[[Hi Sister! I listened to a video that argued about the importance of Canon 603, I think to say it was not needed. The point being made was that if the canon was not being used by dioceses to correct problems with the vocation, then why even have it? An additional point seemed to be countering some of what you have written on this blog. The video asserted that "hermits don't need to be recognized, and don't need to be respected, and they don't to have a place of honor in the Church". This would be contrary to the very nature of the hermit call. I don't recall your ever having asserted that c 603 was published to "force" the Church to recognize and respect hermits and their vocations! Besides, does real humility imply that the Church should not recognize or respect the person or the vocation? That's not what I have been catechized to believe!!]]
Thanks for writing about this. I think some of it is a bit dated, and I may have responded to it a couple of years ago. At the same time, the real reason c 603 was created and the nature of genuine humility are timely issues because misunderstandings still abound.
First then, the reason for the canon. Eremitical life, though a vital and essential vocation within the Church (and always inadequately appreciated by the Western Church from the time of the Desert Abbas and Ammas), had largely died out in the Western Church by modern times. There are a number of reasons for this. It remained present and vital in the Eastern Church but also was linked to monastic life therein. The challenge Bp Remi de Roo set the Church was the recovery of the solitary eremitical vocation (community forms of eremitical life continued in the Church) and its establishment as a "state of perfection" (the term once used for the religious or consecrated state). The reasons he gave were entirely positive and had to do with the witness value of the vocation and the need of both Church and world for these vocations.
The canon that eventually grew out of Bp Remi de Roo's Vatican II intervention has nothing to do with correcting problems in the eremitical life as lived at the time. It makes a single reference to being under the supervision of the local bishop, but does not speak of problems, difficulties, etc. in living the life, nor does it refer to detailed ways of living its essential elements. Instead, it codifies a flexible approach to the vocation that depends on the hermit's own Rule of life, her own understanding and experience of things like "stricter separation from the world", "assiduous prayer and penance", and "the silence of solitude", and a local bishop's "supervision" --- though without detailing what constitutes adequate supervision. None of this sounds like something mainly written to deal with problems.
As I have already pointed out, in any case, one does not take a problem vocation (or those with problems in living a vocation) and raise them to a new state of life with additional rights and obligations, in order to deal with the problematic elements. Instead, either one corrects the person in ways open to one, or one simply lets the vocation die out, as was occurring in the Western Church. Real problems with various lay vocations could be dealt with through one's pastor or bishop, as truly needed. Ways of correcting and censuring people existed apart from c 603, whose purpose differed from this in any case. Remember that to call something canonical means it is normative, while non-canonical refers to ways that are not normative. This also means, then, that unless one is charged with living a normative vocation, personal eccentricities and failures rarely matter and certainly cannot be understood to throw off an entire way of living for other people.
On Forcing the Church
Regarding what I am supposed to have said about "forcing the Church" to esteem hermits or their vocation, let me affirm that I believe every vocation and every Christian from every vocation and state of life should be respected, esteemed, and recognized as possessing a dignity rooted in God and a value sealed by the Holy Spirit. I have never used the term forced in this regard. Even so, I do believe that the Western Church did fail to appropriately regard the eremitical vocation from the days of the Desert Abbas and Ammas onwards. Local Churches (Dioceses) created statutes and liturgical rites for hermits and anchorites in the Middle Ages (ca 1200-1500), but, as I understand it, these vocations were not recognized in law by the Universal Church. It was Bishop Remi de Roo's Vatican II intervention regarding making eremitism a state of perfection because of the various positive points he outlined that allowed the Church to look at this matter with fresh eyes.
I have written about this for some time now because, like you, I was taught that humility was not about self-deprecation, but about honesty, and loving honesty at that! Today, as I explore the nature and significance of ecclesiality in regard to vocations to the consecrated state, I am freshly struck not only by the truth of the human person as imago dei growing into imago Christi, but also with ecclesial vocations as imago ecclesiae. The bridal imagery we have used through the centuries has been applied to religious, both male and female, and now to consecrated virgins living in the world in a recovery of a truly ancient vocation. This has been done, not to aggrandize the individuals called in this way, but to remind them that they are icons of the Church --- and to remind the Church that the last and least among her serve to remind her of her truest nature and dignity.
Recovering Real Humility and Rejecting the Idea that We are Nothing to God's all:
For a very long time, I thought that the comparison about being nothing to God's all made sense. I thought that without God I was a "walking zero," and tried to outline the truth of the order of grace in this way. And now, (with apologies to Catherine of Sienna!) I look back at that and realize that there was never a time when this comparison applied to my life or my being. From the moment of my conception, God knew me as precious and as someone he yearned to love as fully as possible. God knew me as capable of this because God created me to be capable of this and dwelt within me. The human person is never made to stand as nothing to God's all. Instead, they are the awesome
capacity for Love-in-Act, and that is never nothing!! Yes, it grows and develops, but it is still never "nothing". I think here we are dealing with another paradox that theology is so full of. We are not the everything or the pleroma that God is, but we are the constellations of every yearning and hunger that call out for the living God so that God might be incarnate in our world and so that we might come to fulfillment at the same time.
No matter how I have tried (and invariably failed) to say this in the past, I have to say this now: we are not empty containers God fills with Godself. Instead, we are the (fullness of) capacity or potential for God, for light and love and being and meaning, and we reveal the nature of God even when we think of ourselves as this capacity and nothing more. (Perhaps potentiality is the better word here and means more than "mere" capacity. I say this because potential and potentiality have a more integral dynamism about them than the word "capacity" I think). We are the "awaiting impress" of the infinite Mystery that is the source and ground of everything that is and could exist. And while I cannot adequately express what this truth actually means, I know that humility means the recognition that I am the capacity or potentiality for God, and my vocation means I have been made (through being consecrated, both in baptism and in the second consecration of admission to the consecrated state) to be imago ecclesiae. Neither of these is about being nothing to God's all. That older comparison is entirely too worldly to capture the awesome truth of human being-toward-God.
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By the way, human beings (and hermits among them!!) do, quite literally,
need respect, recognition, and a place of honor in the Church. We cannot live fully or with dignity without them. People die without these. Psychologists speak of a thing called "soul death" in regard to the lack of these and similar fundamental needs of the human person. Jesus reminds us that we do not live from bread alone, but from every Word that comes forth from the mouth of God. Those words are words of recognition, respect, and honor. They are words of Love-in-Act. No one should be made to feel apologetic about these fundamental needs. They are precisely part of the revelation of the very great dignity of the human person and the great generosity of our God.
By the way, I need to thank you again for your questions. With repetitive questions, I often think I shouldn't respond here yet again, but, in doing that today, my writing brought me to a very new place in terms of this last consideration of the nature and value of the human being vis-à-vis God. I don't know that that would have happened without your questions, so again, thank you very much!!
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