Followup questions on the Danger of Eremitical Life Without a Divine Call

[[ Dear Sister, why would the desert or a desert spirituality be considered dangerous? Why would it be dangerous for someone without a Divine call to be a hermit to try to live as one? I've heard a few times that the hermit life is dangerous, but hermits today don't live in real deserts, do they? So what's the danger?]]

I put up an older post before approaching this series of questions. Hopefully, any overlap will take the form of expansion. The basic truth at work in understanding various calls or vocational pathways is that each of us shares a single foundational vocation to authentic humanity. Authentic humanity is the task our lives are meant to accomplish, the single most important goal of our lives. Each of us must therefore discover the various pathways to authentic humanity that our own lives must follow. Some will tend towards marriage, some toward single life, some towards consecrated life, and some towards priesthood. Within these are various pathways that serve our fundamental vocations. Within both lay, clerical, and consecrated life, one important but rare pathway is eremitical life. What is critical regarding ANY pathway is that it helps lead us to authentic humanity.

The Great Commandment points us to the nature of authentic humanity and in the direction of both God and mankind. We are to learn to love as God loves, and we are to love both God, ourselves, and others as we love ourselves. Authentic humanity is all about loving both God and others more and more fully. Every genuine pathway must lead us to this, whether it focuses on union with God or communion with others. All persons depend on relationships with others to learn to love more authentically and fully. Such relationships are necessary for our humanity. So too is one's relationship with God. Every vocation must lead to our fulfilling of the Great Commandment. With eremitical life, we are looking at one of the rarest ways of achieving authentic humanity because our life with and for others is itself at once far more limited and essentially hidden from others. It is also more clearly dependent on one's developing life with God.

Unfortunately, the potential for self-delusion is very high with eremitical life, and the Church's corresponding responsibility is very high indeed with regard to discerning and supervising these vocations. Much passes for eremitism today; much masks isolation, selfishness, misanthropy, covert narcissism, individualism, and other forms of "me first" (or "me only"!!) life. Regular spiritual direction is absolutely necessary throughout the life, and everyone must take care that the hermit is truly growing in her kenotic capacity for love of God and all that is precious to God. They must be aware of the hermit's growth in prayer and in the courage and generosity required to give herself completely to Union with God for the sake of the Church and witness to the Church's Gospel. They will watch for selfishness, fear, the hermit's relative inability to love herself or others, as well as assessing her potential and capacity for fullness of life, and they will guide her appropriately on her path through darkness to light and authentic humanity.

It is in all of this that we begin to see the danger of eremitical life, especially when it is undertaken without ecclesial supervision or adequate spiritual direction. If one undertakes an essentially selfish or self-centered life while validating it with the name "eremitical", one has embraced the very world eremitical life requires one to renounce. More importantly, one claims to be witnessing to God and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ when one has really become antithetical to the God of Life. In such an instance, one's life is a lie, a sham, a fraud, and it doesn't matter how often one invokes the name of the Lord in one's "witness". This doesn't validate what one is living; instead, it may well condemn it. One misses or actually rejects the Divine gift of one's vocation to authentic humanity and the pathway(s) leading one there. This is the most obvious danger of claiming a vocation to eremitical life when one doesn't have one.

False hermits also endanger the vocation itself. It has always been difficult for the majority of folks to understand how Christianity could see the eremitical life as valid because one's call to love others is largely a hidden dimension of the life. One other way we might contribute to that without meaning to is by focusing our attention solely on the external constituent elements of that vocation without serious concern for the deeper journey these are meant to serve. For instance, some look at the degree of silence or solitude the person is living, the degree of poverty, prayer, limited ministry (which is ordinarily allowed so long as it is truly limited), etc., and try to discern whether or not the person is a hermit. The problem in measuring a vocation in these terms is that many people live alone without being hermits and without loving themselves, God, or others as every person is called to do. Many people embrace silence, reject actively ministerial lives, refuse to marry or live in community, and many live relatively impoverished lives while mistaking these for lives of religious poverty. Similarly, many pray in ways that need to deepen without actually working toward this. Few of these are called to be hermits, and I seriously suspect many have not yet discovered their own path to authentic humanity.

While the constitutive elements of c 603 are necessary elements that contribute significantly to an authentic c 603 eremitical life, they are not, per se, the heart of the vocation. Instead, the heart of the vocation is one's journey towards authentic humanity via growing union with God. This is what the hermit is about. This is who she is and who she is called to be primarily. Her witness stems from this specific journey and what it reveals to the Church and world, not only about God and authentic humanity, but also about the victory over sin and death achieved through the death and resurrection of God's Christ, the wisdom of faith, hope, and love, and the entire Gospel of God's Christ. The hermit witnesses in a particularly vivid way to all of these as reflections of her embodiment of the Great Commandment --- though the way she loves and the degree to which she loves will remain hidden from most.

I think you can see why, as noted above, a regular spiritual director is essential here. The journey the hermit makes is both hidden and countercultural in many ways. It is also contrary to the usual distractions and busyness of life in the world, even from ministerial life in the world. Because silence and solitude, especially together, break open our hearts and minds to the working of the Holy Spirit, this may involve their being broken open to past memories and woundedness. The journey to union with God involves a journey to the depths of ourselves and thus, to darkness and, at least sometimes, terror. When this happens, it is really important to have a spiritual director who can accompany us as we work through such things while staying on our present path to union with God. There is a lot to discern here, and while the hermit herself does this to whatever extent she can, talking things over regularly with someone who knows one and the spiritual life well is truly critical.

I'll end this for now. I hope it raises additional questions for readers. Thanks for writing!