On Not Cherishing the Spirit of Separation

[[ Hi Sister, you said Fr Wencel wrote that the hermit was not "to cherish the spirit of separation", but a hermit is supposed to embrace stricter separation from the world, right? What is the difference Fr Wencel is trying to emphasize here? Aren't hermits supposed to love what they do?]]

Good question and on a great line from Camaldolese Father Cornelius Wencel!! I think this line is especially provocative and a good way to help dioceses and others discern authentic vocations to eremitical life as well. In approaching this line, I come at it in a couple of ways. First, I pay attention to the meaning of the phrase, "spirit of separation" and second, I look at what it means to cherish something. The canon reads "Stricter separation from the world, along with the silence of solitude, and assiduous prayer and penance but at first seems to say nothing about the spirit of separation. Preceding this, however, the canon says that the hermit lives this life for the praise of God and the salvation of the world. It is here the canon provides the Spirit that drives a hermit's separation from the world. Instead, the spirit that drives c 603's separation from the world is the spirit of compassion for the world, and, in Christ, the spirit of engagement for the sake of the world's salvation as well as for the praise or glorification (revelation) of God and God's Church. 

This kind of engagement (like all truly loving engagement) requires commitment to be grounded in both intimacy or closeness to, and in some definite distance from that to which we are committed. Otherwise, we lose ourselves in the thing itself (this is what we call enmeshment), and once that happens, we cannot truly love it effectively or ourselves either. So,  hermits accept stricter separation from the world, first of all to commit ourselves to God more completely, and in order to love the world that is resistant to Christ into greater wholeness through the power of God's love. In this way of seeing what c 603 calls for, stricter separation is a form of penance embraced for a larger and other-centered purpose. In the language of the Desert Abbas and Ammas, this was called anachoresis, a healthy withdrawal from that which was resistant to (or insufficiently committed to) Christ in order to bring all of reality into unity with God in Christ.

But Cornelius Wencel also refers to not cherishing the spirit of separation and being closed to the social aspects of life and of being cut off from any form of communal life and the problems of this world, and notes that many great hermits reveal that any authentically spiritual experience (which, he observes, is always the culmination of an experience of love) "leads to an attitude of ministry" (an attitude of service). In other words, eremitical life is not about admiring, esteeming, revering, or protecting, the spirit of separation. This cannot motivate the authentic hermit vocation. Rather, the hermit is called to truly love God and others so they can be themselves as fully as possible (and the hermit can also!!). This means embracing the spirit of engagement, which will include stricter separation without being driven by, much less cherishing, the spirit of separation!

There is a paradox right at the heart of c 603's phrase "stricter separation from the world". If one misunderstands what the canon means by "the world", or, if one believes c 603 is calling for what Wencel identifies as the "spirit of separation" rather than the spirit of engagement rooted in authentic love, one will mistake what eremitical life, and especially c 603 eremitical life is all about. Then one will begin to absolutize the various elements of the canon and make idols of them rather than servants of the life. Canon 603 means what it says when it defines the spirit which is to shape and drive one's anachoresis and it is not selfishness, concern with one's own spiritual purity, fear of the "worldliness" of others, escape from the spatio-temporal, or a sense that we are more spiritual than others. Again, the withdrawal the hermit embraces is driven by love and the spirit of engagement, both with God and with all that God truly cherishes. This, by the way, is the same Spirit that informs the vocation's ecclesiality and allowed the Church to perceive the vocations of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as well as embrace the c 603 vocation as ecclesial.