On taking up our Cross: Accepting the Call to Kenosis and Authentic Humanity

The articles I put up recently on emptiness and the hiddenness of the eremitical vocation are profoundly linked, as I noted, to the theologies of the cross of Paul and Mark. Readers might remember that Mark's Gospel is often called a "passion narrative with a long introduction". But really, it is a passion narrative, a long story of self-emptying that climaxes on the cross. I was thinking about this recently because of one of our Friday gospel lections that had Jesus inviting and calling us to take up our crosses to follow him. Always before I have spoken of crosses as those difficult, challenging, and painful times we associate with suffering. We take up our crosses when we suffer well with the inspiration and empowerment of God in Christ. But I also understand more clearly that when we speak of Jesus taking up his cross it means his relinquishment of all of the ordinary ways to honor and success, power and prestige, relationships, family, even his own People, so that he may be completely transparent to the One he called Abba.

In Mark's Gospel the shadow of the cross marks the whole of Jesus' life. It stands as the summary and culmination, the most radical example of everything Jesus has been, done, said, and experienced until now. It is the symbol of the entire dynamic of self emptying which drove Jesus on as he ministered in compassion, prayed in the silence of solitude, felt the anguish of being rejected in so many ways or celebrated with his friends and disciples. Jesus is the one person in human history who did not only say yes to God, but who emptied himself (allowed himself to be emptied) so completely that in him God might be exhaustively revealed in the senses of both being made known and being made real with a human face in our world. Jesus allowed the will and purposes of God to so overshadow him, he opened himself so completely to God's love and power that he perfectly fulfilled the human vocation to image God. Our doctrine of two natures is one of the ways the Church has tried to speak adequately of this NT paradox that where Jesus was fully and exhaustively human there was God definitively revealed, and where God is definitively and exhaustively revealed there we see authentic humanity.

This is the dynamic Paul is speaking of when he talks of Jesus being obedient (open and responsive) to God even to the point of death, death on a cross. Jesus' entire life is one of taking up the call, task, and challenge to be fully human, and therefore to be imago dei --- not in the weak sense of mirroring God, but in the strong sense of allowing God's power and presence, his love and mercy, to flame up in Jesus without obstacle, obscurity, or distortion so that Jesus is incandescent with God, and so, when we see Jesus' humanity we see Divinity face to face. This is the heart of the Eastern notion of  "divinization and it is something we are each called to allow God to achieve in us in our own way. Humanity and divinity are not in conflict here. They are counterparts in genuine covenant existence.  This is why my most important (and beloved) theology professor (John C Dwyer) was fond of saying, "Human freedom is the counterpart of Divine sovereignty." What must lessen, what we must be emptied and stripped of is our false (or better, falsified) selves so that God may be entirely sovereign. And where God is sovereign we are most truly ourselves.

The emptying of self happens throughout Jesus' life and reaches its furthest points, its most radical form, in his crucifixion. Because Jesus embraces the godlessness of sin and death while trusting his Abba completely this kenosis is similar to that of the rest of his life. For this reason, although it is especially true that we can speak of taking up our crosses to refer to those times of significant suffering we might have in our lives, taking up our cross also means taking up the task, challenge, indeed the very vocation we have to be authentically human. We take up our cross every time we consent to being emptied and to allow God to be God, every time we allow the mercy of God to transform us or the love of God to empty and strip us of all falseness --- as well as to fill and make us whole and true with Divine meaning and purpose. To take up our cross daily is to take up the continuing call to become the persons God wills us to be whether this process is marked by the suffering of various forms of emptying and being made true, or the joy of completion and personal fulfillment we know in union with God. Taking up our cross is simply the task of embracing a life entirely committed to trusting and mediating the love of God as imago dei.

Hermits: On Being Lonely and Misunderstood

[[Hi Sister Laurel, does it ever bother you that people don't understand your vocation? Some hermits write about this as though they are misunderstood by everyone including their own families and that it is very painful but understandable. These others live in the world and may not even be Catholic and the hermit is completely separate from all that. Still, I wonder if this doesn't bother you. Isn't it lonely to live this way where no one understands you?]]

On the distinction between not being understood and being misunderstood:

Thanks for the question. I think I have said myself a few times here in the past 8 years that folks don't really understand my vocation or that they see me as a contemplative nun but don't know what to do with the hermit part of things. That, I think, is a little different than misunderstanding it. It is true that a lot of folks do not understand my vocation, but that is completely understandable; no one has explained it to them and we live in a world where its central characteristics and values are increasingly alien. I am thinking here of silence and especially the silence of solitude lived for the praise of God and the salvation of others which is so contrary to the individualism and isolation that infects so much of what we know today as "contemporary culture".

Moreover, I am growing in my own understanding of this vocation. For instance, the writing I did recently on hiddenness and on its linkage to kenosis and the hidden activity of God was a new connection for me. The pieces have been there for a long time; not only is this described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (par 921, cf below ***), but I have written about all of them. Still, the direct connection was something I saw clearly (or perhaps, experienced as my own truth) only just recently. Its place in my own life is profoundly rooted in my own lived experience but I could not have explained that in the same way before last month. My point is that the very hiddenness of the life is a deep mystery and if it takes time for the hermit herself to understand and imperfectly articulate, how can she (I) be surprised when people who have never met another hermit nor spoken to me about the deep realities of my life do not understand it? That is particularly true when the external or observable elements of the eremitical life are so easily misunderstood to reflect or at least support selfishness, isolation, and misanthropy.

However, for those who actually know me one thing that becomes very important is that they understand me and see the good that has come from my life of the silence of solitude. Of that I have no doubt and it is gratifying. I never get the sense, for instance, that people find me bizarre or eccentric even when they do think being a hermit is these things. Nor do I have the sense that people find my choices or the constraints of my life strange. They may not choose such things for themselves nor may they understand what motivates me to make the choices I have made and make daily, but they know me and regard me; for that reason my experience is rarely one of being misunderstood simply because I am a hermit. That only tends to occur with people who do not know me at all; in those cases it is often the effect of biases and stereotypes being applied. Since I know I am no stereotype (!) it becomes a pastoral task to introduce myself to these folks --- to let them see me and not to simply play a role! When I fail at that it is THEN I may feel misunderstood --- and at those times --- though I have also known a handful of times when people have willfully misunderstood me --- it may well be my fault for "playing hermit" rather than being myself -- the one who is a hermit!

What most bothers me personally, what IS a cause of pain besides those uncommon times folks have willfully misun-derstood me, is the rarity of being able to explain and even more importantly, being unable to share with others what is at the heart of my life. That creates an ongoing loneliness which I accept as an integral dimension of this vocation. The ability to share the silence of solitude with others who also know what it means to live this reality daily happens relatively infrequently in my life and it is especially valuable to me --- something I both need and consider precious. Time away with a friend where we work silently on our own projects (e.g., reading,  my writing and her lesson plans and math problems), or time shared in quiet prayer, meals, etc, with Sisters who live substantial silence and solitude all the time (time at Whitethorn, for instance) become tremendously important to me and to my ability to be faithful to my own Rule. These times involve an experience of  the silence of solitude which nourishes me and which I carry with me at all other times. These rare but privileged times in shared solitude mean that my loneliness never becomes a malignant loneliness from which I must seek distraction or for which some sort of "therapy" or special direction is needed. They mean that my solitude is really a shared reality, with God, of course, but also with others. These times allow me to feel deeply understood, deeply known --- even when these particular kinds of times with others are rare.

A life of Being instead of Doing is Counter Cultural:

Otherwise though, living as a hermit in a suburban setting can be difficult. We are all used to explaining our lives to others in terms of what we do. That is important, but it is also a real problem that exacerbates our tendency to validate ourselves in terms of what we do rather than who we are in light of God's love. Even hermits fall into this trap; we are seen as (and sometimes accept the label) "prayer warriors" whose lives are explained in terms of intercessory prayer or some great  "talent" for contemplative prayer or mysticism; too often we collude with these explanations of our vocations despite knowing full well that prayer is always God's gratuitous work within us to which we can only bring our emptiness and incapacity. In my own life one of the most difficult and perennial temptations I face is to shape and even more, to explain my life in terms of active ministry.

Partly I do this because folks can easily understand this dimension of my life, partly it is because what happens in prayer is literally inexplicable and mainly too intimate to talk about in any case. Partly I do it because it is a way of connecting with others, fitting in, being less eccentric in the literal ("out of the center") sense of that term so that others may be comfortable. Partly it is the normal way of answering a friend's question, "What have you been up to?" In other words it is a way of relating to others, establishing common ground --- certainly a good thing of itself. Unfortunately, this can also represent a kind of distortion of my life and it tends to underscore the human tendency to see and justify ourselves (and judge others) in terms of what we do rather than who we are made by God to be --- the very thing hermits do NOT want to do.

So you see, I do understand the pain of the hermits you speak of. It is always difficult when we cannot talk about the things which are most important to us, the things from and for which we live, the things which make our lives truly meaningful, the relationship we would most like to share with others and invite them to share in as well. It is especially difficult when those others are our family or those who have no interest in God or what we identify as spirituality. But I also have to take responsibility for some of the continuing mystery (here meant in the sense of obscurity) and lack of understanding of this vocation. I can't simply bemoan that lack, much less blame others; to do that is more likely to be a matter of self pity (that is, a way of saying look how this vocation God has called me to makes me suffer),  or self-aggrandizement (look how special, unique, rare MY vocation is) than it is anything else.

Hermits must know we are the same as others:

Another source of difficulties stems from the related tendency of some hermits and would-be hermits to treat everything outside the hermitage door as "the world" and to believe the folks who represent this part of God's creation cannot understand our lives, have nothing in common with us, are simply not spiritual enough, and neither understand the mystical nor the things of God more generally. This form of elitism and denigration is especially to be despised by the hermit. As I have written here a number of times "the world" the hermit is called to stricter separation or withdrawal from is defined as "that which is resistant to Christ". I would add that it is anything which promises fulfillment apart from Christ. Canon 603 requires stricter separation from the physical and social world outside the hermitage more generally, but even more significantly it demands stricter separation from the things which are resistant to Christ (whether or not the term Christ is ever explicitly involved).

This understanding of "the world" monastics or eremites "flee" is critical because if we see it otherwise we at least implicitly deny the deep commonalities shared by every human being, especially the very real and dynamic relationship with God which grounds and makes all authentic human existence a reality. We deny the pervasive spiritual or sacred dimension of all reality and the activity of God appreciated (even anonymously) in transcendent realities like beauty, depth, meaning, truth, love, freedom, etc. Hermits are engaged in the profoundly human and solitary search for meaning and the Source and ground of both being and meaning.

We do that in a focused and relatively stark way. But we do what every person does in the ways they know how. More, we are the search for meaning every person is most fundamentally. To embrace a kind of elitism which divides reality into those who seek God and those who do not falsifies reality --- hardly something a hermit should be guilty of! To sharpen this dichotomous approach by asserting 'they are not even Catholic' is especially shortsighted. It is spiritually shortsighted as well as theologically and humanly naïve. One of the ways Catholicism is a real gift is its sacramental view of all reality. Another is its insistence that every person is profoundly related to God, that God is actively present summoning each person to him/herself, and that these things are true whether or not the word God is ever used.

On the other hand, the hermit is not completely separated from "the world" in another way. "The world" is a reality the hermit carries within her heart; doing so thoughtlessly can make the hermitage itself an outpost of the world rather than of the Kingdom of God. This is especially true if the hermit tries to deny this fact by naïvely labeling everything outside the hermitage door "the world" as though she has simply closed the door on it. I have written about this before so I encourage you to look at those posts. What I may not have noted is that our tendencies to create dualisms like this may stem from our discomfort with the fact that our vocation is a lonely one, almost by definition. A hermit's job, it seems to me is in part to bear witness to the existential solitude we share with every human being. If it becomes a source of self pity, then perhaps we are not called to eremitical solitude. If we regularly find ways to distract ourselves or try to escape it then the conclusion may be the same. If we blame others, label them "the world" in a theologically unnuanced way, subscribe to elitisms that really mean we are generally failing to love everything and everyone in God or see them as God sees them then perhaps we are more at home with isolation than with eremitical solitude.

Trying to Summarize:

How can I bring this all together for you? Some people say hermits never feel lonely. My experience says that a hermit who really loves God and others will feel lonely simply because love cries out to be shared and poured out for and to others. Moreover hermits need community; this does not change because she is called to solitude --- though in my experience the form this community takes is usually one which stresses shared solitude. I have said in the past that loneliness is part of the penitential dimension of eremitical life. I will say now that it is part of the emptiness a hermit is called to embrace for God's own sake. As we bear witness to the completion and fullness of life that is ours in union with God, so too do we bear witness to the fundamental loneliness of the human person this side of eternity. However, in my experience, this has relatively little to do with being misunderstood. On the other hand it can certainly be sharpened by not being or not feeling understood . Misunderstanding, which is something else again, can occur and is often the result of stereotypes being misapplied.

It seems to me that  hermits can minimize such problems by letting folks (fellow parishioners, neighbors of all sorts, etc) know us for who we are. To insist, as some wannabe hermits do, that on those rare occasions when we dine or stay with friends or family for instance, we can only speak of "spiritual things," that we must eat dry bread and boiled lentils (or their stereotypical equivalent) while we don a mask of barely-contained suffering or grim forbearance, is pretense and unChristian pretense at that. To refuse to simply enjoy or delight in the other and listen to them in whatever terms they choose to share themselves, may well be more about playing hermit than being the hermit one truly is (assuming, of course, one really is a hermit in the first place!). In such cases it is the hermit him/herself who is guilty of assuring the vocation will be misunderstood and dismissed as eccentric and irrelevant at best! We may not be able to share the silence of solitude with these people we love nor the deepest and most truly mysterious parts of our lives rooted in that specific silence, but we can show them lives which are essentially loving, joyful, and full. That is, after all, the essential witness we are called to give and the the only thing which will correct any misunderstanding.

***Catechism of the Catholic Church par # 921: "[Hermits] manifest to everyone the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church, that is, personal intimacy with Christ. Hidden from the eyes of men, the life of the hermit is the silent preaching of the Lord, to whom (she) has surrendered (her) life simply because [the Lord] is everything to (her). Her's is the particular call to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified One."

Followup Questions on the notion of Bringing "One's Entire Availability"

[[Sister Laurel, Can it be that simple - that God just wants me to live "on friendly terms" with him? (It brings tears to my eyes to just write this sentence.) Is that what the "abyss" is all about? Just to live with him even when I don't feel him present and only know by faith he has promised to be there - "on friendly terms?" To  do all the mundane things "with him" - not even "for him" - because I can't bring anything worth having except my being entirely available to him? So where, then, does the "doing" fit in -- the seeking/seeing him in others, serving him by serving others? Since I am not a hermit, how does this translate to the active life - because I think it must. How do I "spend myself" if I bring nothing worth having to him? ]]

Thanks for your questions and the chance to reflect on all this further. My own thought is coming together in new ways in all of this so I offer this response with that in mind. Here is a place where words are really critical. First, yes, it is that simple but no one ever said simple meant easy or without substantial cost. Neither does simple mean that we get there all at once. This is simple like God is simple, like union with God is simple, like faith is simple. In other words it speaks as much of a goal we will spend our whole lives attaining as it does the simplicity of our immediate actions. That quotation (from The Hermitage Within regarding bringing one's entire availability and living on friendly terms with God) is something I read first in 1984 some months after first reading canon 603. I posted it in the sidebar of this blog in 2007 as I prepared for solemn profession. And now I have returned to it yet again only from a new place, a deeper perspective. It represents one of those spiral experiences, the kind of thing T.S. Eliot writes about when he says: [[We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.]]

Secondly, the quotation referred to bringing " my entire availability" not just to "being entirely available". While these two realities are profoundly related and overlap, I hear the first as including the second but therefore as committing to something more as well. I think bringing one's entire availability means bringing one's whole self for God's own sake so that God might really be God in all the ways that is so. As you say, it implies being available to God, doing things with God, being open to awareness of God and God's will, but more, it says "I bring you all my gifts, all my neediness and deficits, myself and all the things that allow you to be God. I open myself to your love, your recreation, your healing, your sovereignty, your judgment; I bring myself in all the ways which might allow you to be God in my life and world." It means, I think, that I allow myself to be one whose entire purpose and meaning is in the mediation of God's presence and purposes. And this, I think, is a commitment to being entirely emptied and remade so that my whole life becomes transparent to God.

As I think more about this it seems to me "my entire availability" is something we can only offer God.  "My entire availability" seems to me to mean bringing myself to God in ways which would possibly be an imposition, unsafe (for them and for me), and pastorally unwise or simply unloving in the case of others. "Being entirely available," on the other hand, sounds to me like bringing myself as I am and allowing God to share in my activities and life as it is but, for instance, not necessarily giving God my entire future and past, my entire self -- body and soul, physically, mentally and spiritually. It also sounds like the focus is on gifts, but not on emptiness and need. Our world is certainly familiar with the idea of bringing one's gifts, but to bring one's "weakness," "shame", and inabilities is rarely recognized as something we are called to sign up for at church (or wherever) to offer to others. Despite the importance of vulnerability in pastoral ministry bringing one's "weakness," "shame", deficits, and inabilities is rarely recognized as something we must offer to God if we are to bring others the Gospel as something whose truth we know intimately.

Thus, I think, that "entire availability" means that I also bring my deficits and deficiencies and that I do so trusting that God can make even these bits of emptiness something infinitely valuable and even fruitful to others. To be available to God and to bring one's entire availability may indeed be the same thing but they sound different to me --- overlapping, yes, but different. Whether I am correct or not in this, the formulation in the passage quoted from The Hermitage Within pushes me to envision something much more total and dynamic than the other formulation. Other things push me to this as well, not least Paul and Mark's theologies of the cross, Jesus' kenosis even unto godless death and descent into hell, and the conviction I have that every hermit must be open to being called to greater reclusion.

Entire Availability for Jesus and for the Hermit:

In light of these, I think for the hermit "my entire availability" means bringing (and maybe relinquishing or actually being stripped of) precisely those discrete gifts which might be used for others, for ministry, for being fruitful in the world. Gifts are the very way we are available to others. Alternately, those ways we are available to others are our truest gifts (including --- when transfigured to mediate the love and mercy of God --- our emptiness and incapacity). This is why a person claiming to be a hermit as a way of refusing to use her gifts or simply failing to be available to others, a way of being selfish and misanthropic, is one of the greatest blasphemies I can think of. But to be stripped of gifts or talents in solitude so that God's redemption is all we "have" is an entirely different thing indeed --- and one which absolutely requires careful and relatively lengthy mutual discernment. In any case, the eremitical life means bringing to God every gift, every potentiality and deficiency one has so that God may do whatever God wishes with them. Eremitical solitude is not about time away so one becomes a better minister (though that may also happen), nor greater degrees of prayer so one's service of others is better grounded (though it will surely do that as well). For those called to these eremitical solitude and commitment to eremitical hiddenness reflect an act of blind trust that affirms whatever God does with one --- even if every individual gift is left unused --- will be ultimately significant in the coming of the Kingdom because in this way God is allowed to be God exhaustively in these lives.

When we think of Jesus we see a man whose tremendous potential and capacity for ministry, teaching, preaching, simple availability and community, was stripped away. In part this happened through the circumstances of his birth because he was shamed in this and was seen as less capable of honorable contributions or faithfulness. In part it was because he was a carpenter's son, someone who worked with his hands and was therefore thought of as less intellectually capable. In part it was because he was more and more isolated from his own People and Religion and assumed a peripatetic life with no real roots or sources of honor --- except of course from the One he called Abba. And in part it was because even his miracles and preaching were still insufficient to achieve the transformation of the world, the reconciliation of all things with God so that God might one day truly be all in all. Gradually (or not so gradually once his public ministry began) Jesus was stripped of every individual gift or talent until, nailed to a cross and too physically weak and incapable of anything else, when he was a failure as his world variously measured success, the ONLY thing he could "do" or be was open to whatever God would do to redeem the situation. THIS abject emptiness, which was the measure of his entire availability to God and also to us(!), was the place and way he became truly and fully transparent to his Abba. It also made the effectiveness of his ministry and mission global or even cosmic in scope.

This, it seems to me is really the model of the hermit's life. I believe it is what is called for when The Hermitage Within speaks of the hermit's "entire availability."  One traditionalist theology of the cross suggests that Jesus raised himself  from godless death to show he was God. The priest I heard arguing this actually claimed there was no other reason for the resurrection! But Paul's and Mark's theologies of the cross say something very different; namely, when all the props are kicked out, when we have nothing left but abject emptiness, when life strips us of every strength and talent and potential, God can and will use this very emptiness as the source of the redemption of all of reality --- if only we give that too to God. Hermits, but especially recluses, are called by God to embrace a similar commitment to kenosis and faith in God. We witness to the power of God at work when perhaps all we can bring is emptiness and "non-accomplishment".

Questions on Active Ministry:

Nothing in this means the non-hermit is not called to use her gifts as best she can. Of course she is called to minister with God, through God, and in God. Her availability to others is meant to be an availability to God and all that is precious to God. We all must spend ourselves in all the ways God calls us to. But old age, illness and other circumstances make some forms of this impossible. When that is true we are called to a greater and different kind of self-emptying, a different kind of availability. We are called to allow God to make of us whatever he wills to do in our incapacity. We are called to witness to the profoundest truth of the Gospel, namely, that not only does our God bring more abundant life out of life and move us from faith to faith but he will bring life out of death, meaning out of absurdity and senselessness, and hope out of the desperate and hopeless situations we each know.

All we can bring to these situations is our entire availability whether measured in talents or incapacity. For Christians our human emptiness is really the greatest form of potential precisely because our God is not only the one who creates out of chaos, but out of nothing at all. Our gifts are wonderful and are to be esteemed and used to serve God and his creation, but what is also true is that our emptiness can actually give God greater scope to be God --- if only we make a gift of it to God for God's own sake. (Remember that whenever we act so that God might be God, which is what I mean by "for God's own sake," there is no limit to who ultimately benefits.) The chronically ill and disabled have an opportunity to witness to this foundational truth with the gift of their lives to God. Hermits, who freely choose the hiddenness of the silence of solitude, I think, witness even more radically to this truth by accepting being freely stripped of every gift --- something they do especially on behalf of all those who are touched by weakness, incapacity, and emptiness --- whenever and for whatever reason these occur.

The Abyss:

You and I have spoken about the "leap into the abyss" in the past and you ask about it specifically so let me add this. For those not part of that conversation let me remind you that I noted that while leaping into the abyss is a fearful thing (i.e., while, for instance, it is an awesome, frightening, exhilarating thing), we don't have to hope God will eventually come to find us there; God is already there. God is the very One who maintains and sustains us in our emptiness and transforms that emptiness into fullness. That is the lesson of Jesus' death, descent, resurrection and ascension. There is no absolutely godless place as a result of Jesus' own exhaustive obedience (openness and responsiveness) to God.

Yes, I believe the emptiness I have spoken of through this and earlier posts is precisely the abyss which Merton and others speak of. Kenosis is the way we make the leap. The notion of "entire availability" involves a leap (a commitment to self-emptying and stripping) into the depths of that abyss we know as both void (even a relatively godless void) and divine pleroma. (In Jesus' case his consent to enter the abyss of sinful death was consent to enter an absolutely godless void which would be transformed into the fullness of life in and of God). It is first of all the abyss of our own hearts and then (eventually) the abyss of death itself. We ordinarily prepare for the abyss of death to the degree we commit to entering the abyss of our own hearts. Whether we experience mainly profound darkness or the glorious light of Tabor, through our own self-emptying in life and in death we leap securely into God's hands and take up our abode in God's own heart.