Where God Dwells

[[ Sister Laurel, what does it mean to say, "No hermit should get along with the temporal Church"? (I think temporal here is opposite spiritual.)]]

I'm afraid I can't really answer your question. My understanding of the Church says it is an institution that exists in space and time with dimensions that transcend these. It is spatio-temporal at the same time it participates in the life of God, and anticipates the Kingdom of God. Thus, it makes no sense to me to suggest that no hermit should get along with the temporal Church. I am aware of one person who divides the Church into temporal and spiritual, and also speaks as though one can be spiritual without also being temporal, but to be frank, that just makes no sense. After all, the Risen (and differently embodied) Christ is present in our world and is mediated by things which are spatio-temporal. (This is why we have sacraments, of course!)

In fact, one of the most important truths (and one of the most difficult) about the reality we call Christianity is that it is rooted in historical events. God comes to us in a human being and is most exhaustively revealed in Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Even the appearances of the risen Jesus to the scared and dispirited disciples following his death are marked by events underscoring both the historicity of the events as well as their transcendent nature. Disciples touch the wounds, Jesus cooks and eats fish on the beach, even as he is capable of walking through walls, etc. Christianity is all about God making human history his own. It is not about a devaluing of time and space, but a transfiguring of these. This is why the Scriptures speak of God making a new heaven and a new earth where all will dwell in harmony. Our ultimate hope is that the God who reveals himself as Emmanuel will remake the whole of reality in the power of the Spirit and dwell with us in this new reality.

The idea that only the spiritual counts while the realm of the spatio-temporal should (or even can) be eschewed is a Gnostic one and thus, quite old. The Catholic stress on Sacraments demonstrates to us that God comes to us in the things of this earth, the temporal if you like. Bread and Wine are raised to their highest level (made infinitely nourishing) and made capable of truly mediating Jesus and the power to be family to us. Sacraments are not about the spiritual alone, but the spiritual made real in the spatio-temporal. The Church, and here I mean the historical reality that is called the primordial sacrament, is precisely the place where human beings are transfigured and made new by the power of the Holy Spirit. God is certainly Spirit and eternal, but what is also true is that God has chosen to be Emmanuel, God With Us, here in this world with all its problems and limitations. 

There is no other Church than the historical one we all know. Yes, it has different dimensions, and for that reason we speak of the Church militant, or the suffering Church, or the Church triumphant, but it is still one Church, and it is a historical (spatio-temporal) reality informed by the presence of the Trinity. Catholics embracing eremitical life do so within this historical Church. Moreover, we do so as human beings who are thoroughly conditioned by space and time, even as we allow God to be Emmanuel and the Holy Spirit's transfiguration of all we are and know. As we move through Advent, it is a good time to remember that every religion except Christianity tried to escape history to bind back (re-ligio) to God. Christianity is the only faith we know whose God came to dwell with us, made a place for us (newly embodied human beings like the risen Christ) in his own life, and promises a new heaven and new earth where God will be all in all. 

The nativity of Jesus marks the coming of this God among us, and that has always been a scandal, though especially to those with a Gnostic mindset. The scandal is increased with Jesus' crucifixion and death. A God who could allow himself to be "touched" (not to say tainted) by such realities and participate in our own humanness while raising us to participate in his divinity (theosis) was and, it appears, remains a stumbling block for some. The hermits I know take God as Emmanuel seriously. They take their own call to union with God seriously as well. And while they do live a stricter separation from the world, they are very careful in the way they define this reality. When I was newly consecrated and began this blog, I wrote the following. I think it is pertinent to your question.

[[. . . First of all, "the world" does not mean "the entire physical reality except for the hermitage or cell"! Instead, the term "the world" refers to those structures, realities, things, positions, values, etc, which are antithetical to Christ and promise fulfillment or personal [dignity and] completion apart from God in Christ. Anything, including some forms of religion and piety, can represent "the world" given this definition. "The world" tends to represent escape from self and God, and also escape from the deep demands and legitimate expectations others have a right to make of us as Christians. Given this understanding, some forms of "eremitism" may not represent so much greater separation from the world as they do unusually embodied capitulations to it. (Here is one of the places an individual can fool themselves and so, needs the assistance of the church to carry out an adequate and accurate discernment of a Divine vocation to eremitical life.)]]

It seems to me that anyone who divvies reality neatly up into the temporal and the spiritual, for instance, and tries to live in this way is really fooling themselves. We each have to allow the Holy Spirit to live in us and enliven us fully. In this way, in Christ, we ourselves become Emmanuel. If we can take Christianity seriously, we will take historical (the spatio-temporal) reality seriously as the place where God wills to dwell "on earth as it is in heaven". Hermits, especially, are called to believe this foundational truth of our faith, to pray this petition, and to allow it to be realized in their lives. In this way, they become ecclesiola, little Churches, that are both sacramental and prophetic precisely because they are both historical and enlivened by the Holy Spirit.

Do Hermits Watch the News?

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered if hermits watch the news and if they don't, is this because they are turning away from the world? If they do watch the news, then why do they do this? Aren't they supposed to be separated from the world?]]

Interesting questions, thank you.  I can't speak for hermits generally in this, so let me answer in terms of my own life. I don't watch the news usually because I don't have cable, but I do catch up with things on my computer. I tend to listen to or watch several programs regularly, including Rachel Maddow (Mondays), along with the writing and videos of Heather Cox Richardson. Prof. Richardson, a historian at Boston College, does a daily letter and a video of what's going on. This last January, watching the news in any way whatsoever became really difficult for me, and because it is important for a hermit to know what is really going on, I decided I could not forego watching. Instead, I made some choices about what I would and would not watch and prayed before "the news," and also prayed and read Scripture afterwards.

So, why is watching the news (or catching this in some other way) so important that I had to add prayer periods to make it possible? It is critical, I believe, to have a strong sense of the suffering of the larger world, not in some general or abstract way, but through one's compassionate attention to real people and contemporary stories. More, it is critical to the hermit's vocation to be aware of the profound questions people struggle with and are, so that one may be an interceding or intercessory presence in the Church and larger world. At the same time, the hermit represents these questions; she poses her own and comes to embody the answer that is God in Christ. Beyond intercessory prayer, the hermit takes on a role as intercessor in Christ, and in all of this, she becomes more compassionate and loving in and of the suffering world. 

It is critical that the hermit participates in the ongoing suffering of the world and in the life of God at the same time. Ponam in Deserto Viam sees the hermit's intercession not only as valuable in itself, but as a substantive preventative of self-centeredness that can come from a solitary life merely seeking personal holiness. Like any Christian, the hermit grows as she learns to love both God and mankind together. Ponam quotes Pope Francis: "prayer will be all the more pleasing to God and more effective for our growth in holiness if, through intercession . . . it is an expression of our fraternal concern for others. Of those who commit themselves generously to intercessory prayer, we can apply the words of Scripture: "This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people." (2 Mac 15:14) in Gaudete et Exsultate, 154.

The world from which hermits maintain a stricter separation is that reality which is resistant to Christ, not the larger world of God's good creation. Yes, these overlap and living the stricter separation appropriate to the hermit takes discernment and care; still, intercession is also a matter of witnessing to the larger world. Turning away from everything outside the hermitage to pursue personal holiness alone is misguided and a betrayal of the eremitic vocation. Ponam in Deserto Viam points out that, "By interceding, the hermit brings into this world the image of the world to come, in which God will wipe away every tear (Rev 21:4) and the communion of saints will be fulfilled."

Gaudete Sunday, Opening ourselves to a God of Surprises

Advent is a time of preparation, a time when we ready ourselves to see God acting in our world in a new, special, and surprising way --- a way that comes to us from beyond anything we have ever imagined. Many of the season's readings encourage us to pay attention and do so in a way that allows a response that is truly worthy of us and the God who comes to dwell with us in smallness, powerlessness, and homelessness. One of the most striking to me is the passage from Matthew 11: They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’ What I have said about this before is: . . . it occurs to me that the people of "this" generation to whom Jesus spoke were seen as incapable of or entirely resistant to being themselves in response to whatever "tune" God plays or sings. It is an almost inconceivably tragic portrait of who we have become when the best analogy to that is of children who themselves resist or have actually become incapable of play! In light of this, I want to make two suggestions folks might practice in this preparation time for the celebration of Jesus' nativity. 

Approaching the Rest of Advent:

First, take time to play --- take time for serious play in something both easy and absorbing. Jesus' example of children who are incapable of playing in ways that prepare them for adult roles in the Kingdom is a devastating one. Again, there is nothing more tragic than children who cannot play, who cannot enter into the games their playmates begin and encourage them in. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber once called play "the exaltation of the possible." Adults often have had the capacity for play bred right out of themselves and this has serious consequences for their capacity to be surprised by a God who is the ground and source of the (unimaginably) possible. We have been so conditioned to work incessantly (even at recreation) and to have the answer to everything (or to Google it immediately!), that we are often incapable of the play which allows the deep questions of our lives to surface. Therefore, the first thing we need to allow ourselves the freedom to do is play in a way, perhaps, we have not done in a while. Perhaps you paint or color, or love jigsaw puzzles; maybe you used to do photography. If so, time to take these up again --- gently, not obsessively, but with a quiet focus that increases attentiveness and openness to the new and unexpected. Play!! It's important and serious work, especially in preparing for the surprising coming of God!

Secondly, while at play ask yourself the question associated with this Friday's Gospel and one of those associated with Advent in general, namely, [[What am I looking for?]] (This, along with the corollary, [[What am I being asked (or allowed) to see?]] would be wonderful questions to allow to rise within us before peering at the world through the lens of a camera, for instance. We are so apt to become aware of the unexpected and hitherto unseen at such times.) God is coming to dwell amongst us, even within us, so what are we looking for? What are we yearning for, dreaming of? What do we need this Christmas to be in light of Christ's birth amongst us?? We have taken the time to travel into the "desert" of play (and yes, it is a desert where we ourselves, God, and demons may be met!), we have relinquished control and allowed the eyes of our hearts to open gently and wide in this way. It is a perfect time to consciously "live the question" as Rainer Marie Rilke once reminded a young poet. We must allow ourselves to stop and explore the question, [[what did you come to see?]] Was it merely the expected or was it the unexpected? And how will we respond if and when the God of surprises comes? Imagine this!!! Prepare yourself!! Allowing the serious yet joyful living of such questions seems to me to be part of the very essence of play --- and also of Advent!

May we each open ourselves this Advent to become people who exalt in the possible, people who play and dream, and in this way are readied to partner with God in God's unimaginable enterprise of love!

Our Lady of Guadalupe: God is the One Who Lifts up the Lowly (Reprise)

 Fifty years ago at Vatican II, the messiest, most passionate, and often "dirtiest" fighting to occur during the council happened during discussions of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Out of nearly 2400 bishops, the fight was divided almost exactly evenly between two factions, those nicknamed the maximalists and those nicknamed the minimalists. Both factions were concerned with honoring the greatness of Mary in our faith, but their strategies in this were very different from one another. The maximalists wanted the council to declare Mary Mediatrix of all Graces and to proclaim this as a new dogma in the Church --- never mind that the thrust of the Council was not toward the definition of new dogmas. They wanted the council to write a separate document on Mary, one that effectively made her superior to the Church.

The minimalists also wanted to honor Mary, but they wanted to do so by speaking of her within the document on the Church. They desired a more Scriptural approach to the person and place of Mary, which honored the dogmatic truth that Christ is the One unique Mediator between God and mankind. The Church would be spoken of as Mother and Virgin, for instance, and Mary would be seen as a type of the Church.

The minimalist position won the day (had only 20 Bishops voted differently it would have been another matter) and so, in Lumen Gentium after the Church Fathers wrote about the Mystery of the Church, Church as People of God, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the Laity, the universal call to holiness, Religious, and the Church as a Pilgrim people, they wrote eloquently about Our Lady in chapter VIII. Mary is highly honored in this Constitution --- as it says in today's responsorial psalm, she is, after all, "the highest honor of our race", but for this very reason the Church Fathers spoke of her clearly as within the Church, within the Communion of Saints, within the Pilgrim People of God, not as a rival to Christ or part of the Godhead, but as one who serves God in Christ as a model of faithfulness.

It is always difficult, I think, to believe and honor the Christmas truth we are preparing during Advent to celebrate, namely, that our God is most fully revealed to us in the ordinary things of life. We are a Sacramental faith rooted in the God who, for instance, comes to us himself in bread and wine, cleanses and recreates us entirely with water,  and strengthens and heals us with oil. Especially at this time of the liturgical year we are challenged to remember and celebrate the God who turns a human face to us, who comes to us in weakness, lowliness and even a kind of dependence on the "yes" we are invited to say, the One who is made most fully real and exhaustively known in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Advent is a time when we prepare ourselves to see the very face of God in the poor, the broken, the helpless, and those without status of any kind. After all, that is what the Christmas Feast of the Nativity is all about.

I think this is one of the lessons today's Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches most vividly. We all know the more superficial story. Briefly, in 1531, Juan Diego, an indigenous man and Christian, encountered a beautiful Lady on the hill of Tepeyac; she told him to ask the Bishop to build a church there. The Bishop refused and required a sign of the authenticity of Juan Diego's vision. Diego returned home to find his uncle dying. He set out again to fetch a doctor and avoided the hill where he had first met the woman and went around it instead --- he did not want to be distracted from his mission! But the Lady came down to him, heard his story about his uncle, reassured him his uncle would be well, and told him then to go to the top of the hill and pick the flowers he found there. Diego did so, gathered them in his tilma or mantle, and went again to the Bishop. Juan poured out his story to him and he also poured the flowers out onto the floor. Only then did he and the Bishop see a miraculous image of the Lady of Tepeyac hill there on the tilma itself.

But there was a deeper story. Remember that Juan Diego's people were an essentially subjugated people. The faith they were forced to adopt by missionaries was geared toward the salvation of souls but not to what we would recognize as the redemption of persons or the conversion and transformation of oppressive structures and institutions. It was more a faith enforced by fear than love, one whose central figure was, a la Anselm, a man crucified because an infinitely offended God purportedly willed it in payment for our sins. Meanwhile, the symbols of that faith, its central figures, leaders, and saints, were visibly European; they spoke and were worshipped in European languages, were dressed in European clothes, were portrayed with European features, etc. At best, it was hard to relate to; its loving God was apparently contradictory and remote. At worst, belief in this God was incomprehensible and dehumanizing. Moreover, with the "evangelizers" who had forcibly deprived the Indians of their own gods and religion came diseases the Indians had never experienced. They were dying of plagues formerly unknown to them, working as slaves for the institutional and patriarchal  Church, and had been deprived of the human dignity they had formerly known.

It was into this situation that Mary directly entered when she appeared on Tepeyak hill, the center of the indigenous peoples' worship of the goddess Tonantzin, the "goddess of sustenance". The image of the Lady was remarkable in so many ways. The fact of it, of course, was a marvel (as were the healing of Diego's uncle, the December roses Diego picked and poured out onto the Bishop's floor or the creation and persistence of her image on Diego's tilma), but even more so was the fact that she had the face of a mixed race (Indian or Mestiza) woman, spoke in Diego's own language, was pregnant, and was dressed in native dress. And here was the greatest miracle associated with OL of Guadalupe: in every way through this appearance the grace of God gave dignity to the Indian people. They were no longer third or fourth-class people but persons who could truly believe they genuinely imaged the Christian God. The appearance was the beginning of a new Church in the Americas, no longer a merely European Church, but one where Mary's Magnificat was re-enacted so that ALL were called to truly image God and proclaim the Gospel. One commentator wrote that, [[Juan Diego and millions after him are transformed from crushed, self-defacing and silenced persons into confident, self-assured and joyful messengers and artisans of God's plan for America.]] (Virgilio Elizondo, Guadalupe and the New Evangelization)

Here too, then, in the truly unexpected and even unacceptable place, our God turns a human face to those seeking him. He, and those who are from and of him, come to us in weakness and lowliness as one of the truly marginalized. In the process, we see clearly once again the God of Jesus Christ who scatters the proud in their conceit, unseats the mighty from their positions of power, and lifts up the lowly. During this season of Advent, Our Lady of Guadalupe calls us especially to be watchful. God is working to do this new and powerful thing among us --- just as he did in the 1st Century, just as he did in the 16th, just as he always does when we give him our own fiat.

US Air Force One Voice

I thought this was a particularly apt song and production given the recent conversation here about Peter Damian's ecclesiology and Ponam in Deserto Via. I especially like the way the idea of "one voice" moves back and forth between singularity in plurality, and multiplicity expressing a single Spirit. (That is, sometimes "one voice" means a single voice in the midst of many, and sometimes it means many persons singing with the same Spirit.)  A hermit participates in and recognizes both realities in her solitude. Others, I believe, should be able to recognize the same in her.

My first experience of community was not Church; it was orchestra. So, when I hear something like this, it reminds me of that first awesome moment when the conductor brought down her baton and all of our individual parts, parts we had learned at home and only heard alone, came together in a sound I had never imagined or guessed was possible! It was my first introduction to a hint of the reality Peter Damian describes in his Letter #28. In one way and another, whether as a violinist playing in orchestras, a Franciscan praying in community or working in a clinical lab, a theologian reading the Scriptures and people like Peter Damian, or a solitary hermit journeying toward deeper union with God, it has always been about "surrendering to the Mystery," that both transcends and enlivens our world.

Question on Non-Canonical Hermits and the Danger of Individualism

[[Sister Laurel, do you think non-canonical hermit lives are individualistic?]]

This is a great question, and an important one called for, not only by contemporary circumstances, but by the entire history of hermit life. So let me say that every hermit's life is tempted to individualism. What I have written about my own vocation is that being subject to canon law and the various elements of life in the consecrated state (supervision, rule or proper law, public role and visibility, public vows, etc.) helps avoid that temptation and assures a stronger bond to the whole Church. Because in this way of living eremitic life, the silence of solitude is not merely about being alone but is an availability to God that includes solidarity with others, the hermit is called to ever-deeper understanding and representation of the ecclesial dimension of the eremitic life. 

Non-canonical hermits are called to realize and represent the same truth of any hermit's role within the Church and world. What you may or may not remember is that years ago, I was asked if it was easier or harder to live either canonical or non-canonical eremitic life. My answer was that I thought it was harder to live as a non-canonical hermit. I wrote: [[While there are greater explicit rights and obligations associated with canonical standing, the discernment and profession/consecration with and by the Church ensures that one also experiences a greater correlative permission to stand in the face of the values of the world around us and to be the person one is called to be by God in his Church. That permission is part of what leads to greater freedom to be oneself.]]

In the rest of the piece, I argued that I thought the constraints of canon law and the other elements of canonical life led to a freedom that was greater than that of non-canonical life because I defined freedom in terms of the power to be the persons God calls us to be. What I discerned with my Diocese and the persons involved in that process was that this was the way I could grow into the person God called me to be. I accepted the constraints of canon law, an approved Rule of Life, a Delegate who worked both on my behalf and that of the Diocese and Church more generally, and the profession of vows in a commitment that made me responsible for witnessing to the nature of eremitic life in the Catholic Church and the Church herself in this contemporary world. I also did so because I had the sense that I had something (both in terms of giftedness and limitations) that I was called to bring to the Church in this vocation.

If a non-canonical hermit makes a conscious choice to remain non-canonical, to embrace eremitic life on the basis of their baptismal consecration alone, because this is the way they perceive God calls them to realize their vocation to authentic humanity, then that is their way to the kind of freedom I experience within the canonical and consecrated state. If, as was the case in my own diocese for the first number of years I lived as a hermit, a person's diocese will not implement c 603, and will not consecrate c 603 hermits, then the person has, in the main, two alternatives and must determine which of these will lead to greater freedom and the power to become the persons God calls them to be. They may either live as a non-canonical hermit and revisit the possibility of consecration with their diocese from time to time over the years, or they may need to move to a diocese where c 603  is already implemented or will be implemented upon the appearance of a truly suitable candidate. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees here; the process of discernment is not necessarily easy. (As one Vicar I know put the matter, "It's not easy. I always thought the process of discernment was more art [than science]!")

There is nothing automatically or inherently individualistic about non-canonical hermit lives, no. Neither is the canonical hermit life automatically free from individualism. Both are capable of being lived in the way c 603 and groups like the Camaldolese, Carthusians, Carmelites, et al. live them. I continue to believe it is harder because I am aware of the obligations and responsibilities that mark my own life precisely as a member of the consecrated state of life. Every day, and especially when I meet with other c 603 hermits in our "virtual laura", post here, or reflect on the beauty and nature of c 603 life, I am aware of not allowing my own life to become individualistic. Similarly, when I see the examples of "private" hermits who are present online, it seems to me that some are not aware at all of the danger of individualism, much less of the fact that they may well have fallen into this disedifying trap.

It is important to remember that eventually hermits died out in the Western Church, whereas in the Eastern Church, where hermits were always integrally tied to monastic communities, hermits never died out. Whether one is canonical or non-canonical, hermits are called to be actively involved in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. To sever ties with the Church and become a lone pious individual is to betray the very heart of the vocation within the Church and subject it to a quick death in its individualism. Non-canonical hermits who maintain their ties (say, through membership and activity as part of a parish) and who believe they are called by God to witness to the same realities canonical hermits are responsible for in law can, even if this is difficult, certainly avoid the temptation of individualism. Once again, I hope that such hermits will begin to reflect on and write about their lives as lay (or clerical) non-canonical hermits. Their witness is important and needs to be heard!

On Peter Damian's Letter #28 and the Ecclesial Nature of c 603 Vocations

[[Hi Sister, you referred to Saint Peter Damian's Letter #28 (Dominus Vobiscum) and cited Ponam in Deserto Viam too. I am not clear why the ability to say, "The Lord be with you" is such a question. Also, Ponam in Deserto Viam speaks of two phrases in par 16. One is solitudo pluralis and the other is moltitudo singularis. I dont understand these or their importance, and I didn't hear Ponam make that clear. (I honestly read par 16 several times and just felt more confused.) Can you help me with this? Why begin with such a meaningless question and take it into the kind of difficult terms Damian does?]]

Important questions. Thanks!! One key to understanding the phrases in Par 16 of Ponam is Par 15. In these references, Ponam is exploring the nature of eremitical solitude and the way it represents and even defines the ecclesial role of the hermit life.  It says, [[In the Latin tradition, as Peter Damian (1007-1072) wrote. . .radical solitude most carefully defines the ecclesial role of the hermits' way of life. Hermits are like a microcosm of the world and the Church in miniature. Therefore, they cannot forget the Church and the world which they represent in their totality. The more one is alone before God, the more one discovers within oneself the deeper dimension of the world. With an expressive phrase, Peter Damian underlined this openness: 

. . .by virtue of the Holy Spirit, who is in each one and fills all, on the one hand one perceives a singularity [or perhaps singleness or solitariness] that has plurality in itself [solitudo pluralis], on the other hand a multiplicity that has singularity [or perhaps, singleness] in itself [moltitudo singularis].

Then, as you know, Ponam (par 16) explains something of these two phrases, solitudo pluralis and multitudo singularis, and concludes, "The hermit's life is not one in which its subjective distinctiveness becomes the criterion of all. Rather, it is a life in which plurality (personal and social) finds meaning in the only One who is necessary. Thus, the complexity of the individual part is integrated as in a microcosm of the whole. True identity is rooted in a vital tradition that neither excludes nor rejects, but includes, integrates, and reconstructs." I think that it might be important to look at some of what Peter Damian says in his 28th letter. In some ways, I think he is clearer than Ponam manages in its brevity. Damian says, 

"Truly the Church of Christ is so joined together by the bond of love that in many it is one, and in each it is mystically complete. Thus we at once observe that the whole Church is rightly called the one and only bride of Christ, and we believe each individual soul, by the mystery of baptism, to be the Whole Church. . . . If you search diligently through the open fields of Holy Scripture, you will frind the Church is often represented by one man or one woman. And although, because  of the great number of people, the Church seems to be many parts, it is still one and simple in the mystical federation of one faith and one divine regeneration.. . .  And so we conclude . . . since the whole Church is symbolized in the person of one individual, . . .holy Church is both one in all and complete in each of them; that is to say, simple in many by reason of their unity of faith, and multiple in each through the bond of love and the various charismatic gifts [gifts of the Holy Spirit], since all are from one, and all are one." (The Fathers of the Church, CUA Press, pp 262-263)

Peter Damian's letter goes further and speaks about hermits who might misunderstand the nature of their vocation: 

"It is possible that in their simplicity some of the brothers might be tempted while living alone to think that they are somehow separated from the community of the faithful, and that they would also be loathe to use the common language of the Church in their prayers." . . . For we are not here concerned with the number of persons but rather with the mystery of the Church's unity. Here indeed, unity does not exclude multiplicity, nor does multiplicity violate unity, for one body is at once divided among many members, and from the various members one body is made complete. Nor are many members lost in the unity of the body, nor is the wholeness of the body minimized in the multitude of its members." (Ibid. pp 271, 274)

In recent years, I have stressed that the canonical eremitic vocation is ecclesial. This does not mean that other hermits, especially non-canonical hermits, do not belong in an integral way to the Church, nor that they do not give their lives to the Church. Instead, it means that canonical hermits have accepted a public role in the very life of the Church that reminds every person, at least implicitly, of the two dimensions Peter Damian and Ponam in Deserto Viam put at the center of understanding eremitical solitude (in our oneness we are always part of a multiplicity, and in our multiplicity, we are one in the Spirit). Part of this witness by hermits embracing ecclesial vocations requires a canonical commitment to the life of the Church as consecrated hermits in order to witness to the very nature of the Church and the consecrated life within it. Solitude in such vocations is marked by a serious and radical aloneness, and at the same time, it participates in and reflects community in an equally radical way. One source says it this way, [[the solitude of the hermit is a solitudo pluralis, a corporate solitude, and (her) cell is a miniature Church.]]

The canonical hermit participates fully in the Sacramental life of the Church. She prays the Church's official prayer (Liturgy of the Hours); she may join with other hermits in lauras --- including virtual lauras that are non-geographic and allow for the strengthening of ecclesial bonds and witness. She lives her life according to an approved Rule of Life and under the supervision of Bishops (and often, accepted delegates) and spiritual directors. She does not live an individualistic life where canon law is dismissed as something only legalists or the "less spiritual" or "more temporal" choose. Instead, she allows herself to become subject to additional canons beyond those associated with baptism alone, because she understands that hermit life is a radically ecclesial and incarnational life, that, in a unique way, sees the multiplicity in one, and the one in and as the many. She wants to witness to this double reality in her own life and to do so officially for the sake of the Church and world.** Of course, it goes without saying that no hermit is alone because she lives with and from God, but what is also true is that no hermit is ever alone because we each carry the entire Church with us in our solitude. In fact, we are that Church.

While the question that begins Peter Damian's essay in this letter seems almost meaningless to contemporary readers, I personally love it. What I see Damian doing is taking a tremendously small act in the daily schedule of eremitic life, and demonstrating how it and, in fact, every single act done in cell is shot through with both the solitude and the multiplicity of the Church. This solitude and solidarity were what Pope Leo XIV spoke to in his address to hermits during recent Vatican festivities. Canonical standing, again, helps witness to these values and distinguishes the eremitical life from the individualism noted above. When I speak of the structure of canonical eremitic life protecting from the dynamics of "the world," the temptation to individualism is one of these.

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** When one does something officially, it really does have greater effectiveness than doing something unofficially. The very fact that the Church chose to create c 603 in response to interventions at the Second Vatican Council indicates the Church's openness to freshly evaluating or re-evaluating the importance of solitary hermits in the life of the Church as well as looking at the reality of religious life not associated with membership in an institute of consecrated life. The cogency of Peter Damian's ecclesiology in Letter #28 is strengthened by the contemporary establishment of c 603 and solitary hermits. These are very good reasons for the "official" or canonical establishment of the solitary eremitical life.

Is it a Sin to Call Myself a Catholic Hermit?

 [[Sister Laurel, if I am a privately vowed hermit and have called myself a Catholic Hermit, am I guilty of sin? I have read what you wrote about this and I think I understand what it means to call myself a Catholic Hermit. I really didn't understand before. I just thought it meant I was a Catholic and a hermit!! But I didn't mean to do anything wrong but now I see from another hermit that this is even sinful. Should I go to confession for this? Am I an illegal hermit?]]

Please don't worry!! You used language in a way that was entirely understandable and simply mistaken. That is not a sin. It only becomes a sin if you are corrected by someone truly knowledgeable and you persist in misusing the language for unworthy motives. Then you might become culpable for actual sin, not because you misuse the title per se (though you would then be guilty of being fraudulent or a counterfeit "Catholic Hermit"), so much as because of accompanying stubbornness, arrogance, a lack of charity (it is uncharitable to knowingly misrepresent oneself in this way), and disobedience or other such motives. The fact that we are baptized gives us the right to call ourselves Catholic, but we cannot call ourselves a Catholic Hermit because, as I have already explained here, that means a Hermit specifically representing this vocation in the name of the Church. It would be similar to a situation in which you are a teacher and a Catholic, but not a Catholic teacher (an official catechist) who teaches in the name of the Church, not in her own name.**

No, you are not an illegal hermit. I cannot emphasize that enough. You are a Catholic and a hermit living that calling by virtue of the grace and freedom of your baptism. You have every right to do that. In  October 1983 the Church added c 603 to allow for solitary consecrated hermits for the first time in universal law. It became, on that day, the norm (canon) for solitary Catholic Hermits. Because you do not fall under that canon (norm) or under the canons applying to religious men and women living semi-eremitical lives, you are a "non-canonical" hermit. Those of us who do fall under these canons in addition to those that apply to every Catholic by virtue of baptism, are called "canonical". This also means that you are not called to live your hermit life as publicly normative of the Church's understanding of this vocation. Those who live canonical hermit lives are called to publicly represent a normative form of eremitical life. 

This does not mean, by the way, that they are perfect hermits nor that they are identical to one another, and certainly it does not mean that they are better hermits than one that is non-canonical, but rather, that they have petitioned and been admitted to a public commitment that will deepen and intensify in time, and that their call is an ecclesial vocation that proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the hope it brings to both Church and World. (It does this latter because the inner journey such a hermit has made (and is committed to making ever more deeply for the whole of her life) allows her to experience both death and resurrection in her encounter with Mystery.) 

In a world where individualism is rampant, even epidemic, canonical hermits with public, ecclesial vocations are countercultural and the solidarity with Church and World that is demanded by their ecclesiality is critically important. We need to be able to see the profound linkages between hermit and Church, as well as hermit and the world. Public commitments allow this. (More about this in a piece I am working on re Saint Peter Damian's letter #28 and a passage from Ponam in Deserto Viam.) If you, or other non-canonical hermits, should discover that your own eremitical life is moving in this direction, you might then consider whether you feel called to a canonical commitment. Even if you do not move in this direction, you can continue to live freely as a non-canonical hermit based on the grace and freedom of your baptism. Please don't let anyone convince you that that makes you an "illegal" hermit! That inaccurate and unnuanced form of language denigrates the lay (or non-canonical) hermit vocation!!

By the way, as a kind of postscript, your question also raises an important matter of moral theology. You should be aware that if you do something wrong, or see someone else doing something wrong, even something the Church identifies as an intrinsic evil (like killing someone), only the one doing the wrong and God can say whether a sin has been committed. I have heard of someone opining on the hermit life and speaking wrongly about others' sins, or even about (her own) "being an occasion of sin for others". In fact, to speak this way, to suggest that another person is sinning or has sinned because one knows what actions they took, is an impermissible judgment. We can know that the person's behavior (the action they took) is wrong, unworthy of being chosen, and even intrinsically evil, for instance, but we cannot know whether they have sinned unless they tell us they have. (I am assuming God is NOT going to tell us such a thing!!)

A Contemplative Moment: The Absence

The Absence

It is this great absence

that is like a presence, that compels

me to address it without hope

of a reply. It is a room I enter

from which someone has just

gone, the vestibule for the arrival

of one who has not yet come.

I modernise the anachronism

of my language, but he is no more here

than before. Genes and molecules

have no more power to call

him up than the incense of the Hebrews

at their altars. My equations fail

as my words do. What resource have I

other than the emptiness without him of my whole

being, a vacuum he may not abhor?

R.S. Thomas

How much do you long to experience God's Presence?

from Janet Morley's haphazard by starlight, 

A poem a day from Advent to Epiphany

 

Second Sunday of Advent

We all choose what is important for celebrating Advent well,--- what is necessary to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths, to ready ourselves to see (i.e., to receive, understand, and to be transformed and transfigured by) the salvation of our God in Christ. This year I am going back to focus once again on the Lord's Prayer as one key to this preparation. I am spending my mornings doing lectio, study, and writing on this prayer. It has always been an incredible source of life, insight, and strength for me; two of my favorite authors, Tom Wright and Gerhard Ebeling, write especially about this prayer in terms of Advent and waiting on the Lord.

 

One of Ebeling's most striking observations in his work, On Prayer, The Lord's Prayer in Today's World is an insight that transformed my own theology and understanding of prayer when I first read the book as an undergraduate @ 1973. Ebeling was writing about the petition, "Hallowed be Thy name," and said: [[. . .we ought not to tone down its amazing, and indeed offensive, aspect or reduce it to a mere act of reverent adoration before the glory of God. For this is the most necessary petition. In other words it is concerned with the greatest need, God's need. . . .we must pray to God on behalf of God: that he would take up his own cause, that he would assert himself as God, that he would come, that he would appear, that he would reveal himself, that he would arise as God, that he would in very truth become God. This is the deepest source of prayer: God himself compels us to this intercession for God, to this passionate longing, that God will become God.]] In this passage I think Ebeling captures two senses of the meaning of waiting on God: 1) looking forward to God's coming and to the fulfillment of God's purposes with anticipation, and 2) serving God and allowing our lives to be defined by this service.

 

I am reading or rereading two other books for Advent. The first is a collection of poetry that my former pastor recommended. (John is returning to it for Advent himself and has looked forward to doing so. Sounded excellent to me!) And so it is! This is Janet Morley's Haphazard by Starlight, A Poem a Day from Advent to Epiphany. Each day has a corresponding poem by a famous poet and then a reflection looking at the poem's content as it relates to themes of the season. Finally, there is a question directed to the reader. Yesterday's selection was a poem by Ruth Fainlight called "The Other" and the reflection explores the crucial importance of waiting, the theme of the poem. The question one is asked to sit with is, "What is your most important experience of patient (or impatient) waiting? 

While I didn't get the book until the 4th of December, I am definitely loving it and am looking forward to spending time with today's selection, "We grow accustomed to the Dark" by Emily Dickinson. The day's question is, "Have you ever experienced the sense of being totally in the dark, either in your prayer life or in life decisions generally? Was it possible for you to risk keeping going in that darkness?

That fits well with my reading of John of the Cross and my second book, Ruth Burrow's work on his spirituality, Ascent to Love, the Spiritual Teaching of John of the Cross --- something I am doing at the same time another hermit in the UK is reading it! (We did not plan this. It just happened that we were each reading the same book. We will discuss it at the end of the month during Christmas week and maybe beyond that.) Burrows' reading of John of the Cross is very honest and may surprise readers, especially if they do not understand that he is a sure guide for the "beginner" (spiritual "high flyers" need not apply!). So, that's part of what my Advent looks like. 

If you are looking for a way to spend Advent in terms of lectio divina and great prompts for prayer and journaling, I highly recommend Janet Morley's book, Haphazard. . . She has another one for the season of Lent to Easter called The Heart's Time.

On the Importance of the Laity and Lay or Non-Canonical Hermits in the Contemporary Church

[[Dear Sister, it has always been hard for me to understand how some people can be called to consecrated life and others are not. That just seems exclusivist to me. You wrote that everyone is expected to live some form of the evangelical counsels, but not everyone is called to do it as Religious men and women do. If I am a lay person I am wondering how I live the evangelical counsels. Do I make vows? Also, if I want to be a hermit and desire to live like the Desert Fathers and Mothers did, will the Church recognize me as a hermit? What if I make private vows? Is it possible for me to try to become a canonical hermit and be refused? Isn't that exclusionary? Why do dioceses refuse people? I heard a hermit saying that Jesus never rejects us, but isn't the Church rejecting those who want to be c 603 hermits when they refuse to consecrate them in this way? I am still struggling with the sense that lay persons in the Church are second class citizens.]]

Thanks for your questions, and also for the heartfeltness of your comments. I have struggled with the same issues in the past. In important ways, Vatican II's focus on the role of the laity was dealing with the same set of questions and sense that you have described above. Those called to lay vocations, and not to consecrated or ordained life, felt like second or third-class citizens. What this meant for the Church itself was that it had not reflected sufficiently on the nature of the lay vocation, nor appreciated it sufficiently to convey the esteem it felt for it (and sometimes, apparently failed to feel for it!). What the Church recognizes is that all three states of life, lay, consecrated, and ordained, are essential for the Church as Church. All three are required and contribute to the truth, beauty, integrity, and holiness of the Church as the Body of Christ. All three witness to the Church's call to holiness, though they will do so in different ways. 

In Vita Consecrata, John Paul II commented that he could not imagine a church composed of just priests and laity. Here he was pointing ot he importance of consecrated life for the Church. However, the same could be said of the laity. It would be impossible to imagine a Church composed of only religious or consecrated persons and the ordained! It would be impossible to imagine a Church given over to the kind of holiness or missionary presence Jesus represented in our world, and called all his disciples to, if the Church had no laity. Vatican II spoke of the call to holiness, not as an exclusionary or elitist vocation meant only for a minority of its members, but as a universal one. When we begin to reflect adequately on the laity, we begin to look at vocational pathways of every sort: family, education, business, medicine, science, law, politics, etc. Similarly, we consider all the ways society is created and sanctified, all the ways the world is cared for, explored, honored, healed, and even made sacramental through the Church's living presence. The lion's share of these vocational pathways and the ministry associated with them belongs to the Catholic Laity. Critically, when we look at ministry in the Church today, we reflect on the way the laity shares in the priestly, prophetic, and royal offices of Christ, so that today we speak of lay ecclesial ministry --- something that would have been impossible prior to Vatican II and the years following the Council. What would the Church be without the laity? Not the genuinely Catholic Church of Christian discipleship and witness to the Kingdom of God!

While I write mainly about the nature and significance of my own vocation here, I have tried, over the past decade and a half and longer, to indicate my appreciation for hermits who choose to or otherwise need to remain "non-canonical" or lay hermits -- just as the Desert Abbas and Ammas were. I continue to think it is unquestionable that the majority of hermits in the Church are not canonical hermits, whether under the canons and proper law of institutes of consecrated life, or under c 603, dedicated as it is to solitary hermits, and sometimes, lauras of solitary hermits. Online listserves, Facebook sites, etc., demonstrate this to me, as do newsletters like that of Raven's Bread. What I would love to see and what I have tried to encourage is that some of these hermits give time and energy to writing about their vocations, to make them known, and to explore their significant place in the Church.  They live these lives for the sake of others, and they do so specifically as laity. Share what this call is!! Demonstrate who it serves and how!!! Especially, indicate how it helps the Church appreciate not only the eremitic vocation, but the importance of the laity for the Church and the World!!!

You asked if you do this, will the Church recognize you as a hermit? Well, I can tell you that the Archdiocese of Seattle is doing that today and has been doing so for a number of years.  The (newer) Archbishop there (Paul D Etienne) is not consecrating new c 603 hermits, and is accepting the commitments of lay hermits in the Archdiocese at Eucharistic liturgies. Look into this. Check into your own diocese and see if they would be open to something similar. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with being a hermit living your vocation in the lay state. It is not about being second-class or "illegal" as one online commentator puts the matter, however, the exploration of such a vocation and discovery of its significance in and for the Church must be done by those embracing such a vocational path and helping to make it a real presence in the Church. I personally believe that c 603 gives the entire Church permission to pay attention to and esteem solitary eremitic life today. It has helped establish this form of eremitical life as a significant contemporary vocation, not a long-gone, irrelevant vocation that died out in the Western Church several centuries ago! One does not have to be consecrated according to this canon to benefit from it!! What one does have to hold strongly to, however, is the Church's teaching on the laity made freshly present at Vatican II and synods thereafter. This will take real courage and vision in a Church that is still in the throes of a crippling clericalism!!

I know I haven't answered all of your questions, but I sincerely hope I have answered those that might give you a pathway to consider lay eremitic life anew. The Desert Abbas and Ammas lived their lives as laymen and laywomen, not only for the sake of personal holiness, but because the Church needed them to do so when it became relatively easy to call oneself a disciple of Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire. We need such men and women today, calling all Catholics to such discipleship in the midst of a world that seems to have forgotten where and why Jesus lived out an exhaustive incarnation of God's love. Deserts come in all shades and stripes, including urban settings; stricter separation from the world involves a freedom from enmeshment in that which is resistant to Christ, and an obligation to love God's good creation into wholeness. The evangelical counsels assist in both of these. ** I would not be surprised to find God calling a whole host of new Desert Abbas and Ammas, not to canonical eremitic life, but to non-canonical or lay eremitic life today!! Perhaps you are one of these!

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** You could make private vows, but every Christian is called to live these counsels in their own state of life. That would mean embracing the values of poverty (or simplicity), chastity (which is really about generously and appropriately loving others in Christ), and obedience (an attentive listening and responsiveness to God in every situation). How anyone is to implement these counsels apart from religious or consecrated life depends on each person's creativity and faithfulness. What the laity are not called to is religious poverty and religious obedience.

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 forms, 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, etc., 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. Instead, 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.")