More on the Hiddenness of the Hermit Vocation

[[Hi Sister Laurel, thank you for telling your story from the perspective of using gifts vs being the gift. Two things surprised me a little. The first was the idea that the hiddenness of the eremitical life has to do mainly with the work God is doing within the hermit. This really is the vocation of the hermit and where else can it happen but in hiddenness? The second was that in letting go of a concern to use the gifts God has given us and instead focusing on the gift God makes of us we are involved in what the Gospel calls "dying to self"! I had never thought about it that way but this is the sense it made to me. The motto, "Let go and let God" fits here doesn't it?]]

The Hiddenness of the Hermit Vocation:

Thanks for writing. You got it exactly right with regard to the hiddenness of the eremitical life!  I especially liked your rhetorical question, ". . . where else can it happen but in hiddenness?" Most of the time when hermits speak about the hiddenness of their lives they speak about people not knowing they are hermits or doing things anonymously. Others speak of not wearing habits, not using titles or post-nomial initials and the like lest the hiddenness of the vocation be betrayed. I have written several times now about the tension between the hiddenness of the vocation and its public character --- its call to witness to the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church in this way of life. All of these have some greater or lesser degree of validity but I think that when we recognize that eremitical life is about letting God do God's own silent and solitary work in the hiddenness of the human heart as we move more and more toward dwelling within his own heart in Christ, we have put our finger on the heart of the matter of eremitical hiddenness.

It seems to me that in every person's life God works silently in incredible hiddenness. The hermit commits her entire life to allowing this and witnessing to it. The very fact that she retires to a hermitage witnesses to her commitment to and faith in this hidden work of God. The fact that she embraces a life of the silence of solitude is a commitment that witnesses to it. Those of us who wear habits, use titles and post-nomial initials that prompt people to ask about our lives are a commitment and (paradoxically) witness to this incredible hiddenness. It is always striking to me that when people learn I am a hermit they tend to be completely off-footed. I noted that recently I played violin for a funeral held in our parish and that this was well-received. People understood this use of gifts and they wondered what I did here at the parish; they expected that I taught, perhaps music, or that I was a liturgist or any number of other things but they looked a bit stunned when they heard I was a hermit and rarely played violin this way. No one actually said, "Oh what a waste," of course; surprise and maybe puzzlement was what was generally expressed. I am hoping folks realized that the violin expressed and reflected what happens to my own heart in the ordinary silence and solitude of my hermitage.

In any case, the gifts we occasionally use and those we relinquish in the name of our lives as hermits witness to the essential hiddenness of those lives and of the God powerfully at work there. We know that God works this way in every person's life but it seems to  me that relatively few people actually commit to revealing this by embracing an essential hiddenness. Cloistered nuns and monks do so, hermits do so; it is a witness our world needs --- and one that throws folks off-balance when they meet it face to face. The Kingdom of God comes in this way. It grows silently in the darkness and night when we can do nothing but trust in the One who is its source. It bursts forth when we have reached the limits of our own patience, when we have finally relinquished any pretense of control or even understanding. It comes in victory at the same time we admit defeat and steals upon us -- gently silencing the prayer that storms heaven so that heaven can simply sing within us.

 Prayer is certainly the hermit's main ministry but only if it is genuinely the work she allows God to do in, with, and through her, the work which allows her to set her own concerns, frailties, strengths, and even her talents and gifts aside so to speak so that the hidden work and presence of God may flourish within her. I have written before that it is the hermit's very vocation to become God's own prayer in our world; in fact, that is really the fundamental vocation of every person because it is the thing which characterizes authentic humanity. Hermits, it seems to me, undertake this with a special dedication in a way which is largely stripped of the activities and ministries which, while usually revelatory, may actually distract attention from that foundational presence at work in the solitary silence of every human heart. See also, Essential Hiddenness: A Call to extraordinary ordinariness for a post on the universality of this call.

God-given gifts and Dying to Self:

Ordinarily we speak of dying to self in terms of using our gifts generously and selflessly. This is an entirely valid and critical piece of what dying to self really means. However, I think the idea of letting go of significant gifts God has given us so that who we are ourselves, that is, so that we are who God makes us to be most fundamentally, is the real witness of our lives; it is a special and even more radical kind of dying to self peculiar to the eremitical life --- though we find suggestions of it in old age, chronic illness, etc. This really is a new insight for me --- one, that is, I have only just begun thinking consciously about in connection with the idea that the hermit's life is an essentially hidden one. It is a paradox because at the same time we let go of those gifts we become freer to use them without pressure or self-consciousness should appropriate opportunities arise. Even so, we are not our gifts, not most fundamentally, nor is our life ultimately about a struggle to protect or even to use those gifts.  And when we are deprived of those gifts or of the ability to use them by illness or other life circumstances the deepest or foundational meaning and mystery of our lives can become clear. This too is a form of dying to self --- perhaps the most radical form short of the physical death of red martyrdom.

I think hermits have known this right along.  It is what allows them to use the term "white martyrdom" for their lives. I have written here that I once thought of contemplatives and hermits as selfish rather than selfless. Back then I was thinking of the multitude of wasted gifts and of some sort of failure to honor them but I was not thinking of a life which explicitly honored the giver of all gifts in a more transparent way or was a naked expression of (dependence on) that giver and the redemption he occasions in us. At the same time I was very young; I had not really faced a situation where my own God-given gifts were either unusable or where, in my brokenness, emptiness, and incapacity, I knew more fully and clearly my own need for radical redemption --- much less had I come to actually know that redemption.

Only as I came face to face with these and the immense question "WHY?!" that drove me did I begin to sense that eremitical life could "make sense of the whole of my life." My sense of this, however, was still inchoate; it was as unformed as my own eremitical identity for I was not, in any sense of the term, a hermit. In time, and especially in the silence of solitude, God did with my life what the Gospel promises and proclaims. He loved me into wholeness and continues to do so. That hidden, unceasing, and unconquerable redemptive Love-in-act is what my vocation witnesses to. Hermits have seen right along that their witness is more fundamental and radical than even the use of God-given gifts for the sake of others can make clear.

One of the reasons the hermit life will always be rare is because we need people who use their God-given gifts in the multitude of ways which enrich our lives every day. In no way am I suggesting that such gifts are unimportant or, generally speaking, should not be used in assisting in the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is the usual way we cooperate with God and reveal God's life to others.

But at the same time there will always be a few of us who have come to a place where chronic illness (or whatever else!) made this impossible; and yet, through a Divine mercy and wisdom we can hardly believe, much less describe, we have been redeemed and become gifts more precious than any or all of the individual talents we once carefully developed and shepherded. Through a more radical and counter-cultural kenosis (self-emptying), in the hiddenness of a life more fundamentally about being made gift than about using our talents, hermits are called to witness to the inexhaustible, transcendent, and redemptive reality dwelling in the very core of our being -- the infinitely loving source and ground of our lives. Those redeemed and transfigured lives say, "God alone is enough!" With St Paul (who himself was stripped and emptied by life's circumstances and who spent time in the desert learning to see the new kind of sense his life held in light of the crucified Christ), we proclaim in the starkest way we can, "I, yet not I but Christ within me!"

On the Distinction Between Using Gifts and Being the Gift

[[Hi Sister. I've been reading what you wrote on chronic illness as vocation. I wondered why God would give a person gifts they could never really use.  And if their gifts can't be used then how do they serve or glorify God? I mean I do believe people who can't use God-given gifts still serve God but we are supposed to use our gifts and what if we can't? Since you are a hermit do you ever feel that you cannot use your gifts? Does it matter? Does canonical standing make better use of your gifts than non-canonical standing? I hope this is not gibberish!]]

These are great questions and no, not gibberish at all. The pain of being given gifts which we may not be able to use because of chronic illness or other life circumstances is, in my experience, one of the most difficult and bewildering things we can know. The question "WHY?!!" is one of those we are driven to ask by such situations. We ask it of God, of the universe, of the silence, of friends and family, of books and teachers and pastors and ministers; we ask it of ourselves too though we know we don't have the answer. In one way and another we ask it in many different ways of whomever will listen --- and sometimes we force people to listen to the screams of anguish our lives become as we embed this question in all we are and do. Whether we act out, withdraw, retreat into delusions, turn seriously to religion or philosophy, resort to crime, become workaholics for whom money is the measure of meaning, create great works of art, or whatever else we do, the question, WHY?! often stands at the heart of our searching, activism, depression, confusion, and pain. This is true even when our lives have not been derailed by chronic illness, but of course when that or other catastrophic events occur to us the question assumes a critical importance. And of course, we can live years and years without finding an answer. I think you will understand when I say that "WHY?!" is the question which, no matter how it is posed throughout our lives, we each are.

One thing I should be clear about is that God gives us gifts because he wills us to use them and is delighted when we can and do so. I do not believe God gives gifts to frustrate us or to be wasted. But, as Paul puts the matter, and as we know from experience, there are powers and principalities at work in our world and lives which are not of God. God does not will chronic illness, for instance. Illness is a symptom and consequence of sin --- that is, it is the result of being estranged to some extent from the source and ground of life itself. Even so, though God does not will our illness, he will absolutely work to bring good out of it to whatever degree he can. Especially, God will work so that illness is no longer the dominant reality of our lives. It may remain, but where once it was the defining reality of our lives and identity, God will work so that grace becomes the dominant theme our lives sings instead; illness, though still very real perhaps, then becomes a kind of subtext adding depth and poignancy but lacking all pretensions of ultimacy.

This is really the heart of my answer to your questions. Each of us has many gifts we would like to develop and use. I think most of us have more gifts than we can actually do that with. For instance, if I choose to play violin and thus spend time and resources on lessons, practice periods, music, and time with friends who also play music, I may not be able to spend the time I could spend on writing or theology, or even certain kinds of prayer I also associate with divine giftedness. This is a normal situation and we all must make these kinds of choices as we move through life. Still, while we must make decisions regarding which gifts we will develop and which we will allow to lay relatively fallow there is a deeper choice involved at every moment, namely, what kind of person will we be in any case? When chronic illness takes the question of developing and using specific gifts out of our hands, when we cannot use our education, for instance, or no longer work seriously in our chosen field, when we cannot raise a family, hold a job, or perhaps even volunteer at Church in ways we might once have done, the question that remains is that of who we are and who will we be in relation to God.

The key here is the grace of God, that is, the powerful presence of God. Illness does not deprive us of the grace of God nor of the capacity to respond to that grace. In my own process of becoming a hermit, as you know, I had had my own life derailed by chronic illness. Fortunately, I had prepared to do Theology and loved systematics so that I read Theology even as illness deprived me of the possibility of doing this as a profession. I was also "certain" that I was called to some form of religious life; these two dimensions were gifts that helped me hold onto a perspective that transcended illness and disability, and at least potentially, promised to make sense of these.

My professors (but especially John C Dwyer) had introduced me to an amazing theology of the cross (both Pauline and Markan) which focused on a soteriology (a theology of redemption) stressing that even the worst that befalls a human being can witness to the redemption possible with God. In Mark's version of the gospel, the bottom line is that when all the props are kicked out, God will bring life out of death and meaning out of senselessness. In Paul's letters I was reminded many times that the center of things is his affirmation: "My (i.e., God's) grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness." Meanwhile, at one point I began working with a spiritual director who believed unquestioningly in the power of God alive in the core of our being and provided me with tools to help allow that presence to expand and triumph in my heart and life. In the course of our work together, my own prayer shifted from being something I did (or struggled to do!) to something God did within me. (This shift was especially occasioned and marked by the prayer experience I have mentioned here before.) In time I became a contemplative but at this point in time illness still meant isolation rather than the communion of solitude.

All of these pieces and others came together in a new way when I read canon 603 and began considering eremitical life.  The eremitical life is dependent upon God's call of course, but everything about it also witnesses to the truth that God's grace is enough for us and God's power is perfected in weakness. When we speak about the hiddenness of the life it is this active and powerful presence of God who graces us that is of first concern. I have many gifts, but in this life there is no doubt that they generally remain hidden and many are even entirely unused while the grace of God makes me the hermit I am called to be. Mainly this occurs in complete hiddenness. I may think and write about this life; I may do theology and a very little adult faith formation for my parish; I may do a limited amount of spiritual direction, play some violin in an orchestra, and even write on this blog and for publication to some extent --- though never to the extent I might have done these things had chronic illness not knocked my life off the rails. But the simple fact is if I were unable to do any of these things my vocation would be the same. I am called to BE a hermit, a whole and holy human being who witnesses to the deepest truth of our lives experienced in solitude: namely, God alone is sufficient for us. We are made whole and completed in the God who seeks us unceasingly and will never abandon us.

So you see, as I understand it anyway, my life is not so much about using the gifts God undoubtedly gave me at birth so much as it is about being the gift which God's love makes of me. Who I am as the result of God's grace is the essential ministry and witness of my life. Answering a call to eremitical life required that I really respond to a call I sensed from God, a call to abundant life --- not the life focused on what I could do much less on what I could not do, but the life of who God would make me to be if given the ongoing opportunity to shape my heart day by day by day. Regarding public profession and canonical standing under c 603, let me say that it took me some time to come to the place where I was really ready for these; today I experience even the long waiting required as a gift of God.

Paradoxically a huge part of my readiness for perpetual eremitical vows was coincident with coming to a place where I did not really need the Church's canonical standing except to the extent I was bringing them a unique gift. You see, I knew that the Holy Spirit had worked in my life to redeem an isolation and alienation occasioned mainly by chronic illness. THAT was the gift I was bringing the Church, the charism I was seeking to publicly witness to in the name of the Church by seeking public profession and consecration. That the Holy Spirit worked this way in my life in the prayer and lectio of significant solitude seems to me to be precisely what constitutes the gift of eremitical life.  (Of course canonical standing and especially God's consecration has also been a great gift to me but outlining that is another, though related, topic.)

Thus, when I renewed my petition to the Diocese of Oakland regarding admission to perpetual profession and consecration in the early 2000's, eremitical solitude had already transformed my life. I was already a hermit not because of any particular standing but because I lived the truth of redemption mediated to me in the silence of solitude. I sought consecration because now I clearly recognized this gift belonged to the Church and was meant for others; public standing in the consecrated state made that possible in a unique way. I was not seeking the Church's approval of this gift so I could be made a hermit "with status" so much as I was seeking a way to make a genuine expression of eremitical life and the redemption of isolation and meaninglessness it represented better known and accessible to others. That, I think, is the real importance of canonical standing, especially for the hermit; it witnesses more to the work of the Holy Spirit within the Church, more to the contemplative primacy of being over doing, and thus, less to the personal gifts of the person being professed and consecrated.

By the way, along the way I do use many of the gifts God has given me to some extent. Yesterday, for instance, I was able to play violin for a funeral Mass. I don't do this often at all because I personally prefer to participate in Mass differently than this, but it was a joy to do for friends in the parish. (A number of people who really do know me pretty well commented, "I didn't know you played the violin!") Today I did a Communion service and reflection as I do many Fridays during the year. Often times, as I have noted here before, I write reflections on weekly Scripture lections, and of course I write here and other places and do spiritual direction. This allows me to use some of my theology for others but even more fundamentally it is an expression of who I am in light of the grace of God in my life. Even so, the important truth is that the eremitical vocation (and, I would argue, any vocation to chronic illness!) is much more about being the gift God makes of us  --- no matter how hidden eremitical life or our illness makes that gift --- than it is a matter of focusing on or being anxious about using or not using the gifts God has given us.

In other words my life glorifies God and is a service to God's People even if no one has a clue what specific gifts God has given me because it reveals the power of God to redeem and transfigure a reality fraught with sin, death, and the power of the absurd. A non-eremitical vocation to chronic illness does the same thing if only one can allow God's grace to work in and transfigure them. We ourselves as covenant partners of God in all things then become the incarnate "answer" to the often-terrible question, "WHY?!!"  In Christ, in our graced and transfigured lives, this question ceases to be one of unresolved torment; instead, it becomes both an invitation to and an instance of hope-filled witness and joyful proclamation. "WHY??" So that Christ might live in me and in me triumph over all that brings chaos and meaninglessness to human lives. WHY?1! So that the God of life may triumph over the powers of sin and death in us, the Spirit may transform isolation into genuine solitude in us, and the things that ordinarily separate us from God may become sacraments of God's presence and inescapable, unconquerable love in us!

I hope this is helpful and answers your questions.

Questions on the Relation of Committed Singleness to Diocesan Eremitical Life

[[Dear Sister, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and that the New Year will be truly blessed. 

The other day I was having coffee with a friend of mine and I was speaking with him about the call to single life (as the Church envisions it). I know that this is my calling (whether it leads to a fully eremitic vocation has yet to be seen). In the course of our conversation he said that the single vocation is a tough one because unlike marriage, priesthood and even religious life; the call to single life is very hidden and often misunderstood. It inherently includes much solitude. 

After the conversation with my friend, I was wondering if the single life has as its base the eremitic life. Could it be that it is the eremitic ideal and its pillars that are the font of spirituality for the committed Catholic single? [After all] The single life (in a Catholic sense) involves active service but also a more contemplative life of prayer in worship of God and intercession for the Church and others. In addition, single life involves much solitude and a unique hiddenness not found in other vocations (even marriage). Even though I am busy at work; at the end of the day, when everyone goes home to their families, I'm on my own (I don't think this is a bad thing by the way).  This means that a large portion of my life is spent in solitude. This solitude is a blessing as it leaves me more time for prayer and lectio than my married counterparts (or even parish priests and active religious as many of their meetings take place in the evening).

Thus, I see a great convergence between the eremitic vocation and the Christian single vocation as many of its key pillars are plentifully present in how a committed single Catholic lives his/her life (prayer, lectio, solitude, hidenness etc.). In fact, due to the large amounts of solitude I think hermits and singles might even have more in common than even contemplative or cloistered religious as they usually live in community. I would welcome your insights on this. Do you think my thoughts are correct or do they demonstrate a misunderstanding of these two vocations? Also, what special insights do you think the eremitic life can give to committed people living the Catholic understanding of the single vocation. Should committed Catholic singles look to the hermit vocation for their sustenance and spiritual baseline or touchstone? Thank you again for your important presence on the Internet! :)]]

Thanks for writing again. I hope your own Christmastide is going well and that this year is a blessed one for you. I will answer your questions referring to committed singleness (sometimes just "singleness") throughout.  I am assuming in the rest of what I say here that "committed singleness" is unmarried lay life with a private dedication to celibacy (that is, a private commitment to remain unmarried) for  the sake of the Kingdom. If I do not think of it this way I have a very hard time thinking of it as a true vocation at all. (I will hold my doubts about this for another time I think.) When I speak of eremitical life here I will mainly be speaking of diocesan or other consecrated (canonical) eremitism unless I specify lay eremitism.

Regarding your specific suggestions and questions I think you have the relationship between the two realities backwards and are also generalizing too readily from your own experience. First of all eremitical life builds on single life, not the other way around; it presupposes singleness and both specifies and transforms that in a nuptial relationship with Christ. Secondly though, there is nothing that says a committed single person needs to live an essentially contemplative life nor that they need to have lots of solitude, much less that solitude needs to be a defining characteristic of their lives. (All people need some degree of physical solitude for spiritual health, but ordinarily one's life is not defined in these terms.) A committed single may well be something of a loner, but this is not essential to the life. Further, committed single persons are not simply living eremitical-life-lite nor is their spirituality necessarily a desert spirituality at all. Your own spirituality may be such a spirituality and you may actually be called to be a hermit, but that form of life is not typical of the majority of persons living singleness, committed or otherwise. In any case, even if your own life evolves into an eremitical one, it will have grown out of your singleness, not the other way around.

What you may be sensing is that there is a similar underlying (natural) foundation for both vocations (and for any other). As I have written elsewhere, [[Solitude is the most catholic of vocations, and a specifically eremitic vocation to solitude serves to remind us of its basic importance in the life of every person, not only as existential predicament,  but as Christian value, challenge, and call.  All of us struggle to maintain an appropriate tension between independence and committedness to others which is characteristic of truly human solitude.]] ("Eremitism: Call to the Chronically Ill and Disabled", Review For Religious, vol 48, num 2, March/April 1989) Most fundamentally we are each and every one of us, no matter our vocational path, a covenantal or dialogical relationship with God. It is not simply that we have such a relationship but more that we, to the extent we are truly human and truly individuals, ARE this relationship and are called more and more to be this relationship. This is a profound paradox. In the NT Paul expressed it this way, "I yet not I but Christ in me." We are most truly ourselves to the extent we are an intimate relationship with God and bear witness to God's presence in us. We are most truly ourselves (and most truly free) to the extent God is sovereign (theonomous) in us. (It is Baptism that restores the "theonomy" we each are and opens us more fully to this sovereignty. It consecrates or sets us apart for God and in God and thus frees us to be more truly ourselves.)

Out of this fundamental solitude with its dialectic of aloneness and community grow both cenobitism and eremitism. Because of human solitude's very nature, singleness, marriage, consecrated celibacy, consecrated virginity, ordained life, cloistered and ministerial religious life, secular life and life withdrawn in and for the silence of solitude, all have their roots therein. I think you are trying to get to this underlying foundation which grounds both the eremitical and the single vocation (no matter what form the latter takes). I would also suggest that all vocations are only more or less understood --- though some may be rarer and more misunderstood of course. The existence of stereotypes of marriage, singleness, hermit life, priesthood, religious life, (consecrated) virginity, etc all argue for the truth of this suggestion. In any case, being misunderstood is not an essential characteristic of any vocation itself.

But hiddenness is an essential characteristic of the eremitical life. This hiddenness is specifically tied to anachoresis, a purposeful and deliberate withdrawal from that which is contrary to God and the eyes of others so that one might live in communion with God. This anachoresis is not simply the quest for privacy or discretion though it also involves these. (I suspect privacy is really a more apt term for what your friend was trying to describe than "hiddenness" per se. Hiddenness is hardly an essential characteristic of singleness itself or of the commitment to remain unmarried for the sake of the Kingdom.) Neither is the anachoresis of eremitical life simply about being alone or remaining unmarried. Instead it is about being alone WITH God for the sake of others including for God's own sake. The hermit lives her life, therefore, in a way which witnesses to the truth that God alone is enough. She withdraws from much of the world (including much that is very good and of God) in order to explore a deeper dimension of the world which is often ignored and these days frequently explicitly denied and rejected. It is this positive dynamic which constitutes the cause of both eremitism's hiddenness and its tendency to be misunderstood.

At bottom eremitical life is rooted in, dedicated to, consecrated or set apart by and for God and God's purposes; it is defined by and responsible for witnessing to the hidden foundational relationship which is the ground of creation and the source of every human life in its poverty and in its greatness. This relationship is the sufficient reason for human life, the thing we strive to embody and share with others. It is the source of all creativity and generativity and, in fact, is the aim or telos of creation. Moreover, just as God is the ground, source, and absolute future of all reality, our participation in this foundational relationship relates us to all others as well and witnesses to this often-forgotten truth. It could be argued that this participation is really the entire work of the hermit, the whole purpose and essential ministry of her life and that it MUST occur in the hiddenness of solitude. After all, this is an essential part of the witness the hermit seeks to give. She grows to human fullness and comes to love more fully and authentically because of a relationship which is both hidden yet pervasive in all of creation. In this way she reveals to everyone the hidden and living mystery which is the foundation of their own lives and the source of the hope proclaiming the ultimate future of the entire creation.

Your observation that committed singles may have more in common with hermits than even cloistered Religious do because these Religious live in community leads to a couple of thoughts on the nature of eremitical solitude. As I have already noted, eremitical solitude is not merely about being alone but being alone with God for the sake of others. External or physical solitude is only the tip of a very big iceberg. It is important but exists for the sake of the deeper solitude of one's relationship with God. Many people live alone, many either do not have familes or no longer have spouses. Only a minority dedicate themselves entirely to the deeper solitude of one's relationship with God and fewer still to a desert spirituality. Cloistered religious live in community but community itself is lived in order to foster and nurture this deeper solitude. While communities may certainly differ, if you have ever spent time in a Camaldolese house or some Trappist houses you will know what I mean. In the Trappistine monastery I am familiar with, for instance, while there is a strong and joyful community there, each person maintains an essential silence which protects the foundational solitude each Sister is called to and from which genuine community grows. Work and Meals mainly occur in silence. Recreation is regular and scheduled. Community is not merely about living together any more than eremitical (or monastic) solitude is merely about being alone. Community is established for the sake of God and members' life in God just as Eremitism is.

Given this analysis I am suggesting that contemplative Religious who live in community may well have a good deal more in common with hermits than with those who simply live alone even if they are committed Christian singles. With contemplative religious who share a desert spirituality and the silence, solitude and penance that implies, a significant prayer life structured similarly to that of a hermit (or vice versa!), vows which incarnate and express the same values or counsels, and a commitment to community based on each person becoming their truest selves in communion with God (something a diocesan hermit is certainly committed to in her parish and ministry), we are describing lives whose every aspect will resonate with those of the hermit.  This would be much less true of committed Christians choosing to remain unmarried; generally they share relatively few of these characteristics. There are many entirely valid and meaningful ways to live a Christian life as a committed single. Living alone, even with a commitment to remain unmarried, is simply not enough to establish the kind of affinity or kinship you have suggested exists between such a person and a hermit. All of this is one of the reasons I write again and again that a hermit is not simply a lone pious person but is instead a desert dweller.

Finally, you asked if committed singles should look to hermits as their spiritual baseline or touchstone. I would say that generally the answer is no except to the extent the hermit reminds them of the foundational solitude and need for community which exists for every person. While hermits can also remind committed singles that their prayer lives can be both profound and versatile without demanding a community with whom one can pray Office,  this reminder to foundational (and dialogical or covenantal) solitude is the main thing hermits image for others. Most singles will be called to far greater levels of active ministry, greater degrees of direct community and an essential and meaningful secularity. Hermits will serve as an adequate paradigm for very few committed singles and for those they do I would recommend they become lay hermits in an explicit and conscious way. What is true is that every vocation reminds us of a particular aspect of what it means to be a committed Christian. Committed singles generally need to draw on the lessons of every vocation including marriage --- not least (though not only) because there is no overarching picture of what such a vocation looks like nor single description of its essential nature.

I hope this is helpful.