[[ Hi Sister Laurel, . . .I am glad you wrote about terminology again at the same time you have been writing about individualism. Wouldn't someone's refusal to use the term Catholic Hermit in the way the
Catholic Church uses it be an example of individualism? I think the same is true of the other terms you discussed as well as the idea that the bishop consecrates as a kind of "stand in" for God rather than God consecrating the hermit. I admit, I have never understood how someone could insist God consecrated them when the only thing they have to show for this is their insistence it is true! How important to you is it to live your hermit life "in the name of the Church"?]]
Really good point about terminology. Thanks!! I don't know how common this kind of thing actually is. It does not surprise me when someone who is Catholic and a hermit calls themselves a Catholic Hermit. It is an easy mistake to make, and the line between what one does "in the name of the Church" and what one does not, is not always an easy one to do. It is easier, of course, when the Church itself sets up norms for certain things and one meets these norms (including accepting standing in law acording to a particular canon or set of canons). Once the norms are set and the Church implements these canons, there is a way to determine what it means to be a hermit, 1) as the Church understands the vocation, and 2) as she calls people forth to live this in her name. Before such norms (canons) anyone who was an isolated pious person AND a faithful Catholic could say "I am a Catholic hermit", but, after Vatican II the Church made the decision to establish this vocation as a state of perfection with a central place the Church's own call to glorify God, established it in law, and so, certain norms must now be met.
All of that changes the Church's language, and our own as well. Because the Church specifically calls people forth to live this vocation in her name it means that she sometimes does NOT call others. One knows whether one has been called by God via the Church to live a public (canonical) vocation or not. If someone were to mistakenly call themselves a Catholic Hermit, it would be potentially embarrassing, but easily corrected. I think the problems really occur when a person's usage is corrected and they refuse to make the adjustment, either in usage or personally and in their own mind. Then we could not only be dealing with individualism, but,
at least potentially, other things as well including arrogance, self-righteousness, lack of flexibility and of humility as well. This is tragic because the eremitic life is a significant one no matter what state of life the person called to lives it as well. Each state of life allows the hermit to witness in somewhat different ways to both Church and world.
Yes, it is important to me to live my hermit life "in the name of the Church", and so, to live it well. At the same time this importance has shifted over the years. It is a bit awesome still, and what has deepened is my sense of the nature of the Church and my place in allowing it to be that. Because I studied and still read theology, I have had a good sense of the nature of the Church, what constitutes sound ecclesiology and what does not. It is a different (and maybe always awesome) matter to see God calling me to be a living stone in this edifice Jesus builds day by day and person by person. Recent shifts in my own understanding of eremitic life all have to do with the ecclesial nature of the vocation, and the inklings of all this were present when I approached my diocese @ 1985. To see the ways my understanding has clarified and deepened is so gratifying!
It is not necessarily easy to understand, especially initially, why God calls one to eremitical life rather than to other vocations, especially given the great need the world has for apostolic ministry. It is difficult (many times!) to understand why God might allow various traumata and associated chronic illness to be defining realities in our lives.
And yet, whatever the circumstances of one's life, what remains true for each of us is that one is called to authentic humanity in dialogue and communion with God. Another way of describing this foundational vocation is that one is called to allow God to be God, and most especially, to allow God to be Emmanuel, God with us! It seems to me that this is not only the answer to
all prayer, but the essence of the Church's own vocation in our world as well -- in the Church's case, not to be truly human, of course, but to be the place where God is allowed to reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the One who will truly be with us in every moment and mood of creation's history.
In my own life, the depths and darknesses that have colored so much of it, have, especially in the last several years, given me the opportunity to witness to the truth of this ecclesial vocation. I have been able to plumb those same depths along with all the questions and doubts they raised for me over the years, and find both God and my truest self together there. As I have also said before, Frederick Buechner once remarked that "Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need". For me, the hermitage is the place where all this happens. It is the place God called me to so that I might have the time and space to truly explore not only the complex question(s) I have lived (and been!) for so many years, but also so that I might allow myself to hear the answer God is as Emmanuel. Even more profoundly (and very much a continuing source of awe!!), it is the place I have been called to become myself, the place of intercession where the love and mercy of God meet the anguish and yearning of his creation and the Good News of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension proclaimed as lived experience.
I believe that having been called to a specifically ecclesial vocation has challenged me to explore what that really means, and more, what it means to live it for God, for the Church, and really for all of God's creation. This dimension of the vocation not only deals with individualism, but it replaces fear of (or concern about) individualism with a sense of mission and charism that mirrors the Church's own even within the silence of solitude. Because I am a convert to Catholicism, I am even more blown away by what it means to be called to live as a hermit "in the name of the Church". I have told the story of the experience I had when I attended my first Mass with a high school friend. I recognized (or "heard") while kneeling and watching others receiving Communion, that "in this place every need (you) have, whether intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, spiritual, or psychological, could be met". I began instruction that week.
About 18 years later, after I had spent some time in years in community, developed an adult-onset seizure disorder (epilepsy), finished academic studies, had some experimental neurosurgery, and begun working with my current spiritual director (not necessarily in that order), I read the newly published Canon 603, and had a similar experience. On the third or fourth reading, I reflected, "My entire life could make sense in terms of this way of life -- wholeness, brokenness, limitations, talents, giftedness, deficiencies, etc. -- everything could be meaningful." It took years to discover both of these experiences, though especially the first one, were actually promises God was making me if I was faithful to him, and it took many more to understand the paradoxical, counterintuitive, and truly perfect (though still painful) way he was shaping the answer He and I together (in Christ and his Church) would become!
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Note, since I forgot to respond to this part of your question, let me add briefly that it is not the case that the Bishop is a "stand in" for God any more than it is true that the Church is a "stand in" for Christ, or that the Eucharist "stands in" for Christ because he is ascended to the right hand of the Father and can't really be here in space and time. Does the hand stand in for the head? The term "stand-in" implies that God couldn't be there and sent someone else instead. This is emphatically not the case! The Church, the Body of Christ, mediates God's presence to us in Christ in innumerable ways. The consecration of someone during the liturgy of perpetual profession is done by God mediated in the Church's liturgy, through the solemn prayer of consecration.
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