Followup on Dating While in Pre-Discernment Regarding a Religious Vocation

[[Dear Sister, I read your post on dating while in the "pre-discernment" process of entering a religious order (cf., Dating While in Pre-Discernment). I was surprised to hear you talk about dating while doing this. Shouldn't you be pointing people to celibacy and to religious life instead? You said that perhaps the person would find that they were called to marriage or associateship, but what happens if they are called by God to religious life and then get pregnant or decide to marry because they are infatuated? What happens if they never are able to enter religious life? I wonder about your advice!]]

Thanks for your questions. I am happy to answer them and try to show why I advised what I did. First though let's get something really clear. I am not a recruiter for a religious congregation. My "job" is not to point people to any specific vocation or try to get them to live in any particular way beyond as an authentic Christian (or human being!). Instead it is to  answer whatever questions I am asked in a way which is honest and which, I hope, will open up a future to the person. Sometimes this has to do with religious life generally, often with eremitical life specifically, and sometimes with the requirements of canon 603, etc. In cases dealing with religious life of any sort I am going to try to stress the maturity required, and quite often, the formation needed to achieve this maturity.

Secondly, in advising the person to go ahead and date someone whom she thought she was in love, I also reminded her she was called to chastity in whatever state of life she found herself. Nothing I said suggested transgressing chastity simply because I recommended dating! Quite the opposite in fact. When a person is considering entering a religious institute to discern a vocation in a mutual process they should not only be considering this single vocation --- or better put maybe, they should be open to other possibilities entering their life as their true vocation. The person who wrote me had at least as much chance of discovering she had a vocation to marriage as to religious life. A number of other possibilities also existed and may still! It is incumbent on her to maintain her spiritual life and to focus on truly growing in her capacity for love and generosity in mature relationships prior to and during any vocational step she might eventually take.

I am troubled that you connect dating so automatically with having sex. Of course I know that this is not only your association. It is part and parcel of the society and culture and that is profoundly troubling to me. I am not sure we have ever lived in a time or culture where something as sacred as sexual intercourse was so thoroughly demeaned and trivialized. But if a person cannot date without giving him or herself away to another in this manner, if "hooking up" is a routine transgression of significant boundaries everyone does because it is fun or expected or simply meaningless --- much less a way of exploiting another or "proving" one's masculinity/femininity or demonstrating one's love for someone --- then how can we expect them to live a life of radical generosity in celibate religious life without transgressing significant boundaries there as well?

The same goes for marriage. Dating is a time of exploration, yes, but it is also a time of restraint and real care while each one learns to honor the other, their God, and the boundaries which help constitute and protect each person's selfhood and personal integrity. Dating is an intense process of learning to love another and maturing in that capacity (as well as helping them mature in theirs) so that, should one discern one is called to marriage (whomever that involves!!), one will be able make the complete and unique self gift that implies. If that self-gift is to be made instead in religious life, then the process of dating while remaining chaste will have helped the future religious prepare for this complete and unique oblation in celibacy. It also will enrich his or her life in ways which are almost immeasurable. A male or female religious who is capable of healthy, chaste, and strong relationships with someone of the opposite sex is an incredible gift to the Church and world. Dating helps prepare the way for this as much as it helps prepare the way for marriage.

It seems to me then that two young persons who are dating need to realize they are helping one another to grow in their capacity for a life commitment. It is as much about the fact that God is calling the other person to a unique vocation as it is that God is calling oneself to that! One needs to bear in mind that God has a singular calling for each of us! Parents help form the foundation for such a commitment, but it really is with peers that our capacity for this is solidified. If one is only thinking about their own vocation while dating another then they are not nearly generous enough in their relationship. BOTH persons have divine callings and both need to grow in their capacity for responding to and living such a calling --- not only in learning to love others genuinely, but in developing the capacity to sacrifice one's own immediate desires and so forth for the sake of the other and the other's vocation as well. Dating can serve as a significant part of this specific form of maturing.

Will young (and not so young) people make mistakes? Yes, they will. Some will get pregnant, some will marry before really being sure this is what God is calling them to. But some will be able to act wisely and lovingly and some relatively few of these will also be called to religious life. The real or most fundamental vocation any of us are called to is authentic humanity and this itself is about being loved and loving in genuinely mature ways. Thereafter we may find one path or another is the best way for strengthening and expanding this capacity in us, but, whether we miss that path or not, the essential or fundamental vocation is still the same. While I think it is a terrible shame if someone fails to discern a genuine call to religious life, for instance, I recognize that God does not cease calling any of us to be ourselves in the most exhaustive ways possible. We have to trust in God's creative power and will. We have to focus not on what we missed (or on mistakes we made) but on the future God calls us to nonetheless.

You see, the greater risk I see is in religious vocations embraced and lived by those incapable either of mature relationships with persons of the opposite sex or of living a mature (and chaste) sexuality than with "missing" one's specific vocational path. The first is genuinely disastrous and may hurt many people; the second may be a significant bump in the road but it does not end the vocational journey itself.

Is Vocation Ever Coercive?

 [[Sister Laurel, do you think God wanted you to be chronically ill so that you would become a hermit?  I am asking because one blogger on the eremitical life wrote that without her chronic illness she might well be tempted to live as other than a hermit and God told her he didn't want that. Here is what she said, [[perhaps the hermit would be drawn out from its vocational calling as a consecrated Catholic hermit. The temptation would be great to do so. The Lord has told it in the witnessed presence of [name] that if the physical pain were eased, this soul would be back out into the world--and the Lord did not will that.]] Do you think God would refuse to heal you so that you can keep on living as a hermit? I also wondered how the Church would deal with someone who was so tempted to leave a vocation as a hermit that God had to inflict her with serious pain and illness to keep her in the hermitage! I mean that sounds kind of depraved to me.

In what kind of God do we believe?

My answer is an unequivocal NO! I think it is always important to ask ourselves what kind of God would operate in this way. If we leave the character of such a God merely implicit we may never see that we have suggested God is some kind of monster responsible for the sufferings and tragedies of our lives. I think it is clear that the author of the comments suffers from serious pain and that that means she struggles to make sense of the dislocation that has caused. But to attribute all of this to a God who wants her to be a hermit and knows she would consider returning to "the world" outside her hermitage, and thus actually causes her to have terrible physical pain to prevent that is simply awful theology in any number of ways. Catholic faith's theology of vocation is skewed in this presentation, as is a theology of discernment. The same is true of our concept of free will, authentic freedom, providence, and of course, any other bit of theology that depends on an eternally faithful, self-emptying, creative, merciful God who is love-in-act itself.

Still, the questions you asked are important and the problem of theodicy (a theology of suffering) is one with which theologians and every individual human being struggles. But no. I do not believe God willed me to develop a medically and surgically intractable seizure disorder accompanied by chronic pain. Never! No God worth worshiping would will such a situation. Illness is a symptom of sin, the state of estrangement from the ground of being and meaning. We are all more or less subject to it, more or less threatened by it, and in many ways assured that one day we will know it intimately. Sometimes we are complicit in the illnesses that befall us or those near us. In any case illness is an enemy of God. Sin and death are intimately related and death, we are told in Scripture, is the final enemy to be placed under God's feet. We simply cannot buy into theodicies that make God complicit in these realities.

The Place of Chronic Illness in my Own Life:

But what do I believe about the place of chronic illness and God's will in my life? Clearly I believe that God called me to this life and I believe that chronic illness is an important source of my understanding of this vocation; in fact, I would argue that I am suited to this vocation in a unique way because of chronic illness and other life circumstances. I would even argue these elements of my life prepared me for this call and for living it ever more deeply and authentically. When I quoted the passage from The Hermitage Within recently (cf A Contemplative Moment on Entire Availability) I was pointing to something profoundly true in my own life, namely, that even when our lives are stripped of individual discrete gifts and talents, when all we have to offer is a kind of emptiness, God can and will make a gift of that (of us!). It is precisely this bottom line kind of situation the eremitical life witnesses to. As I have written here a number of times now, human beings ARE covenant realities, made for and of union with God. Their weakness is the counterpart of divine power and sovereignty;  unless a person's life evidences significant weakness and stripping or emptying how can they witness to the unmerited fullness of the grace of God?

At the same time, whether life has stripped the person in this way or they have renounced the use of so many of their gifts and talents in becoming a hermit, they MUST witness to the other side of the equation. When one looks closely at her life one MUST see a life defined not by the things that stripped and emptied that life of gifts and talents (or of the opportunities to use these) but instead a life defined by the grace of God that transfigures and redeems such a life. Here is one of the differences between a hermit and a failure at life, between a hermit and a curmudgeon, between a hermit whose life is truly one of the silence of solitude (the quies of a life in union with God) and one whose silence is merely a mute scream of anguish, between an authentic hermit and an isolated individual whose life is marked by deprivation and lack of real relatedness (which would include a superficial or nominal relationship with God).

For a long time I was unable to see various circumstances in my life as gifts which truly prepared me for answering this unique call of God with a commitment to eremitical life. They really seemed to be obstacles to the fullness God was calling me to instead. Today I see them as gifts, not because God willed them but because God transfigured them in ways which made an infinite sense of them. Thus, I am not saying I believe God always called me to be a hermit, much less that God willed the negative circumstances in my life that especially prepared me for the response I was to make to God's call --- circumstances like chronic illness for instance. Part of what I am saying is that God always called me to be fully alive and especially to be myself in union with Himself; the circumstances of my life tailored the kind of answer or response I could and would give.

They tailored or shaped the form which my response to God's love and promise of life would need to take just as they shaped the aspects of the Gospel I would be most responsive to. They urged me to respond to the Word of Life wherever it entered my life, in the smallest and most ordinary ways --- and in a few absolutely extraordinary ones as well. Especially all this defined my call in terms of weakness, emptiness, and stripping because it was these which were redeemed and transformed by the unfailing love of God. These were what needed to be transfigured so that they would not have the last word in my life, or better, so that they would speak of victory rather than of absurdity, defeat and destruction! The various vocations I felt called to (Religious life, teaching, writing, and music) served, both more and less well in the accomplishment of all that. As my director reminded me when we spoke about some of this last week, God's word (so Isaiah 55 promises) does not return to him void.

Vocation as collaboration:

The one "shaped response" which was truly adequate, to the circumstances of my own life and the necessary and unique witness to their redemption or perfecting is, in fact, eremitical life and beyond that, solitary eremitical life. In other words, my entire life prepared me to make this specific and radical response to the creative call of God. I have the sense that God's call and my response are a collaboration which makes my whole life an expression of Gospel truth and joy. Thus it seems to me that vocation is always a matter of collaborating (or, at the very least, cooperating!) with the creator God who brings life out of death and an awesome and infinitely complex cosmos out of nothing at all.Today I recognize that had the circumstances of my life been different  I would likely have still become a theologian and religious Sister with a bent for solitude, but my call to eremitism is more radical because the answer to the question of my life needed to be a truly radical one.

Thus, the vocation we eventually embrace is something which frees us; it makes sense of and answers or completes (resolves) the questions we are. It is a supreme act of love on God's part and our embrace is an act of worship only we can make or become. Our whole lives we listen for that God who calls each and all of us to life and freedom in the midst of even the worst circumstances. We listen to the deepest yearnings of our heart, to the cries of anguish that result when those yearnings are frustrated, denied, and damped, to the potential and talents we hold and develop as signs of the promise of our lives, and the words of encouragement we cling to as part of what motivates and gives us hope. The response we will one day become is shaped in all of these ways and more by the God who is with us in all things. Each of these is a face of vocation, an aspect of the creative and loving call of the God who, standing with us moment by moment, draws us more deeply into a genuine future --- and in fact, into our own truest future.

The only personally diminishing or coercive aspects of this picture are those supplied by sin and evil. So, no, I absolutely reject the notion that God willed me or anyone else to be ill so that we might be forced somehow to become a hermit. The notion that God might thereafter have refused to ease my (or anyone's) suffering much less made it worse lest I (or they) chose something else is absolute anathema and quite frankly, it is blasphemous anathema at that. Such a "God" is unworthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; this God would be a scandal and only worthy of our rejection. To believe in such a God is to apotheosize coercion and violence. It is to transform the idea of a vocation or call from an awesome gift into an oppressive, even crippling burden and to make ludicrous any attempts to speak of Gospel freedom or the covenant nature of human existence. As you have said so well, all this sounds "depraved."

The Church and the Discernment of Eremitical Vocations:

Your question about the church's approach to a person struggling in the way the person you quoted seems to be struggling is also a good one. I don't think anyone I know in vocations work would let a person who admitted such deep unhappiness with a vocational path to continue pursuing it. Above all, my sense is the Church (diocesan Vicars, Bishops, vocation personnel, pastors, etc) would encourage the person to embrace the world as sacramental and push her to seek God in those things she really loves and is drawn to. That is especially true if there is significant suffering; after all, God does not will suffering and there must be sources of life and inspiration which allow the grace of God to counter such difficulty. Since suffering and chronic illness tend to isolate one, unless there are strong indications that solitude is precisely this person's way to human wholeness and profound joy, I sincerely doubt any diocese would allow them to be professed or consecrated as a solitary hermit.

It is not easy to make sense of the suffering that exists in our lives and to some extent I can understand why the person you cited wrote what she did. After all, the Old Testament is full of stories which attribute the calamities of life to "the gods". But more and more what emerges throughout the OT is the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob and Israel who is revealed in terms of mercy and compassion. In the New Testament the revelation of just HOW exhaustively merciful and compassionate this real God is is realized in our midst as he spends himself to rescue us from sin and death by becoming subject to these things in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus his Christ. It is here especially that love has the last word as reconciliation (union or completion) and life are brought forth from the depths of godless death and godless death itself is destroyed forever. To affirm that God refuses to ease a person's pain or even exacerbates it so that she cannot pursue another way of living is to implicitly reclaim the gods being progressively rejected in the Old Testament at the expense of the God of Jesus Christ. Probably we all have pockets of such belief deep within us, but if we are to respond to the gifts our vocations truly are it is really imperative that we outgrow these and allow them to be replaced by the merciful and compassionate God of Jesus Christ.

Reflection for the Feast (Memorial) of Maximillian Kolbe

N.B., I gave a version of this reflection at a Liturgy of the Word with Communion service today at my parish. The sections in italics were borrowed from the post I wrote earlier for this Feast day and reprised yesterday.

We may think of our humanity as something we possess, a given which cannot be lost, but Christians recognize that our humanity is more a task entrusted to us than it is a possession or simple given. Most specifically humanity is the living reality that comes to be when God who is a constituent part of our very being shines forth within and through us. We are truly human to the extent we image God, not in the weak and inadequate sense of imitating his love and mercy, but in the strong sense of letting these heal and transfigure us. We are truly human to the extent we ARE a covenant with God. Covenant for us is not a mere agreement or arrangement we have undertaken with God as some sort of business partner but something we embody and come more and more to embody over our lifetimes.

In Douglas Steere's Together in Solitude, I read the following passage last night. (Steere is a Quaker who writes marvelously on the topics of solitude and community, as well as on silence, prayer and the challenge and task of becoming human.) Here he writes of a story he heard which illustrates part of the task of becoming our truest selves, selves which allow the fire of God's love to flame through us and bring light and warmth to our world. Steere recounts, [[During WWII, a Quaker artist friend of ours who lived in East Berlin painted a water color of three men standing some distance away but in clear view of Christ on the Cross. Each man was holding a mask in his hands and looking up at the crucified one with a mingled gaze of longing and fear: of longing to follow the way to which Christ beckoned him, and of fear both at the loss of his mask which the sight of Christ on the Cross had struck from him and at the price that following the new way might exact of him.]]

Today is the Feast of St Maximillian Kolbe. As I noted in an earlier post his story is as follows: [[Maximillian Kolbe who died on this day in Auschwitz after two months there, and two weeks in the bunker of death-by-starvation. Kolbe had offered to take the place of a prisoner selected for starvation in reprisal when another prisoner was found missing and thought to have escaped. The Kommandant, taken aback by Kolbe's dignity, and perhaps by the unprecedented humanity being shown, stepped back and then granted the request. Father Maximillian sustained his fellow prisoners and assisted them in their dying. He was one of four remaining prisoners who were murdered in Block 13 (see illustration below) by an injection of Carbolic Acid when the Nazi's deemed their death by starvation was taking too long. When the bunker was visited by a secretary-interpreter immediately after the injections, he found the three other prisoners lying on the ground, begrimed and showing the ravages of the suffering they had undergone. Maximillian Kolbe sat against the wall, his face serene and radiant. Unlike the others he was clean and bright. ]]

[[The stories told about Maximillian Kolbe's presence and influence in Auschwitz all stress a couple of things: first, there was his great love of God, Mary the Imaculata, and his fellow man; secondly, it focused on the tremendous humanity he lived out and modeled in the midst of a hell designed in every detail to dehumanize and degrade. These two things are intimately interrelated of course, and they give us a picture of authentic holiness which, extraordinary as it might have seemed in Auschwitz, is nothing less and nothing more than the vocation we are each called to in Christ. 

Together, these two dimensions of true holiness/authentic humanity result in "a life lived for others," as a gift to them in many ways -- self-sacrifice, generosity, kindness, courage, etc. In particular, in Auschwitz it was Maximillian's profound and abiding humanity which allowed others to remember, reclaim, and live out their own humanity in the face of the Nazi's dehumanizing machine. No greater gift could have been imagined in such a hell.]] This was a man with no masks at all, no obstacles to the God who lived within and was mediated by him to others. He was authentically human only to the extent he revealed the God who is Love-in-act to others

In today's readings the accent is on our God, his mercy and what he does with human weakness and the stripping that life brings our way. In Joshua, for instance, the lection is a litany of verbs contrasting human need and the dynamic of Divine mercy: You were captive, lost, hungry, threatened, homeless and childless, and I delivered,  fed,  gave to, assigned,  brought you, led you, planted for you, etc. In every instance God is revealed as the merciful one who gifts us in our weakness and incapacity. The real fruitfulness of our lives is God's work in and through us. The passage comes to a climax in the following reminder: [[I gave you a land that you had not tilled and cities that you had not built, to dwell in; you have eaten of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.]] As difficult as some of the examples might be for us Israel struggled to affirm the truth that genuinely fruitful lives are reflections of the unmerited mercy and love of God.

In the gospel lection Matthew speaks of two of the main ways human beings are made increasingly ready and able to image and mediate God's love to others. The first is marriage where to some degree husbands and wives set aside their own agendas and honestly embrace their own strengths and weaknesses for the sake of spouse, of children, of their children's children, the church, the world around us and, of course, for God's own sake (for the sake of Love itself) as well. It is a life demanding profound honesty and sacrifice if it is to be the sacramental reflection of the union between God and the Human Person it is meant to be.

The second is religious life where Sisters and Brothers commit to stripping the masks we might adopt and wear otherwise and eschewing the things which might mark us as valuable in ordinary terms: the mask of financial success and wealth, the mask of power and influence, and finally, even the mask of our own will and agenda --- our own identity as director of the course of our own inner and outer worlds, however great or small we perceive these to be. Through this renunciation and a life of prayer we also open ourselves to allowing God to be the sole source of strength and validation in our lives. In this life too we embrace both joy and sacrifice for the sake of Love itself.

In my own vocation, what is true is that the hermit commits to laying aside many of her gifts simply so that she may witness to God's love and who that makes her to be; she commits to being a revelation of the covenant each person is with God, to the completion that we each know in God even when stripped of all of the talents we associate with ourselves and apostolic ministry. And that is really true of each of us as well. Our humanity is our most fundamental vocation and the greatest task of our lives. Whatever the vocational path we take to that union with God we are each called to be, it is humanity itself that is "our" (God's) greatest achievement and the single most important gift we can bring to the inhuman situations still so prevalent in our world. That is one of the lessons of Maximillian Kolbe's life and the real nature of any call to holiness.

A Little on Witnessing to a Love that Does Justice in the Face of Tyranny

 [[Dear Sister, I am new to your blog and I haven't explored it very much. I am surprised to find a hermit writing about current events. Do you really not hate ISIS? I think I do. I think I shouldn't but I can't control what I feel when people kidnap and threaten to burn children alive! But here are my real questions. From other articles it seems that your vocation is pretty new and not very well known. I know we don't have any Canon 603 hermits in our parish or diocese. How many of you are there in the US? Do Canon 603 hermits exist in other countries as well? Are there many of them? Do you mind if I ask other dumb questions before I read much of your blog?]]

Welcome to Stillsong Hermitage's blog then. To be honest, I don't write very much about current events but I was asked to write about the situation in Syria and I was very moved by the murder of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. That this occurred just as we were preparing for Lent and the ritual of being marked with the sign of the cross in ashes made things immensely more weighty in my own mind and heart. Add to that the fact that I was just beginning to read the Scriptures with eyes more newly sensitized to the place of honor-shame in Middle Eastern cultures and to see many of Jesus' encounters with family, religious leaders, and so forth as violations of honor, occasions leading to dishonor and shame for some, and you can see why these stories had a special poignancy for me.

You see I have recently come to understand freshly the difference between what guilt-sin-individualist cultures like ours and honor-shame-collectivist cultures like those of the Middle East perceive as honorable. Consciences in these two types of society are formed in vastly different ways from one another. It is not necessarily that consciences have been turned off, as a friend recently commented to me, but rather that they are formed very differently, namely as an instance of group conscience according to what the group determines to be honorable or dishonorable. In light of this I came to see even more clearly how Jesus could be crucified or the cross could be a symbol of the most abject dishonor/shame an individual could know. I have also recently been freshly sensitized to the epidemic quality of shame in our Western culure and to how extraordinarily thin in number and depth have been the reflections of systematic theologians on this aspect of the Gospel and Cross of Christ despite the fact that exegetes regularly remind us that the Gospel writers focus on not the physical pain Jesus experienced but the shame associated with his crucifixion.

These and other threads came together for me recently within a short period of time and all of them were and are critically important. We have either lost or never had an adequate sense of how very counter cultural Jesus and the Kingdom he proclaimed were and are. If we are to begin to understand ISIS and to deal with them adequately we must recover and/or cultivate this awareness. If we are to love our enemies as well as our brothers and sisters in the faith, we must understand this. I suppose it is particularly ironic that a very small piece of this reflection on current events in light of Jesus' Kingdom message and behavior comes from a diocesan hermit living a relatively hidden and certainly silent and contemplative life. But this really is the role of contemplatives and hermits in the Church. Living in silence at the center of existence makes this possible and sometimes, anyway, even imperative. I am reminded of something Thomas Merton once wrote:

I make monastic [eremitical] silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and, when I speak, it is to deny my faith and my Church can ever seriously be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, and believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also and perhaps against these most of all.

Of course, in the situation with ISIS the self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny are not those of the Church nor of Islam. But they are those of religion more generally. It is against just this kind of tyranny that Jesus stood, and against which we should stand in our own lives today. This is the reason theologians often distinguish religion from faith. Faith does not allow us to hate. Often it calls us to be weak and lacking in control but still it empowers us to love. This is so because it is rooted in trust in God's love and the power of that love to create justice. So, ordinarily my own protest is carried out in silence and prayer. Martyrdom, witness, takes many forms. When so many threads some together as happened recently, it may be time to speak.

Numbers of Canon 603 Hermits in the US and Elsewhere:

As for your "real" questions. . . numerically the diocesan hermit vocation is quite rare. While there have always been hermits --- especially in the Eastern Church (their course has been more variable in the Western Church, sometimes dying out altogether) --- diocesan hermits only came to be a possibility in 1983 with the publication of the Revised Code of Canon Law. The model and original impetus for the establishment of this new form of consecrated/religious life was a group of about a dozen hermits who had once lived solemn vows as monks in community; when they discerned a call to solitude they each had to leave their monasteries and solemn vows and become secularized; this was because there was no provision in their own congregation's proper law for solitary life, nor was there any provision in canon law --- the more universal law of the Church. Eventually they came under the protection of Bishop Remi de Roo who came to see the significance of their vocation. Bishop Remi then made an intervention at Vatican II sincerely pleading with the Church Fathers to recognize the eremitical life as a way of perfection. Nothing happened at Vatican II but the plans for a revision of Canon Law were initiated and these eventually included Canon 603 which provides for solitary consecrated hermits in universal law for the very first time.

In the US there are about 80 diocesan hermits, perhaps a small number more or fewer. The Vatican has begun to include numbers of c 603 hermits in their statistics on religious and consecrated life but I don't think any have yet been published. In some countries there are none at all. I have a friend in New Zealand who is a diocesan hermit; she is the only one there. In other countries, France and Italy, for instance, there are more than in the US but the number is still relatively small. Because canon 603 is part of a universal Code of Canon Law binding on the Universal Church, not just a single diocese here or there (as was once the case with hermits or anchorites in Europe, for instance), there are now diocesan hermits all over the world. As you can see though, relatively speaking diocesan hermits are an infinitesimally small percentage within the Universal Church.

Finally, please don't worry about questions being "dumb". I have asked in the past for folks to pose whatever questions they have. A few people do that and some even ask questions on an infrequent but more or less regular basis. They are all very helpful to me. For instance in a post I put up earlier I was able to answer a question about the meaning of the term "institutes". It never occurred to me that word could be a source of misunderstanding for someone reading canon 603 ("Besides institutes of consecrated life, the Church recognizes the eremitic or anchoritic life. . .") but it was a really great question because it made something clear to me I had not known. I think all questions can do that but quite often it is the most obvious ones that don't get asked and could be most instructive for readers, and for myself as well! So while I do encourage you to read posts linked to the labels on the right of this blog, please know all questions are more than welcome.

On Professing Someone who does not Desire it

[[Hi Sister Laurel. Did your Bishop desire you to become a diocesan hermit? Is it possible that a Bishop would ASK someone to petition to be accepted as a diocesan hermit? I have read that a Bishop might desire this for the diocese and could do so even if the individual is not interested in becoming a diocesan hermit. Does this happen? A lot?]]

I think that I have been asked something similar before. If so this answer may repeat some of my earlier answer. Please check through the labels (below and to the right) so see if other posts also speak to these questions. (Actually I am now fairly certain I have done so some time last year or so; I would suggest looking under the labels authentic and inauthentic eremitism and/or abuses of canon 603 to find related posts.)

The idea of someone becoming a diocesan hermit simply because a bishop personally desires it is VERY unlikely! Moreover, the notion that a bishop would desire someone to do this even if they do NOT feel called to it themselves is even more completely unlikely --- not least because it is a silly and at least potentially, a seriously destructive way to proceed with regard to this specific vocation. (Actually, it's not a particularly desirable or edifying way to proceed with any vocation (consider marriage undertaken in this way for a great sense of SOME of the problems involved), but I would argue it is especially undesirable and disedifying with eremitical life!) Bishops, while they might say to someone, "Have you ever considered becoming a priest or religious (including a diocesan hermit), etc?" do not tend to ask someone out of the blue to consider becoming a diocesan hermit; it is altogether too rare, too significant, and too different from the way most folks are brought to wholeness and holiness --- which really means too different from the way human beings ordinarily learn to love and achieve genuine integration and individuation.

A candidate for profession and consecration really MUST have the sense that God is calling them to this and they must be able to make a convincing case of that for the diocese and bishop before being admitted to profession. More, I think the individual MUST take the initiative in this. It cannot be the decision of a director, et al to discern or seek this on behalf of another, nor can a person legitimately or validly approach profession while saying, "I am doing this because my Bishop desires it!" Thus I would have to say the most a Bishop can do (if he even has the opportunity, which is hard to imagine) is to say, "Your life strikes me as implicitly eremitical; why don't you pray and do some studying about the matter of vocation as a diocesan hermit? I will do the same."

I am not sure I understand the part of the question about desiring this for the diocese, or at least, it seems a little "off" to me. I suppose it reminds me of the practice once common in old English gardens; on large estates, no estate garden was complete without its ornamental "hermit". Of course I believe that a diocesan hermit is a gift to her parish and diocese and that that indicates that God has graced the life of these with an eremitical vocation, but it is not as though one can say, "Hmmm, I want some of THESE graces for the diocese so I will ask so-and-so to become a diocesan hermit!" Graces are shared manifestations of God's very self, not bits of "stuff" that can be separated off from the living God and stored up or parceled out or anything similar. The Holy Spirit works in individual lives in all kinds of ways and it is this active presence we call grace; when a diocese recognizes and affirms an eremitical vocation of course I think that is wonderful, but one cannot simply make someone a hermit (or ask them to become one!) because one would like "the graces associated with this" or something. That smacks more of the shopping network than (attention to) the work of the Holy Spirit.

Having said that though, let me also say I wish dioceses were more knowledgeable about and more open to the eremitical vocations in their midst. For instance, where I live there are any number of elderly people who live physically solitary and intensely prayerful lives who might well have eremitical vocations that could serve both the parish and the diocese as a whole as lives of real marginality, chronic illness, poverty, etc are radically transformed, consecrated in a public way, and set before the faith community as paradigms of the truth that God alone suffices. While such lives are (and would remain) marginal in the ways the world measures things they would assume a public place and role right in the very heart of the Church and be a resource even these individuals themselves never imagined. Their illnesses don't need to be healed, their poverty relieved, or their marginality eased as part of this radical transformation. Instead these things would be redeemed by God's consecration of them and made infinitely meaningful pointers to (sacramentals of) a joy and significance which goes beyond anything our world ordinarily imagines them to be or mediate. But, let me be clear, I do not mean that every elderly or chronically ill person should do this as a hermit much less as a diocesan hermit; still, I believe that dioceses have greater numbers of potential hermits living within them than they might realize --- genuine eremitical vocations which are already an unrecognized grace to parishes and dioceses but whose potential meaningfulness and fruitfulness is yet unknown to the local (or the universal) Church.

You ask if a Bishop can profess (and eventually consecrate) someone who does not wish this. The answer is simply NO --- at least not if he is acting responsibly and in a truly pastoral way (I am assuming he is!). As noted above, I wonder if such a profession is even canonically valid in such a case. As I have written many times here, ecclesial vocations are mutually discerned. One cannot proclaim oneself a religious or a consecrated person via a private dedication (that way lies self-delusion and pretense) nor can the Church profess and consecrate someone either against their will nor unless that person is also genuinely convinced this is the will and call of God for them. To attempt to do so is to sin against conscience and possibly involves one in a kind of sacrilege as one demeans not only a particular vocation but the entire rite of profession/consecration.

There is a strain in hagiographical writing which focuses on the unwillingness of individuals to embrace vocations to religious life and/or priesthood. It has sometimes tended to validate discernment of vocations --- a kind of psychologically and spiritually naive, "Well I know I didn't want this so it must be God's will" kind of thing. (It can sometimes be used to underscore a skewed notion of obedience and quasi-humility in a kind of martyred, "Well, the idea really is unpleasant for me but if my Bishop desires it, then I'll do it!" But in point of fact, we know that this is really not the way vocations generally work; radical conversion, perhaps to an extent --- at least in the beginning --- but vocations? Not really. The deeper and more compelling dynamic in vocations is always a deep attraction or yearning.  (By the way, I understand it is a bit false and impossible to tease vocation and conversion apart from one another in this way, but it is necessary in this context.) With the eremitical vocation, if one does not truly have the sense it is the way to human wholeness and holiness for them, if, that is, one does not really believe God is calling one to this as an amazing grace which redeems their lives and is a way of being there for others, and especially if one says, "No! This is NOT for me; I don't want this, it is even a bit repugnant to me!" then it is NOT their vocation!

Vocations are not a way we simply come to terms with God's will, especially with a grudging, foot-dragging, half-hearted,"Oh-all-right-I'll-go-along-with-this" acquiescence. Vocations are the deeply joy-filled ways we cooperate with God's life within us and our world. They make us profoundly happy and fulfilled in a way which sustains us in even the most painful situations which still befall us. This profound happiness or joy shines through even in the darkness; more it (and the call it stems from) is the ground which sustains one at these times. There is a great difference between someone who bitches and moans about how awful their life is, how difficult or arduous their vocation, how much pain they are in, how routinely rejected they are, or how endlessly God tests them --- who then ends this grim disquisition with the postscript, "God is love; how I love to do God's will!" and the person whose main life-theme is a deep joy while very real pain, difficulty, or rejection experienced are merely subtexts! Vocations are demanding realities, but they are not difficult in themselves. What I mean is that they present us with difficulties and may trouble us at times in heart and mind, but of themselves, they are a joy and gift which makes all the rest shine with the radiance of God.

The notion that a vocation (meaning here a vocational path like religious life) can be used to hide profound human unhappiness and dysfunction is something we are all the more sensitive to today. We know more clearly than we have ever known that this must NEVER be the case. After all, every vocation is a call to authentic, exhaustively loving and generous humanity. A vocational path must surely be a means to this. In referring to hiding profound unhappiness or dysfunction then, I am not speaking about dealing appropriately (and privately) with the more normal times of depression, mental illness, etc which can afflict every human life. I am speaking about covering profound unhappiness and personal dysfunction with the trappings of a vocation. That strain of hagiographical writing I spoke of earlier has provided some with the grounds for this misguided approach. So has the notion of higher vocations and a tendency to absolutely separate the supernatural from the natural, the eternal from the temporal, or the divine from the human. In eremitical life this tendency becomes even more acutely dangerous because for most people living in solitude is itself dysfunctional and can be used to escape or run from the demons which inhabit every human heart. It can be used to make of the hermitage an escape from the whole of God's good creation and the requirements of a heart which is only purified in loving and being loved by God and others. To profess and consecrate someone who is really profoundly unhappy and may be even MORE profoundly unhappy (and increasingly dysfunctional) in solitude is a serious failure in charity.


Postscript: (I forgot to answer this part of your question)

About whether or not my Bishop desired me to become a diocesan hermit I have to say I don't really know. Certainly I believe he had discerned this was what God was calling me to. Similarly I believe he discerned it was a gift to my parish, the diocese, and even to the wider Church. Finally I don't think he did something he did not desire to do in this, but at the same time, I don't usually think in terms of what Archbishop Vigneron desired or did not desire. This is important because if my eremitical life is a matter of discernment then many niggling questions and problems melt away with profession and consecration. If it had merely been something my Bishop (and I!) desired, then it actually raises questions, creates difficulties, and certainly it would heighten the niggling questions that would have remained on the day of profession. Let me know if you want me to say more about this.

Letting go of Childish Things

Today's reading from Paul is one of the most beautiful passages about love in all of the Old and New Testa-ments. But the point of the reading is especially important for hermits who seek to live in solitude or others who find themselves otherwise isolated and alienated from the faith community of their local Church. The very first line of 1 Cor 12:31-13:13 sets the lesson: [[Brothers and Sisters: Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a still more excellent way!]] Paul then goes on to list a number of recognizable spiritual gifts including speaking in tongues, knowledge (including mystical knowledge), and faith (including the faith to move mountains!) but reminds the Corinthians that without love these gifts and indeed, the person herself, are nothing at all. (Despite medieval attempts to aggrandize being "nothing." Paul is clearly disapproving of being nothing here.) Paul's argument through the rest of the passage is clear, if one truly loves then one has every other thing as well; in truly loving, all the spiritual gifts, which are partial and finite, find their completion and eternity. Moreover without love these gifts are empty, void, possibly illusory (or worse), and disedifying.

One of the most salient criticisms of eremitical life is the observation that the hermit has no one around to love or be loved by in the truly demanding and concrete ways human beings require to grow in Gospel love and authentic humanity. This observation has caused some Church Fathers to deny the validity of the eremitical life. It is true that I, for instance, can write moving blog posts, articles, and chapters about eremitical life as essentially loving and about eremitical solitude as essentially dialogical or covenantal, but, as Paul clearly says, [[If I speak in human tongues or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.]] I might get some attention with and even praise for what I write, but unless it is clearly informed by genuine love, it will be empty and ultimately meaningless. Moreover, the validity or at least the quality of my vocation itself, including the mystical dimensions of my prayer, would need to be seriously questioned in such an instance. As Paul says, [[if there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing, if tongues, they will cease, and if knowledge [referring to mystical knowledge], it too will be brought to nothing for each and all of these will pass away.]]

We hermits may err in our vocations in many ways but it seems to me that given today's reading and the criticism of some Church Fathers (and the affirmations of all genuine hermits!), our focus, even in maintaining appropriate degrees of physical solitude and silence, must be on our growth in our capacity to love others in Christ both effectively and concretely --- even should we sometimes err against solitude in doing so. This tension between physical solitude and the commandment to truly love one another is always present in the hermit's life. It is certainly not acceptable to speak about loving humanity while one fails to love the individual persons sitting in the pews next to or around us --- much less claiming such a love while eschewing their company. "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand," may be darkly humorous in a Peanuts cartoon strip, but in the life of a hermit it is a blasphemy.

The emphasis on loving others in concrete ways and circumstances is one reason every hermit maintains the importance of hospitality --- whether that means opening one's hermitage to others in specific ways or participating in the local parish community in limited ways; it is also the reason hermits form lauras or are associated with parishes and communities; these are not optional but, even when necessarily limited, are essential to the eremitical life itself and certainly to the lives of those who are privileged via their professions and explicit commission by the Church to call themselves Catholic Hermits. In other words, community and the commitment to concrete forms of loving are critical dimensions of ANY authentic eremitical vocation, even those to complete reclusion; loving effectively and fully is, according to Paul, the truest sign of human wholeness and holiness, the truest sign of genuinely spiritual gifts. (The would-be recluse who is incapable of loving others effectively will be unlikely to be allowed to embrace reclusion.This is one of the reasons the Church requires serious vetting and supervision of eremitical recluses).

Part of the reason for this emphasis on concrete human loving is the especial ease with which a hermit (or other solitary person) can fool themselves about their own degree of spiritual growth or the nature of the spiritual gifts they have been given.  In today's first reading Paul has chosen not to take the Corinthians to task over the authenticity or inauthenticity of their spiritual gifts despite their tendency to self-delusion. Instead of calling them frauds he reminds them they are children. To motivate them to change and grow he speaks to and captures their attention by focusing on the thing which seems to  capture their imagination, namely, their drive and desire for more and more excellent spiritual gifts. He wants them to understand that love is the greatest divine gift, but also that it is the criterion by which all other gifts are truly measured and then brought to completion. Prophecy without love is not of God. The ability to speak in tongues without love is empty and essentially godless; mystical experiences or knowledge without the ability to love others in concrete ways is not authentic. One may have all kinds of moving and extraordinary experiences in solitary prayer, but  in terms of the spiritual life these are, at best, often "childish things" if they remain fruitless. At other times they are simply delusional:  they may simply be ordinary dreams (which can be be insightful, no doubt) treated simplistically as visions, empty visions which, tragically, lead to nothing more than self-satisfaction and navel-gazing, and the psychological projection of one's own problems, conflicts, and struggles. Spiritual maturity implies the ability to love those persons who are precious to God and to do so as they truly need! Divine gifts, whatever the type, are meant to allow us to do this.

These mystical and other prayer experiences and psycho-logical manifes-tations, like everything else in our spiritual lives, must be tested or proved --- words which mean several things including measuring, fostering maturation, and helping to make stronger and truer. They must be integrated into one's everyday life and growth; they must be transformed into personal maturity and wisdom. They must lead to or be associated with the ability to love in concrete situations and relationships. Therefore they must, to the degree they are authentic, lead to patience and kindness. They must not lead to or be associated with arrogance or rudeness nor to a sense that one's spiritual life is somehow "superior" to that of "ordinary" parishes and people! They must be associated with other-centeredness and to genuine humility and they must not allow one to brood over injuries done to one nor to rejoice when evil befalls others. Any authentic hermit, indeed any person who finds that their prayer lives (and especially what they call mystical experiences) do not lead to these manifestations of genuine love must surrender them for (or at the very least complement them with) the demands of community which do lead more surely to these manifestations. One must let go of the manifestations of spiritual childhood for the spiritual wisdom of adulthood. (cf, On Discernment With Regard to Prayer.)

Paul's letter to the (perhaps) spiritually precocious community in Corinth reminds us especially then that spirituality, even and perhaps especially eremitical spirituality, is not a "me and God" only enterprise. That is NOT what God alone is enough means! Canon 603 is very clear that hermits in the Catholic Church, particularly those that live the life in the name of the Church embrace eremitical solitude for the salvation of others. The love a hermit cultivates in the hermitage and in her relatively limited encounters with those in her parish, diocese, monastery, etc is not a facile abstraction, an exercise in empty piety, much less a matter of meaningless if superficially impressive verbal expressions, (e.g., "Not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" or,"in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do"). It is not enough to proclaim one's love for God or humanity while judging and despising people. What makes her vocation divine is the authentic love which motivates and empowers it. The moment a hermit forgets this or chooses isolation over eremitical solitude, she has embraced something which is not truly of God no matter how frequent or vivid the supposed mystical experiences that accompany it. Real union with God involves communion with others. It is the very nature of being a member of the Body of Christ and stands at the heart of Paul's concerns with adult faith and the community in Corinth.

Called to a Union Most People only Realize in Heaven? Yes and No!

[[Dear Sister Laurel, In regard to your last blog post, I saw a video of a Nashville Dominican novice saying that, as a religious, she was called to a complete union with Christ that "most people only have in heaven." I'm not sure how that unpacks for her, but at best, I find it misleading. How does it comport with what you have been saying here?]]

Really great question and without clarifying some of what I have said already more carefully, this novice's comment might seem, at first glance at least, to agree with what I have written here recently. However, we are not in agreement; at least I don't think we are. As the CV whose emails I have shared some here wisely remarked, "An experience is not a vocation!" Conversely I think we have to say that a difference in vocation does not necessarily mean a difference in experience either. Let me say that if we are ALL called to union with God,  and every vocation is meant to witness to this eschatological destiny in some way, then this union CAN be experienced and I think we have to conclude that it is therefore MEANT to be experienced in every vocation in some substantive way. For ALL of us this union is experienced partially, fragmentarily, and with distortion here on this side of the eschatological divide**. But I honestly believe it is available to all of us nonetheless; if it is not, the universal call to holiness becomes absurd or relatively meaningless. At the same time, while experience and vocation are not identical, neither are they entirely separate from one another.

It is important that those called to Religious (or other forms of consecrated) life realize their actual experience of union in prayer may be no different from the Mother's in the line ahead of them at the grocery store --- or of the man bagging their groceries!! We simply cannot presume to know what kind of prayer lives or experiences of God these persons have, and we must not presume we are somehow "more advanced" or that we experience a kind of union they will never know this side of heaven. Further, to the extent these experiences of union DO differ, it may (as Rahner would agree) have more to do with our practice at the skills involved in cooperating with prayer (God's work within us) as well as with a kind of internal permission we are giving or withholding from ourselves than it does with the kind of prayer God gifts  (or desires to gift) us with!.

While it is true that God can gift any person with infused contemplation and break through the obstacles we present, that is a rare thing; more often what is true is that the obstacles we put up to various prayer experiences either by believing we are unworthy, by suggesting these belong "only to Religious", by believing prayer is only about saying prayers, by failing to commit to prayer as a regular, disciplined, and significant part of our lives, or by simply not even knowing or imagining such things as experiences of union with God are possible for us, --- all of these and more have a detrimental effect on our prayer's scope and depth. Given the commonness of these situations we can hardly conclude that anyone subject to such obstacles is not called by God to the same union with God here and now which a Religious man or woman is any more than we can say someone who is deprived of access to music lessons is not really called to know the ecstasy of music like someone with access is. It would be analogous to saying that because someone grows up with inadequate nutrition and health care, this translates into the conclusion that they are not called by God to know wellness and real vigor as is someone living a more privileged life here and now. Deprivation, for whatever reason or in whatever form it occurs, does not automatically translate into an objective lack of vocation.

If what this novice meant was that few people subjectively experience what she has experienced and will not do so until they exist in heaven, then her statement is a true one. If what she meant was that objectively God calls some few to experience union with him here and now (especially those who are called to be Religious), but not the majority of people, then I strongly disagree. Lives of prayer and service, lives of authentic love participate AND culminate in union with God. All the paths to this goal share intimately and integrally in the goal. One of the things we teach most poorly (if at all!) is prayer. One of the things we model least well is the universal call to prayer and holiness. Prayer is not merely for specialists, not for experts. Prayer is for human beings who realize they are called to union with God and that they are called to allow that to be as real as possible this side of heaven. On this Feast of the Presentation, a Feast which originally meant "encounter," that is surely something we should help every person in every vocational path to understand and embrace seriously.

Unfortunately, it is precisely in the area of prayer, precisely  in our approach to union with God, as well as in regard to the evangelical counsels that support prayer and to which all Christians are called that we have made things most elitist. The truth is that each of us are called on to serve our brothers and sisters as a paradigm or model of some dimension or expression of this union and of the place prayer serves in the life of the Church.  Married people witness to the incredible union of exclusive (but not exclusivistic) and fecund love in ways my own life can never do, for instance. Religious serve as paradigms of a more universally available love centered in and empowered by community and expressed in the relation between commitment, prayer, and service to the whole human family in ways a married couple may not be able to do. Hermits witness with their lives to the complete sufficiency of divine love alone, to the solitary nature of prayer, and to a quies or hesychasm the world cannot give; it is important to remember that solitude is a dialogical or communal reality however, and that this is a vocation of service lived for the salvation of others.

Priests witness especially profoundly to the Sacramental nature of our world, to the priority of the Word of God and the ministry of reconciliation the whole Christian People is entrusted with, as well as to the need for every Christian to serve their brothers and sisters in making all of these real in their own lives and in our Church and world. CV's living in the world witness to the reality of spousal union here and now and remind us each especially that heaven means the transfiguration of this world by the sovereign and spousal love of God. Those among the laity are called to witness to the profound presence of God in ordinary reality and model lives of faithfulness and prayer/union which transform their families, friendships, neighborhoods, businesses, etc. It is probably the most challenging and least commonly esteemed vocation I have mentioned thus far.

Meanwhile all of these vocations and others overlap and support one another in the gifts, graces, and challenges they bring to our church and world. None of them are exclusive to one vocation or another (with the exception of marriage and the sanctity of sexual love). At the heart of each is a call to union with God even when each serves as a paradigm of the different ways this can be reached and expressed for the good of others. I think we really have to embrace this notion of paradigmatic service wholeheartedly and reject the elitism which still so riddles some of our approaches to "states of perfection" and vocations to the consecrated state.

** eschatological divide, a phrase I like very much,  is a term I got from a friend and CV.

The Greatest Risk to the Eremitical Vocation?

[[Sister, what is the hardest thing for a new person becoming a hermit? You write about it as a risky vocation. What is the greatest risk do you think?]]

It seems to me that the hardest thing about becoming a hermit is making the transition from being a person who does things associated with being a hermit to actually being one in some essential sense. One approach to becoming a diocesan (or a lay) hermit seems to be that of adding in pious and devotional practices without changing one's general environment. In this approach silence and solitude, for instance, are treated as things one adds in to one's life rather than being embraced as the very environment in which one lives. But becoming a hermit is not simply about living more or less of this or that: more prayers, more silence, more time alone, less contact with family or friends, less (or no) TV, etc. It is about a life with God alone which humanizes one and makes of one's life a prophetic presence in a noisy world devoted to self, dissipation, and distraction. Nikos Kazantzakis once said that, "Solitude can be fatal for the soul that does not burn with a great passion." I think that the movement from doing the things a hermit does to being a true hermit --- and the danger of never making this transition --- is a piece of what is behind this quote.

The process of becoming a diocesan (or, for that matter, a lay) hermit involves a transition to being at home in an environment of the silence of solitude. It involves a transition from being a person who prays occasionally (or even often) to being a person who is prayer in some fundamental and conscious way. Because this transition is so all-encompassing, and because it cannot be engineered, the time frame for becoming a diocesan hermit is ordinarily lengthy and individualized. Negotiating this transition is one of the more difficult aspects of becoming a hermit, it seems to me --- particularly if one is not willing to let go of one's previous life, or, similarly, if one is trying to accommodate "hermiting" to a more normal parish or religious life. The call to eremitical life is different not simply in degree, but in kind; a candidate to diocesan eremitical life must understand and embrace this difference.

The greatest risk to eremitical life, in my estimation, is mediocrity because mediocrity is a form of inauthenticity. Because the life is so independent, because there is little direct oversight, it is easy to lose oneself in this or that distraction. No one but the hermit and God knows if the hermit lives her Rule or horarium. No one knows if she shows up for prayer or spends appropriate time in lectio or study. No one knows when legitimate recreation slides into more dangerous distraction and dissipation. And of course, even if she is dilligent in doing all the things she is obligated to in her Rule, she still may not be growing sufficiently in holiness, human maturity, and the capacity to love and serve others. This too can be a kind of mediocrity. Yes, she lives this life under the supervision of her Bishop and those he delegates to serve in this way. But in most ways these individuals cannot do other than take the hermit's word about the quality of the life she is living. (Directors and delegates can and do ask probing questions and challenge to ever-greater fidelity to God's call, but ultimately, they do not live with the hermit and cannot measure mediocrity. Only the hermit can do that.) Here Kazantzakis' quote also is helpful, for the hermit will be one with a great passion and that passion will not allow mediocrity.

This tremendous independence and inner directedness (development of a truly great passion) is also one of the reasons the period of discernment and formation for a diocesan hermit is often quite lengthy. Again,the person seeking to make and live this commitment needs to make the transition from "doing hermit things" to being a hermit in an essential way. They are persons who have come to terms with their own poverty and realized that communion with God is, for them, found only in silence and solitude. Human wholeness and the community necessary for that is for them a paradoxical reality realized in the silence OF solitude. For them the ability to love and serve others requires an unusual degree of silence and solitude, prayer, penance, personal work, etc, and they MUST be committed to that. That is, they must be embracing this vocation because they love, and are committed to loving more and more. Diocesan representatives, the person's spiritual director, et al, must come to assurance not only that all this is true for this person, but that the person is capable of living out this truth with self-discipline and integrity and that she has a track record of faithfulness to the Rule of Life which reflects the truth of her life with God.

By the way, there is no formula for what this faithfulness means in any given individual's life. Canon 603 defines the essential elements of the life but does not quantify these. It says this is a life of the silence of solitude, and that it is marked by assiduous prayer and penance, a living out of the evangelical counsels, and stricter separation from the world, all lived for the salvation of the world and according to the person's own Rule of Life. However, it does not indicate any single picture of what these things mean. Because of this one must find out what each of these terms will look like in her own call to eremitical life. Again, discovering this, building it into a life which genuinely loves and serves others, which leads one to genuine holiness, and which is also consistent with eremitical tradition takes time, discernment, and consistent and focused work.

The risk, of course, (and an ongoing, every day risk in fact) is that one will fail in some part of this challenge, whether that is by buying into a stereotype of eremitical (or contemplative) life which allows one to cease discerning how the life is to be lived lovingly and prophetically in this time and place, or whether it means convincing oneself that certain evasions and compromises are legitimate when they are not. Mediocrity can take many forms and wear many guises (some of them quite dramatic or extreme in normal terms) even once one has made the transition from doing hermit things to being a hermit in an essential sense. It has a number of roots as well: failure to love, disobedience, selfishness, various forms of fear or resistance, arrogance, complacency, etc. In any case, while it is important to deal with each of these roots, I think mediocrity itself is really the greatest overall risk that faces someone trying to live an eremitical life.

On Encouraging and/or Discouraging Canon 603 Vocations

[[Sister Laurel, do you encourage people to pursue eremitical vocations or do you discourage them? For instance, you criticized members of [name of project] for using the Canon for diocesan eremitism as a "stopgap" or "fallback" position. Shouldn't we be happy to have as many people pursuing this vocation as desire to do so? There are so few diocesan hermits, and so few religious vocations today that I am surprised to find people discouraging others from pursuing these.]]

You are correct about my "Canon 603-as-stopgap-measure" criticism and I will explain that in a bit. Surprisingly (for I was surprised by the fact), I have found that I do generally discourage people from pursuing vocations to Canon 603 eremitism; that is, of the people who contact me curious about this as a vocational path I encourage only a fraction to pursue it and tend to suggest other vocational paths for the majority. I have recently looked at my own motivations for this reticence and I think they are worthy reasons. Let me explain, for I think it is a piece of the answer to your questions.

Throughout history there have been hermits from all religious traditions. At some points in this long story there have been more hermits and at other points fewer, but always the vocation has been recognized as a relatively rare one. I don't think this is generally because of undiscovered vocations or human cowardice, resistance, etc, but because of the very nature of both the human being and of the call to eremitical solitude. Human beings are social beings; ordinarily we grow to maturity and achieve individuation only through our relationships with others. The need for community is a part of our very nature. Our hearts are "dialogical realities" as Benedict XVI reminds us, and the God we image is himself a community of love. At the same time we are constituted in dialogue with God not only directly (as the deepest dynamic of our hearts) but through the mediation of and in relationship with other people. This communal dimension of our lives is essential. It cannnot be dispensed with, even for the genuine hermit, and ordinarily its requirements militate against a call to a life of physical solitude. Authentic calls to eremitical life are exceptions to the rule, and therefore, are both relative rarities and paradoxical in that they actually foster or enhance the dialogical character of one's life in these particular cases.

In Christian eremitical life, these insights are reflected in the characterization of eremitical life as the summit of monastic life, and by the insistence of people like St Benedict that those seeking to live in solitude should be well formed in their monastic lives, and no longer in the first flush or fervour of conversion. [[The second [kind of monk] are the anchorites, hermits --- that is those who, not in the first fervour of religious life, but after long probation in the monastery, have learned by the help and experience of others to fight against the devil; and going forth well-armed from the ranks of their brethren to the single-handed combat of the desert, are now able to fight safely without the support of others, by their own strength under God's aid, against the vices of the flesh and their evil thoughts.]] (RB 1) Benedict, who had lived as a hermit understood the vocation and his cautions and qualifications are as valid today as they were when he wrote his Rule.

While the language of combat with demons may seem a bit dated and off-putting for many today, the seriousness (and genuineness) of the enterprise it underscores should not be missed or minimized. One goes into the desert in response to a call to a hard-won conversion and humanization which is accomplished in dialogue with and through the grace of God alone. There is no room for mediocrity here (though there is assuredly great temptation to this!!), no sense that eremitical solitude, for all the joy and peace it possesses (and these are indeed substantial), is merely a pleasant time apart to recharge depleted batteries or balance the activity in one's life. Neither, as I have written several times before, is it a way to indulge one's selfishness, over-developed individualism, insecurities, lack of ambition or success at life, or misanthropy. What is at stake in a call to eremitical solitude is one's very humanity, nothing less. Further, it is a humanity at the service of Church and World, or it is not eremitical life.

For the hermit this is THE WAY to more complete healing, wholeness, and holiness, the way her ability to love others is perfected, the way she is most clearly made into imago Christi in service to others. If one misses the demanding and extraordinary character of this solitariness, one has missed something essential to the eremitical vocation. Above all one should not forget that relatively very few people are called to achieve the goal of their own humanity in this way. For most, the desert as a life choice would actually hinder growth as a person and prevent individuation or the achievement of true holiness. For most, this would be a destructive choice leading to actual dehumanization and illness. For the hermit, on the other hand, it is the necessary or indispensible full-time environment and occupation which God in his mercy and compassion calls them to so that they might achieve fullness of authentic humanity.

At the same time I argue the relative rarity of this vocation then, I recognize that among some groups of people there may be more vocations to diocesan or to lay eremitism than has been appreciated heretofore. The chronically ill constitute one of these groups, as do the bereaved and isolated elderly. So too, as I wrote just recently, may some prisoners in the unnatural solitudes of our nations's prisons. In each of these cases diocesan or lay eremitical life may be ways of redeeming the isolation, bondage, and brokenness of these situations and transfiguring them into genuine solitude thus making them occasions of essential wholeness and freedom. So, while I am convinced vocations to solitary (diocesan) eremitical life are rare, I am more than open to encouraging exploration of this call by those whose life experiences may suit them to such a call apart from monastic formation and life. For those who are younger and can enter a congregation which is eremitical or semi-eremitical to get the formation and challenge which life in community allows, I recommend this option rather than Canon 603.

Contrary to the way your questions are framed, this is not about numbers. It is especially not about finding a canonical alternative to an individual's inability to be professed in some other way to get the number of vocations to the consecrated life up, nor is it a fallback position for those seeking to enter religious life or to found a community only to find either that they are unable or that no one else joins them in their project! My criticism of the project you mentioned was rooted in these two concerns. When Canon 603 (which is meant to address and foster SOLITARY eremitical life, not communal or religious eremitical vocations) is used in this way the person doing so apparently demonstrates little or no sense of the nature or significance of this specific vocation, little or no respect for the unique charism it represents especially for our church and world, no real sense of what it truly means to discern a LIFE VOCATION, and a lack of respect for the actual divine vocations the persons being funneled into Canon 603 life are really called to. Add to this an overriding concern with trappings and externals, and other forms of fundamental dishonesty on the part of the head of the project (the specific topic of a previous post) and you have a more complete picture of the basis for my criticism.

While it is common to hear people bemoaning the dropping numbers of religious vocations today, what we should be hearing more of is an accent on authenticity. In the wake of Vatican II we recognize the universal call to holiness and have come to esteem the lay vocation and the vocation to marriage in ways we had not done adequately. Our ecclesiology (i.e, our theology of church) is much improved with decreased clericalization (including no longer treating religious as a semi-clerical caste which can do things lay persons cannot!). Further, we are coming to be increasingly aware that many in religious life prior to Vatican II may not have had genuine vocations, but also had no way to fulfill their needs to minister, etc apart from religious life. The lower numbers of religious vocations today may simply indicate that these remaining and contemporary vocations are mainly authentic and that the desire to serve or minister (an important but secondary concern) is now better met for most persons in other ways. Canon 603 eremitical life is a significant (that is, meaningful and important) vocation with the capacity to witness to aspects of the Gospel in ways other vocations may not do as vividly. It serves (and should serve) the church and world in redeeming unnatural solitudes and in humanizing and sanctifying a rare number of people --- and in witnessing to many many more. We cannot empty it of this significance or witness value by turning discernment into a piece of a numbers game (which is always more apt to be of men than of God) or refusing to wait for genuine (relatively mature, life-tested, and divinely inspired) vocations to walk through the chancery door.

I hope this answers your questions. You might want to check past posts on the unique charism of the diocesan hermit, as well as those on abuse of Canon 603 or the "Lemons and Lemonade" series of posts, for a more expanded discussion of some of the issues that fueled my criticism of the use of Canon 603 as a stopgap measure or fallback position. Articles on the time frames for becoming a diocesan hermit (also cf the "Lemons and Lemonade" series) might explain better the idea that this is generally a vocation for the second half of life. As always, if this raises more questions for you or is unclear in some way, I hope you will get back to me.