Why are Hermits Known for Their Freedom? Part 1: Foundational Freedom

[[ Sister, why are hermits known for their freedom?  Is it because they can do whatever they like? I mean they can go off and leave their families and live alone and do whatever they love to do, right? Were you looking for freedom when you decided to become a hermit? What about the ones who were shut away in a cell next to a church? They weren't free in living that way were they? Are they also hermits who would be known for their freedom?]]

Thanks for your questions. Hermits are indeed known for their freedom, and this includes not only "freedom from" a lot of truly good stuff, but also "freedom for" in really significant ways. The most important and characteristically Christian form of freedom is the power to be the persons we are called to be, and hermits are free in this way especially. Human beings are themselves free when and to whatever extent they are in a heart-level dialogue with God. This means allowing God to call us to wholeness, to humanness, and learning and being empowered to love ourselves and one another in light of that. It also means allowing God (Love-in-act) to reside at the center of our lives and letting all else fall into place in light of that theocentric way of relating to reality.  

For the hermit (and for every authentic Christian), everything is relativized in light of one's life with God, but this does not mean the hermit is free to forget or neglect "everything else" as one focuses on God. Instead, because life in dialogue with God (and here I mean the really deep dialogue that comes from posing the profound questions of being and meaning we each are and listening to or receiving the response that God is) represents freedom from the false self and the freedom of the true self, the hermit comes to know and love all of reality in God, in the truth. We reject enmeshment in the distorted reality c 603 calls "the world," with all that fosters the false self, and we embrace authentic engagement, that is, we love and revere the truth and beauty of all reality in God. 

This is genuine freedom. It is the way Christ perceived and loved God's creation, the way empowered by the Holy Spirit, the way that sees everything that is with a clarity and reverence we are made for, but are incapable of when we are enmeshed and unfree. This shift from false to true self, from the inability to see rightly to clarity of perception, and the inability to love as Christ loves to being one in whom Christ lives and loves ("I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me!" Gal 2:20) is the very essence of the freedom of the hermit. And yet, it is not always easy to love in the selfless way Christ loved and with the generosity of God. We must be reborn and remade for that. 

Hermits commit (dedicate) themselves to being remade (consecrated and sanctified) in and by God. They literally dedicate themselves to being loved into wholeness/holiness in the way only life with and in God can do. This means they commit themselves to becoming the very place where heaven and earth come together and interpenetrate one another. They dedicate themselves to God's project of being Emmanuel to his creation, and the corresponding human vocation of being Emmanuel in and through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. The natural outflow of this dedication is an active love for all that God holds as precious. In Christ, our lives of prayer are not just a matter of praying for others, though of course we do that, but of becoming the intercessory "place" in our world where Human and Divine truly meet and come to abide in one another. We become symbols of what c 603 calls "the silence of solitude", symbols of genuine freedom to truly be ourselves for and in relation to others, signs of liberation from the noise and enmeshment of what c 603 calls "the world", and made prophetic with lives commissioned to challenge our Church and creation to truly become and be what God wills these realities to be.

This is not about just doing anything at all, or even about doing just what we truly like doing (though we are apt to really love doing what we do in this way, and being who we are in Christ). Again, it is about doing the will of God in our world. It is about being the persons God calls us to be, and doing so for the sake of God, God's Church, and the whole of God's creation. In embracing this kind of freedom and letting God grasp us, we sacrifice many of the discrete gifts God has given us in order to become the single overarching gift he makes us to be in His Son and Spirit. 

We trust that God knows how best to use us, and, when we look back over the whole scope of our lives, we will be amazed at the wondrousness of the tapestry he has woven with the woof of our sinfulness, illness, suffering, death, betrayals and infidelities, struggles, incapacities, ignorance, venality, etc, and the graced warp of our love of others, the passion and hard work of our own dedication to life and Love-in-Act, and the victory of Divine meaning over absurdity. Because this use of the material of our own lives by God is not manipulative, but transformative and transcendent, it sings of an otherworldly freedom. Most people will never perceive the truth of this -- at least not this side of death. Others will catch glimpses of it. A relative few will know it themselves, even if they are not hermits. This, by the way, is one reason the life of hermits and the anchorites you refer to is known as "hidden". Superficially, such lives look so limited and constrained that most people will miss their real depth and breadth.  That different way of seeing (or not seeing) is what your questions reflect --- the difficulty of seeing the profound freedom that constitutes a truly human life grasped by and grounded in God, especially when that person is a hermit or anchorite. 

We tend to mistake the nature of the lives of such persons in two main ways: first, we can see them as narrow, limited, or constrained in a way that seems to mean they are neither free nor particularly human, and second, we can see them as wholly disengaged from and uncaring of everything and everyone of real value, and so, empty and meaningless. (This latter mistake is one  that some who have called themselves "hermits" through the centuries have made, and currently still make!) The freedom of the hermit, however, is one of deep and broad engagement, pervasive and abiding love, not in the abstract, but concretely, really, humanly. Hermits reject enmeshment so that we might be engaged with reality as Christ was and is.  We do it so that he might be uniquely embodied in us in anticipation of the New Heaven and New Earth that Jesus' death and resurrection inaugurated. We reject enmeshment so we might love --- fully, freely, truly, and more profoundly in Christ than "the world" can even imagine. This is the foundational freedom of the hermit. Every other freedom flows from this and serves it.

Why is Star Trek Easier to Imagine than the Ascension? (Reprise)

[[ Hi Sister Laurel, in your post on the Ascension, you said that it was difficult for us to believe that Jesus was raised bodily into "heaven". You suggested it might be easier to imagine the Star Trek story as true instead. I wondered why you said that. Thank you.]]

I appreciate your question. Thanks. We humans, tend to draw distinct lines between the spiritual and the material, and often we rule out any idea that has the two interpenetrating the other or being related in paradoxical ways. We simplify things in other ways as well. For instance, do you remember when the Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin first orbited Earth and made a pronouncement that he had now been to space, had looked and looked for God, and did not find him? The notion that God's relation to the cosmos was other than as a visible (and material) being among other material beings present in "the heavens" was completely beyond this man's ideology or imagination. The idea of God as Being itself, being (not A being) that grounded and was the source of all existence while transcending it all was simply too big an idea for this Cosmonaut. Imagine what he would have done with the notion that everything that once existed, now exists, or is on its way to existing, does or will do so within the very life of God! (Gagarin is now said never to have affirmed this; instead, Soviet authorities did and used his flight to do so.)

Another example might be better. When I was young (grade school), I went to a Christian Scientist Church and Sunday School. There, every Sunday we recited what was called, "The Scientific Statement of Being". It was a bit of neo-Platonic "dogma" written by Mary Baker Eddy. It was the heart of the faith: [[There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-All. Spirit is immortal truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is his image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual.]] By the time I was seven or eight I was questioning what it meant to say matter is unreal (or, more often, how could I be asked to deny the truth of matter's reality). Imagine what it was like to fall off your bike and tell yourself the blood and pain was "unreal" --- only Spirit is real. 

Donna Korba, IHM

The answers never satisfied, but I think you get the point. The human mind has always had difficulty not drawing a distinction between the material and the Spiritual, even to asserting the two things are antithetical --- even to the extent of denying either matter or spirit actually exists at all.  (Christian Science said matter was unreal, not just in the Platonic sense of being less real than the ideal, but in the sense of asserting that materiality is a delusion; on the other hand, contemporary science often says anything except matter is unreal.) An incarnate God, or a God who would make room within his very life for embodied existence like ours (in whatever form that embodiment occurs) would be anathema and literally inconceivable to either of these! So yes, we often suspend disbelief in reading science fiction or fantasy literature in order to enter deeply into the story. But what is also true is that we need to learn to suspend disbelief in intelligent ways in order to appreciate the Mystery of God and the cosmos; we need to do this in order to enter deeply into this great theodrama. Star Trek's stories may seem easier to believe than stories of the Ascension because the Mystery we call God is greater than anything we can create or even imagine ourselves.

One last point. Early on in my studies of theology (probably during my BA work), my major professor answered the question, "What do I do if I cannot believe in God?" His answer was, "I would encourage you to act as though it (God's existence) is true and see what happens." My own objection at the time was that that would be encouraging people to engage in pretense, not real faith, and John Dwyer responded further, " Perhaps it seems like that superficially, but what would really be happening is that one would be opening oneself [or remaining open] to allow those things that God alone can do." Another way of saying this is to affirm that one would thus be refusing to close oneself to the Holy Spirit. Once one allowed or embraced this openness, one would then compare the differences between one's life before and after such openness. I didn't find John Dwyer's initial answer much more convincing than I found the Christian Science answer re: matter's unreality when I was 8 or 9 yo, but I also mistakenly thought my faith was relatively strong and sufficient. 

I now know that learning to trust (and to be open to Mystery) in the way John described is both more difficult and more intelligent than any cynical skepticism scientific materialism offers us today. And one grows in faith (thanks be to God)! I have experienced things in my life which God alone could do, and I recognize the wisdom (and the humility!!) of John Dwyer's advice to students believing they were atheists or that faith was naive, namely, that they suspend their disbelief, open themselves to new ways of seeing, and see what happens. Of course, this specific form of suspension of disbelief would result in a vocation to commitment to a world itself called to be something ever greater than even the limitations of science can imagine. What is often difficult for us is understanding that this specific suspension of disbelief is more profoundly wise than science itself can know, or our often-earth-bound imaginations can create.

 Authentic faith (which, again, is not the same as naive credulity) is something different, and in some ways, both more challenging and compelling than the more superficial suspension of disbelief we adopt when we read science fiction or fantasy literature. The essential difference, I think, is that the first type of suspension of disbelief is a form of chosen naivete adopted temporarily for the sake of recreation and enjoyment; it allows us a vacation from reality, while exercising imagination in the service of creativity. This certainly enlivens us. The second type of suspension of disbelief, that of faith, while also exercising imagination in the same service, requires more than our imagination. It is neither naive nor credulous and requires the whole of ourselves in a more direct commitment to enlivening others; as a result, faith opens us to a more intense and extensive commitment to reality itself and is simply more difficult.

Reflections on Consecrated Celibacy, the Importance of Friendship, and the Relationship between Pope John Paul II and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I have a question that may not be something you want to deal with. It's about Pope Saint John Paul II and the relationship he had with a Polish woman over about 32 years. I understand this was mainly a relationship via correspondence, and they never were involved physically or sexually with one another, but there was a very real intimacy. My question is, where does this put John Paul II in terms of his commitment to celibacy? Wouldn't this be a violation, or even an act of adultery?]]

Thanks for your questions. First, I think this topic is something I could respond to on the basis of my own life as a professed religious and my commitment to consecrated celibacy. Where I cannot respond is on the nature of the relationship between JPII and the woman correspondent. While I have read a couple of articles on these letters, I don't know what they actually contain, or the degree and kind of intimacy they involve. I believe only one side of the correspondence has been made public, or at least "known" in any case. Beyond that, I don't know enough about Anna-Teresa's life to speak about the propriety of these letters or the prudence of continuing the correspondence. She was married, but I don't know the quality or nature of her relationship with her husband, nor do I have any idea how her relationship with JPII affected this relationship or the ability of either husband or wife to live their vows. What I can speak to, however, is the propriety of intimate, loving friendships between religious who are vowed to chastity in celibacy and those of another gender.

Remember that vows of chastity in celibacy are not merely or even primarily about not participating in genital activity and not having sexual relations with others. They are about learning to love in the fullness of one's manliness or womanliness, though without genital expression or (strictly) sexual activity. God, of course, is primary in this kind of learning, but healthy, loving relationships with both men and women are important as well. Chastity in celibacy fosters a kind of availability to others, and provides a focused context in which one can grow in one's humanity, a humanity which is either uniquely manly or womanly; one really does need to be in some relationship with those of the opposite sex for such growth. Yes, these need to be truly chaste relationships (as is true for anyone, no matter their state of life), but they, and everything about them, will always be touched by the participants' fundamental womanliness or manliness. Sexuality is that profound and pervasive a reality. Whatever we do in the spirit of this human reality will be an expression and reflection of our fundamental womanliness or manliness. That includes living a chaste and celibate life.

The possibility of genuinely manly and womanly lives that are capable of loving one another profoundly without falling into lust or moving to genital activity is something Christianity recognizes throughout its history. We have many examples of religious men and women in relationships of intimate friendship. Two of the most famous are St Francis de Sales and St Jane de Chantal, and St Francis of Assisi and St Clare. St Aelred of Rievaulx wrote once about the nature of such profound relationships when he said, "You and I are here, and I hope that Christ is between us as a third." That pretty well captures the nature of relationships known as "anamcara" (soul friends) with roots in both Celtic and Desert Abba and Amma traditions. The New Testament speaks of friendship with God, or of the beloved disciple who rests his head upon Christ's breast, and the fact that that disciple is unnamed allows and even calls each of us to imagine ourselves in precisely that kind of profound friendship. (The Gospel of the day is about this call to profound friendship!) It is intimate, and sexual (manly or womanly) without being genital or necessarily leading there. Meanwhile, Jesus' most loving friends and followers included women who bathed his feet in their tears out of love and grief, or sat at his feet just listening when that position was traditionally appropriate for male disciples only. We are happy to "spiritualize" these relationships (where "spiritualize" really seems to mean to be made physically and emotionally risk-free), but look again at how they truly reveal a profoundly embodied love and deep friendship! Both spirituality and sexuality imply embodiedness.

As human beings, we are created by the choices we make. Even more, we are made truly human by the choices we make to love one another intimately, authentically, and in Christ -- or, by those choices we make refusing to love in this way. Every one of us is morally bound to love chastely, whether we are married, single, consecrated, or ordained. But the emphasis in that sentence is LOVE, not chastely, because all authentic love will be chaste. Some of us embrace chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God, and that Kingdom is where God is sovereign and authentic love is modelled in this state by those given first of all to God. Our consecrated celibacy is embraced to allow both profound love of God and our brothers and sisters in this world; it is embraced to make that love more widely accessible in our world through its public nature and ministry. Nothing in any of this suggests that celibate love, rooted in God and the deep womanliness or manliness of those professed in this way, cannot exist between males and females like Pope Saint John Paul II and Anna Teresa Tiemieniecka.  Just the opposite, in fact. Such relationships can lead those sharing in them to an ever-deepening relationship with God and greater compassion for others. Hence, Rievaulx's famous quotation above from his work, Spiritual Friendship.

There is no circumstance related to a commitment to celibacy per se that makes such a relationship necessarily a transgression of one's vows or commitments. In fact, those of us bound by such public vows often have known profound heterosexual and non-genital relationships with other religious, priests, and non-religious. Sometimes these are some of the most fruitful and growth-producing relationships we have known. I am able to say that some of my best friendships have been with religious Brothers or priests, and some of the deepest sharing has occurred in those relationships. When two people share intellectual and spiritual gifts and interests, as well as values, ministerial or pastoral interests, concerns, and so forth, the relationship can be quite profound and actually lead each other to God in privileged ways. It seems to me that John Paul II and Anna Teresa might well have had just such a relationship.

Yes, there is risk in such relationships; vows might be transgressed, and vocations to truly love might be betrayed. But this is not necessarily so because again, the renewed commitment to chastity in celibacy that occurs choice-by-choice and decision-by-decision can also model really profound and compelling instances of authentic friendship that lead the participants to God in a world that needs examples of deep and intimate friendship that not only can and do remain non-genital, but speak compellingly of the love of God, which is their ground. As is well known, friendship today is trivialized, and the sexual (not genital!!) nature of every person and relationship is neglected or denied so that any deep relationship between man and woman (and often, similar relationships between those of the same sex) becomes suspect. (We also treat genital activity as being as imperative as breathing when that is simply not the case.) I would argue that this specific witness is an especially important reason religious men and women are called to make vows of chastity in celibacy in today's world, and one of the really critical reasons the Church has renewed the vocation of Consecrated Virgins living in the world.

Over time, as (hopefully) more of these letters are made available for reflection and analysis, it will be somewhat easier to say whether the relationship was ill-advised or another of those relationships mentioned above that will one day stand as a model of the relationship between authentic Anamcara (alternate spellings, Anam Chara or Anam Cara). Currently, there have been several reassurances that JPII did not transgress his commitment to celibacy, the primacy of his relationship with God, or his responsibility to the Church, and there are quotes from Anna-Teresa that seem to indicate the same, despite a real personal struggle with the emotional dimensions of the relationship.  As already noted, I have read no comments on the nature of Tymieniecka's marriage over the years, and it seems to me that this is where the greatest risk actually existed.  To truly understand the prudence or imprudence of the (continuing) relationship with JPII, it would be important to consider any information about how the JPII-ATT relationship affected Anna-Teresa's husband and their marriage. However, because the relationship with JPII was not hidden, and Anna-Teresa's marriage was sustained in any case, perhaps she was able to love her husband as fully as her vows called for. In that case, both he and she are remarkable people, as was Pope John Paul II.

For this reason as well, I cannot and so, will not, suggest adultery occurred. I cannot suggest, much less know, that lust was a problem for either party. (Physical attraction and intense emotionality need not become a matter of lust or adultery in one's heart, though of course they may do so. My hope is that the above picture of  SS. Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II demonstrate this in what seems to me to be a very natural and chaste expression of both masculine protectiveness and affection on JPII's part, and joyful receptivity, feminine affection, and even deeper love on Mother Teresa's. Had the picture been of JPII and Anna-Teresa instead, it likely would have been used by the public to condemn either or both of them. My point is there is no necessary reason for this conclusion from what we actually know.) In any case, I will continue reading about the situation and post updates as there is reason to do so. Thanks again for your questions.

We Are Pioneers! The Goal and Witness of Eremitic Life (Reprise)

I have always been a fan of Star Trek and its spin-off series. Some I have liked more than others, but all of them have engaged me on some level. I am finding Strange New Worlds especially wonderful, not only because of the exploration being done in each episode, but because of the rich characterizations, the struggle each player has to be their best selves, and the ethics of equality and compassion that permeate the show. In all of these aspects, Star Trek generally, and in Strange New Worlds specifically, I am reminded of a world we have the potential to be as part of a universe we can hardly imagine yet.

As a hermit, I don't imagine I will ever explore outer space! But I, and other diocesan hermits, are excited by the prospect of exploring inner space, the realm of life with God, and of life lived on the frontiers of eremitism with our canonical rights, obligations, and commitments. More, we do this as part of our ministry to and within the Church, precisely so the Church can be alive in the way she is called to be. This is also essential to the health and well-being of the world around us, and integral to God's own will for the whole of his creation. We are pioneers of sorts, and we struggle in the ways all pioneers struggle, first to live our lives with an integrity that is true to the solitary eremitical tradition we represent, and secondly, to be open to whatever new the Holy Spirit wills to do in and with our lives. That makes our lives a strange mixture of old and new, inner and externalized, traditional and novel, profoundly personal and expansively cosmic, all at the same time. Like many who have gone before me, and numbers of others journeying in the same way today, I think this is what it means to be a contemplative and to live as a hermit in the present moment!! 

It is also what it means (for anyone) to live in and from the Risen Christ, who abides at once in heaven and on earth. He is the one in whom the interpenetration of these realities is made real. In all of the Scripture I have done in the past years, two themes are newly important for my understanding of the nature of eremitical life and the journey I have been called to make. The first is the affirmation that God is the One who, from the beginning, has willed to be Emmanuel, an image of God that affirms his desire to be with me (and the whole of his creation) in every moment and mood of my life. Emmanuel is the name in which heaven and earth are drawn together to make the whole of God's dwelling place. The second theme that affirms this same will of God is that Jesus is the new Temple. A temple is not merely a holy place set apart for God or for worship of God. It is the place in which heaven (God's realm) and earth (creation's realm) are quite literally drawn together. Jesus as the new Temple becomes the One in whom heaven and earth interpenetrate one another, and the renewed world becomes God's own once again. 

Into this incredibly weighty story I have been born and born anew, and what I also know myself, now for the very first time, is that both I and this solitary eremitical vocation were made for times like these. (E E Cummings would shout with delight: "and books are shuter than books can be")! It is something of a truism to say that eremitic life tends to reappear or flourish during difficult times. But here we are, and here I am -- just 42 years into the life of the canon 603 vocation -- and our world faces crises on every front. The US is facing a Constitutional crisis and the endangering of our democratic society on numerous fronts; our people need to be able to hold onto hope, and religious freedom needs to be protected, especially from "Christian Nationalism" and the assault on religious freedom that ideology represents.  At the same time, the Catholic Church has just lost Pope Francis, one of our strongest voices for human rights, social justice, the threat to our environment, as well as to the place of a synodal Church in establishing and maintaining a just and compassionate Church and world. We look to the election of a new Pope and the renewal of the Church's mission, especially in the face of growing fascism, oligarchies, "Christian" Nationalism, and factionalization throughout the Church and the World.

I have written on this blog for almost twenty years about the task to become the person God calls each of us to be. A vocational path is the means by which we achieve this task and goal. An ecclesial vocation also means being part of those directly responsible for assisting the Church to be the Church God calls her to be. As a part of this task and goal, I have worked with a highly skilled spiritual director during this entire time, and together we have explored the ins and outs of my own journey to growth, healing, and union with God. It has been surprising, at times gratifying, at others exhilarating, and at other times (though especially the past nine years with this particular inner work) extremely difficult. In the main, just as it is for every hermit, it has been a journey of love --- loving, being loved, learning to be loved, and learning to trust and love more fully in return. This has meant exploring the depths of myself, learning what it means to be true and, through the love and mercy of God and others, to be made true and whole.  

In all of this, our relationship with the creator God is so central to our lives, so constitutive of who we are, that we can say we ARE this relationship, and like any relationship, it is both demanding and fulfilling. This is the inner world the hermit explores, commits to allowing being enlarged and deepened even to the limits of her human weakness and the darkness of personal alienation and fragmentation. The desert Abbas and Ammas spoke of doing battle with demons, and the vivid pictures they sometimes painted reflected the awesomeness of this same inner world. It was sometimes terrifying, always challenging, and, so long as one persevered, inevitably exhilarating in the victory of love over personal woundedness and brokenness. This is true of contemporary hermits as well. This victory culminates in union with God and the certain sense that one's life is given to God so that He may be the Emmanuel He wills to be, even as he makes of us those we are called to be, too. 

No, this isn't the final frontier of a Star Trek program. But it is every bit as exciting an adventure, and of much greater moment! At a time when truth is generally neglected and routinely betrayed, when personal truth is sacrificed for the sake of inhuman disvalues like greed and power, when Christianity itself is betrayed by a "prosperity gospel" with no room for the Cross or the authentic grace of God, when individualism replaces the commonality of brothers and sisters in Christ, hermits explore and witness to this deepest of truths, namely, to the extent we are truly human and live this with integrity, we ARE a relationship with God in which we both fulfill the telos of our lives, and participate in the fulfillment of the whole of God's creation. This is the source of all hope in our world, and it is the fundamental thing hermits are called to witness to with their lives. As Strange New Worlds might describe this vocation, Ad astra per aspera: Through difficulties to the stars!!