First Steps: Applying Hermit Lessons to Those with Chronic Illness and Disability

[[Hi Sister Laurel,  I am chronically ill, probably on the way to being disabled. I don't want to live as a hermit. I want to do as much as I can with my education and my talents. I also want to maintain my relationships with others, but there is no doubt that illness limits my ability to do all these things, sometimes more than other times. Does what hermits live still apply to me if I am disabled or chronically ill? Can you please explain how what you live could apply to me even if I am not a hermit and don't want to be one?]]  (Redacted some)

Yes, I can sure try at least to start doing so in this post!!! Thanks for your question! When I look at my life, I know that it bears witness to two different sets of conditions: 1) those appropriate to a hermit, and 2) those appropriate to someone with chronic illness and disability. What is also true, however, is that in my life and that of other hermits with chronic illness, for instance, these two sets of conditions overlap. They are both ways to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they are both examples of desert experiences, and even forms of desert existence. Both of these sets of conditions demand that I pose serious existential questions, questions of being and meaning, and that I am open to the most radical answer available to us, so let me start there.

Existential questions of Being and Meaning:

Questions of being revolve around the issue of being my true self. So, for instance (and just off the top of my head!) what does it mean to be truly human? Is it possible for me to be fully myself if illness (or hermit life) limits the gifts I can develop and use for others? Is it possible for me to learn to truly love others maturely if my relationships with others are curtailed by the limitations of disability (or hermit life)?  Questions of meaning revolve around the value and purposefulness of my life in Christ, whether as a Christian with a disability or as someone living in eremitical solitude. And largely, these questions can be answered positively and become a witness for others if the questions of being can be answered positively. For example, if I answer the question about the possibility of being truly myself positively based on my experience of disability or of eremitical life, then I can proceed to explain what the value or purpose of my life is or has been and why that is important. This essentially works out as Christian witness for the sake of others.

Whether one is a hermit or has no inclination to be one, disability and chronic illness impose a variety of existential questions of meaning. What kind of theology makes sense of both my suffering and the limitations associated with chronic illness? Does God will suffering? Could I love such a God? Why has this happened to me? Am I able to develop and use some of my God-given gifts? What if I am not? Am I able to value myself as a person with unique limitations or is that difficult for me? What makes it possible for me to affirm my beauty as a human being not only in spite of my limitations but perhaps because of them and what God is helping me to do with them? What do I do when other people seem to be repulsed by me? What do I do if I am repulsed by myself? Does my life really have value, can I really make a meaningful contribution, or am I a waste of skin? I am so angry because of my situation that I can't love myself or anyone else; what am I supposed to do? Am I just unlovable? Can I get past my limitations and really love others? In whatever way we ask these kinds of questions, they are questions about the meaning of our lives, and they are some of the deepest existential questions we incarnate.

A number of these questions are also raised by the solitary eremitical life, especially those dealing with our capacity and willingness to love ourselves and others, and those centered around letting go of specific God-given gifts in order to embrace a solitary eremitical life. Does the hermit really live a full and meaningful life when letting go of such gifts? Do they really make a meaningful contribution to the Church and world? Of course, all of the theological questions raised and many more besides will show up in some form. We are used to esteeming certain forms of ministry and valuing lives that make a contribution in strict Gospel language (preaching the Gospel, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick, etc.), but hermits are a different matter because of their hiddenness, and because the value of their lives raises significant questions, both for them and for those who know and regard them.

Finding the Answer to Our Existential Questions:

Hermits don't only live the deep existential questions of being and meaning, over time, both through their studies (Scripture, Spirituality, and Theology) and through their experience (especially of inner work like that of spiritual direction and through their long history of assiduous prayer), they come more and more to know the answers to these questions. Your own chronic illness invites you to be aware of and pose such significant questions. It invites you to find the answers!!! You need not withdraw completely to do this. Good friends can help. So can priests, pastors, spiritual directors, some physicians and therapists, and the time you take exploring such questions in writing, art, music, prayer, etc. This kind of exploration is not selfish. It can serve others who also suffer from chronic illness and disability. Of course, you could distract yourself from such things and never really grapple with them, but that would be a lot like someone calling themselves a hermit while watching TV many hours a day, or otherwise being taken up with screens, etc. It would be like a hermit who does not commit themselves to the long and ever-deepening journey to union with God, which is all about growth in a relationship that completes us, and witnesses to the truth of the Gospel we find in Romans 8, for instance.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j] 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What is critically important to both the hermit and to the person with chronic illness or disability is the fact that the "answer" to our existential questions is discovered as we learn who we really are, and that only happens in relationship with those who see us for who we truly are. This does not mean seeing our flaws and limitations, though they will also do that, but rather seeing us as God sees us. In monastic life, the wisdom of truly seeing is seeing with the heart, seeing a person with love. This is what it means to see someone (including ourselves) as God sees us. It is what the Magnificat refers to when it says that God regards Mary. In journeying to union with God, one will journey to the depths of one's own darkness, one's own distortions, defences, selfishness, fear, and despair. The hermit is committed, however, to finding the Light that darkness could not overcome.  She trusts in the existence of such a Light and she learns, in time, to trust that this Light is deeper and more real than the darkness and distortions that obscure it. When she meets this Light, she meets not only her truest self, but the God Jesus revealed to us on the Cross, the God whose love nothing at all can separate us from. Here is the source of real hope and the ability to live with chronic illness/disability as a source of grace.

Obviously, this God is not only available to hermits. Such availability does, however, mean committing oneself to developing a strong and regular prayer life in which one grows in knowing God and oneself as God knows one. It means committing oneself to the kind of inner work that allows all of those existential questions to be fully posed so that God might reveal himself as the answer God is, and to do so as fully as possible. It means discerning how best to live one's life while accepting unavoidable and painful limitations. Hermits can be something of an exemplar here, especially if they have their own disabilities, but even if they don't, they still choose to allow God alone to be and do in their lives what only God can ultimately be and do. They want, and are called to witness to the deepest truth of the Gospel! 

For every person created, God is the One who completes us and is the very source of both Being and Meaning. In other words, God is the one in whom the unique existential question that we ourselves are is "answered" and resolved. God is the source of meaningful life, peace, hope, love, truth, beauty, wholeness, and holiness. The basic or foundational vocational task of every human being is to let God be precisely THIS God, the God without whom we cannot be truly human or truly whole. When we are "successful" in such a vocation, the God our lives reveal and witness to in Christ, is the God Jesus revealed fully, the One we call Emmanuel (i.e., the one who is known most truly as God With Us)!!

Please treat this as a starting point for your questions. If you have other, more practical questions, please get back to me. There are probably other pieces from the last year or two that are clearer, so have a look at those as well.