vocation) in the name of the Church (and also their founders and spiritual Tradition), and that gives the People of God their own rights and reasonable expectations about the quality of life being lived by the person who has been professed and/or consecrated. The people also have a right to turn to the person's legitimate superior if there are grounds for suggesting the vocation is being lived badly, or there are scandalous or concerning circumstances involved. Of course, this is true only because canonical vocations are public vocations. But think how important it is that such expectations and accountability add to the stability of genuinely consecrated vocations! Accountability itself is a central element of a stable or permanent state of life. It shapes the vocation, challenges, and supports it. In a public (canonical) vocation where the vocation "belongs" first of all to the Church, which is entrusted with this calling, and only secondarily to individuals called by God through the mediation of the Church, stability is a function of clear channels of authority and accountability. This does not mean these channels are heavy-handed, of course, but it does require them nonetheless.

One of the things I appreciate most about canonical standing is the way 
it establishes a person (or a community) in a living tradition so that there is a clear and responsible dialogue ongoing between the individual, the Church, and the spiritual tradition involved. (This is true in religious families like the Franciscans, Dominicans, Trappist(ine)s, Benedictines, Camaldolese, etc., and it is true in eremitical life per se.) The continuing give and take as the consecrated person is granted and assumes a defined place in the living stream of eremitical tradition is tremendously edifying. The individual is formed in a given strand of the tradition, and at the same time, she will shape and extend the tradition with her own life.** Edward Schillebeeckx writes about this powerfully in his essay on being a Dominican in God Among Us. A life that assumes this kind of responsibility, accountability, humility, and obedience has been initiated into a stable state of life that extends both behind and after her. She has taken a place within it and lives in a conscious and recognizable dialogue with and for this traditional thread, a thread which may have existed for two thousand years and stretches into whatever future the Church has. Private commitments, which of their nature are truly entirely private (as opposed to public in the technical sense I use it throughout), simply do not do this.

The Church is a complex living reality. States of life within the Church have been some of the primary ways the Gospel has been and continues to be proclaimed, and ministry carried out; they are capable of being flexible and responsive to the needs of the world as a whole because they are also well-founded and rooted in a living tradition. Because of their stability (again, they are mutually discerned, publicly committed, ecclesially consecrated, governed, and supervised), they can represent a way of life in a way that teaches and inspires. When the congregation or individual requires assistance, when congregations reach the end of their natural life, for instance, canonical standing allows for various creative ways to be sure their life and/or charism can be handed on and, eventually, their history entrusted to archives so scholars can research them and allow their life, a response to the Holy Spirit in a variety of circumstances, to be of continuing benefit to the Church and world.

With regard to the lives of diocesan hermits or publicly professed vs privately vowed hermits, I think you can see where the Church will be able to follow and assess the phenomenon of solitary eremitical life beginning in the late 20th century. She will be able to look at the Rules written by c 603 hermits, interview bishops professing and supervising them, speak with their delegates, parishes, and dioceses, and just generally provide the story of professed solitary hermits since 1983, according to c 603. Both as individuals and as a group these hermits will contribute to the eremitical tradition, to assessments of what formation was helpful or inadequate, to considering what time frames were associated with successful discernment and formation of eremitical lives, to considerations re protecting the hermit's requirements for support, modes and effectiveness of supervision, the place and nature of limited ministry in the lives of these hermits, and possibly -- to some extent -- the hermits' affect on their local church communities.

We will also more easily contribute to theologies of eremitical life that allow chronic illness as a witness to the way God's power is perfected in weakness, for instance, because some of us are chronically ill and sought out eremitical life in part because of this. Because we are professed and consecrated into a stable (and public!) state of life, the witness value of our lives will take on greater import for the Church and world. Sometimes folks decry the canonical paper trail that is attached to the profession of the diocesan hermit; others treat it as merely pro forma and relatively meaningless. But the paper trail is a witness to and even part of the stability of the hermit's life and a key to appreciating and researching eremitical tradition not only in the 20-21C but in comparison with it throughout history.

** Ponam in Deserto Viam is clear that this "belonging" to a historical thread of tradition within the Church militates against the danger of individualism. It says, [[All [canonical] hermits make their own a form of life that precedes and surpasses them. They incarnate this life historically and in docility to the action of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the hermit's life is itself unfinished; a partial rendering of the many images of Christ. It is a figure in open relationship with both the ecclesial body and the body of history.]] Pope Leo drew on this very point in his recent address to diocesan hermits.

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Part II 

Regarding your question about the meaning of non-canonical, I know I have also written about this, probably around the same time as the piece you linked above (October 2024), so please check that label out. What I will say here is that it is critical to understand that c 603 is normative for solitary eremitical life lived in the name of the Church. Profession and eventual consecration under c 603, admit a person to a stable state of life in which the professed/consecrated person is responsible for living out this norm with a faithfulness that allows the real nature of the canon's terms to be incarnated in an individual life. The person (hermit) herself is not normative (though her life and faithfulness might one day be considered such!), however, the canon is.

Facilely sliding (or eliding!) the term non-canonical into the term not-legal in the way done in various videos like the one recently linked here, is seriously unnuanced and actually rises to the level of misuse of language. In the Church, just because something is non-canonical does not mean it is illegal. It means it is not normative in the ways it might be were it canonical. Yes, this also means that the thing is not bound by the same rights and obligations associated with that which is canonical, but that still does not make it non-legal or illegal (illicit). Hermits who are non-canonical, as I am sure I have explained before, live their hermit calling by virtue of the grace of their baptism. They live it by virtue of their identity and freedom as members of the laity, the People of God.  However, they are not bound by canons beyond those binding any other baptized person by virtue of that Sacrament, and, to some extent, narrowing the freedom they received at baptism.** For this reason, they can also stop living as a hermit at any time without repercussions or special canonical processes like the dispensation of vows; this is true even if there are private vows associated with their hermit life. This is absolutely not a matter of the vocation not being valuable, but rather, it is a matter of there being no stable state of life except that of baptism, which defines (and keeps open!) the broadest freedom a Christian can know.

**I usually speak of freedom differently in this blog (i.e., as the power to become the persons we are called to be), and I have written about the paradoxical freedom granted by profession when I have done so. (Vows, etc., are constraints which paradoxically free us to truly become the persons God calls us to be.) Here, I am suggesting that baptism has a much wider ambit of choices associated with it, which might include becoming a canonical hermit, but is more likely to include many, many other things instead. Once we are baptized and begin to make life choices, we begin to look at states of life that build upon baptism, and too, that have their own appropriate canonical rights and obligations associated with a narrower ambit of choices open to those committed in these various ways. I can say more about this if it seems helpful. Just let me know.