Personal Update: That which only I can do . . .

Just a brief thank you and update on the reasons for my recent silence! First of all, thanks to everyone for your prayers. The treatment used was extremely helpful, and the signs I had developed that suggested further problems resolved almost immediately upon dropping one med from my regimen --- a very good sign. There is still some testing to be done, and an alternate treatment to be decided on, but on the whole, I am feeling much better!!! Writing continues, and I have managed to begin work on this blog again, so again, many thanks for your prayer. It is always helpful, but has been especially so recently!! It reminds me of a quote I love and believe is especially true for eremitical life's dependence on radical community: [[That which only I can do, I cannot do alone!]]

Questions on the Constituent Elements of c 603 and Writing a Rule of Life

[[Hi Sister Laurel. I read an older post you wrote about the beauty and depth of Canon 603. I was surprised at the way you read the canon and treat what you call "the constituent elements" of the Canon and the vocation itself. When a hermit writes a personal Rule for life under c 603, do they really have to write about all of these "constituent elements"? What does it mean if they don't write about everything? Isn't it possible to be living something without including it in your Rule? How long does it take before one can write about all of the constituent elements of C 603? . . . my own diocese is not really helpful in this process of writing a Rule, and I am really struggling to write one. . . . I am afraid my diocese will think I am goofing off, or that I am not really serious about becoming a diocesan process. . . .  Do you think that dioceses understand the time it takes to really live all of these elements and write about them?]]

Thanks for your questions! They are great and important. Moreover, even though the post you are talking about was written a while ago, it is one I am just now looking at again as part of another writing project. So let me take a shot at your questions. First of all, as kind of a backstory, or underlying foundation, I should note that I understand c 603 as a template of a lived vocation, not just a canon under which a person is professed and consecrated. Instead, I think of the canon as a model of one's embodiment of this vocation, a summary of the values one incarnates as one journeys to union with God in the silence of solitude. I think I said as much in the earlier post you referenced. Thus, while c 603 does not say everything about an individual's eremitic life, it does outline the elements critical to organically shaping what it means, in the Church, to live a consecrated solitary hermit life. (As a reminder for readers, these "constitutive" elements are 1) assiduous prayer and penance, 2) the silence of solitude, 3) stricter separation from "the world", 4) the Evangelical counsels, 5) A self-written and liveable Rule, 6) all lived under the supervision of the diocesan bishop.)

What is most striking to me is that, while c 603 does not literally mention the hermit's journey to union with God, each element presupposes, participates in, and provides necessary dimensions of this specific journey. This means the elements must be there in the hermit's Rule. She must explain what she understands by these elements, something of their spiritual and personal importance, and how she lives them because they are part of the template of a c 603 vocation and shape her as a hermit. If they are not present, or the hermit or hermit candidate does not demonstrate how she lives them and why, it may well be a sign of her incomplete embodiment of this vocation. That said, a couple of caveats are needed here. I don't mean one must live each element perfectly, only that they are substantive dimensions of the particular vocation and its journey to union with God, and need to be present. If they are not, the diocesan team has a good reason to enquire about this, how the candidate is planning to address the lack, and whether the diocese can help in some way. Without this attention, the hermit's journey to union with God and her witness to the Church and world will be frustrated and fail.

 This also means that one lives all of the constitutive elements of c 603 only with practice, prayer, study, or effort. One grows in one's understanding and living out of these elements. One needs to see them lived by others, discuss their importance in the consecrated eremitical life, and experiment with how one can best live them out at this particular stage of one's vocation. One needs to see them in conjunction with the other constituent elements and the whole tapestry of one's eremitical life. And one needs to understand the many ways in the life of the Church, each element has been legitimately lived in the Church, and why. So, for instance, despite some similarities, religious (or evangelical) poverty looks different for Franciscans than it does for Benedictines, and it certainly looks different for solitary hermits who are self-supporting. Moreover, religious poverty has a variety of levels or dimensions, some more superficial than others. Exploring these invites growth. So, what one says about this element of the canon and vocation, for instance, will say something about one's experience of religious poverty, and the pathways (or potential pathways) towards growth in eremitism that religious poverty provides. 

Similarly, stricter separation from the world looks different for the recluse and anchorite than for other hermits, etc. When I wrote my first Rule, I didn't even include stricter separation from the world. I wasn't sure I understood the term and didn't know if I believed in it anyway. I thought it might be consummately selfish and conflict with both the Christian eremite's mission and witness. It took study, reflection, prayer, and consultation before I could be sure of what I was proposing to commit myself to and why! Each of the constituent elements of the canon will reflect dimensions of our own growing maturity in the eremitical life. There are good reasons to refrain from writing about them in one's Rule, but not from a Rule which is written in preparation for profession and/or consecration. One may still be coming to greater clarity on the nature, the importance, or, for instance, the shape one of these elements takes in one's own eremitic life. One may not have adequate time to truly reflect on the element at all. Alternatively, one may have lived the element in one form of life and may be just coming to understand (or even just perceive!) the differences between this and c 603 life. Whatever the reason, what we write or fail to write can be a guide to our need for growth in the vocation.

I would encourage you not to worry about your own difficulty in writing a liveable Rule of Life. Treat the process of writing as part of a process of growth and trust that God is directing your work. Keep notes on what is changing for you, and in what way (i.e., note experiences, questions that have been raised, reading, conversations, etc.), during different periods. When you meet with diocesan staff or communicate with them, provide an overview of what has been happening for you over the months. Because very few dioceses have much, if any, experience with adequately implementing c 603, you will be educating your diocese on the nature and importance of the very process of writing a Rule of Life, even as you strengthen your working relationship with them. I do believe this kind of education is particularly important concerning the organically determined time frames involved, the role of the diocese in accompanying the candidate, the difference between writing a Rule and writing a liveable Rule, and especially, the use of the process of writing as a key to mutual discernment and personal formation.

Feast of St Romuald and the Camaldolese Congregation (Reprise)

 From the Camaldolese newsletter regarding today's feast:

June 19th is an official feast for the Camaldolese congregation. It marks the feast of the founder of the Camaldolese Congregation, Saint Romuald of Ravenna.

Born in 951 AD, Father Romuald, lying on his bed, gave his life back to God on the 19th of June 1027- (Saint Peter Damian: The Life of Blessed Romuald). As a young man, Romuald did penance for 40 days at the monastery of Sant’Apollonare near his home region of Ravenna, which was then an administrative city for the destroyed western Roman Empire, simply for being a witness of a duel where there was a death. He then became a monk there, but shortly afterward came under the tutelage of a hermit monk in Venice named Marino, with whom, among other things, he prayed the 150 psalms every day. Venice was at that time considered Byzantine territory. It was common practice for hermit monks to pray constantly, especially to pray the entire psalter daily. This was a tradition shared with the Levite priests of Judaism praying the Tehillim, the same tradition for monks of the desert in the north of Africa and the Middle East, as well as among both the eastern and western monks of the Roman Empire. In 978 Romuald left Venice to travel with an abbot of Cluniac tradition, Abbot Gari, to one of his monasteries under his jurisdiction located in Cuxa (the Pyrenees). There Romuald lived for almost 10 years as a hermit, but also participated in the cenobitic life with other monks. There, he was also ordained a priest.

These two pivotal places, Venice and the Pyrenees, marked the formative moments in his monastic life, where he realized the importance of a balance of eremitism and cenobitism in the spiritual life. After Cuxa, Saint Romuald returned to Ravenna and immediately to Montecasino for a short period of time. Then, and for the rest of his life, he moved through different areas in central Italy, mainly within what was then the Papal states, and Istria, which was part of the republic of Venice and is now Croatia, founding hermitages, reforming monasteries, and mentoring other monks.

Saint Romuald lived in tumultuous times, where alliances, principalities, empires, duchies, provinces, and new marquisates were forming. Unfortunately, during this period in history, nepotism (the favoring of relatives or friends) existed in order to secure geographical territory. Monasteries and abbeys were appointed or granted to secure some favor in government, alliances, or power. Simony (the buying and selling of religious posts or pardons) was also common.

Within this environment, Saint Romuald was appointed to various abbacies and also twice threatened with death. He rejected the threats and avoided compromising situations with his religious fervor and piety, always responding to the call to serve and surrender to God’s call. He preferred times of prayer and seclusion above all; in his interactions with other monks, as is stated in both documents that narrate his life (Saint Peter Damian’s The Life of Blessed Romuald and Saint Bruno of Querfurt’s The Life of the Five Brothers), he always gave counsel to monks to return to their cells and pray. He attracted multiple candidates to monasticism, and his fame grew in the region of what is now Tuscany, Venice, Croatia, and Rome.

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (partial reprise)

 Thanks to everyone who has contacted me this last week, because I have not been posting for several weeks! I really appreciate it!! I want to request prayers for the next two or three weeks. I have some new medical problems made even more complicated by the side effects of the necessary meds we've tried. So please, keep us (me, my docs, et al) in your prayers!!!!! Prayers, too (please), for the writing I have been doing. The project is both more demanding and more exciting than I had expected. Many thanks!!! (And for those awaiting responses, thanks for your patience; I am getting those out today.)

Meanwhile, (and I am aware of the irony of this feast), today we celebrate a feast that sometimes seems irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies, which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theologies of grace and freedom point directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways which are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term that points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood, which the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way or another, we respond to become the people we are called to be. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind, it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing that could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Other times, love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, and, of course, a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover. In such cases, our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff, and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened," and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts, they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, callousedness. Such hardening is self-protective, but it also locks us into a world that makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons --- and I use only Sons because of the prophetic, countercultural sense that term had for women in the early Church), we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence. Like the Sacred Heart, our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others, but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic (self-emptying) dimensions and, therefore, too, by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart that heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts that love as God loves, and therefore, do justice in our world. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!