On Working with a Diocese Toward the Discernment and Formation of c 603 Hermits

 [[Sister Laurel, I want to become a diocesan hermit but my diocese doesn't have the personnel to work with me. Is that common? You said you sometimes work with dioceses who are unfamiliar with c 603 or don't have the personnel to work with the candidate sufficiently to discern and help in the formation of an eremitical vocation. Would you consider doing that with me or does my diocese need to contact you first? What do I need to do to get this started? Thank you for taking the time to answer this. I am fine with you doing that on your blog except for private information of course!]]

Hi there, and thanks for your questions. In the main, though you gave permission to post this on the blog, I'll answer you privately; at the same time, there is some general information I can post here which may help others so thanks for your permission. First of all, it is not uncommon these days that dioceses don't have sufficient personnel, especially in dealing with other than priestly vocations. There are shortages of both priests and religious and vocations offices tend to be less fully staffed than was once the case. Some dioceses no longer have Vicars for Religious or Consecrated Life, The work of these offices is taken on by Vocation Directors working mainly with priestly vocations. As you can imagine, this leaves gaps re c 603 vocations. At the same time, DICLSAL has published Ponam in Deserto Viam (The Hermit's Way of Life in the Local Church) Libreria Editrice Vaticana (2022), which, among other things, encourages the use of qualified c 603 hermits to mentor or collaborate in the discernment and formation of such vocations.

To that end, yes, over the past seven or eight years or so, I have worked with people from several dioceses in the US and Great Britain. As I have noted here in recent years, there are a couple of ways c 603 can be approached to assist with discernment and formation of vocations. One is to add canonical layers to things (requisite time frames, required canonical hoops to jump through usually drawn from established approaches to religious life more generally). This tends not to work in my estimation. The second is to develop a workable and individualized process of discernment and preparation (formation) from within the canon itself with minimal extraneous requirements.

That latter is the approach I have taken with these others based on my sense of the adequacy of the canon itself and its history (especially in terms of the dozen monk-hermits who preceded c 603 in time as its forebears with Bp Remi de Roo, who was their Bishop Protector and made the initial intervention at the Second Vatican Council to see the eremitical vocation, but particularly the solitary eremitical vocation, recognized as a state of perfection). What this approach provides is a process of supervised growth in the vocation based on the requirements of the canon, especially that of writing a liveable Rule of Life, and a minimal set of formal time frames (minimum time to temporary vows, writing of a liveable Rule, readiness for perpetual vows and consecration). While every diocese can approach this differently, the candidate still needs to negotiate certain things to be truly ready for profession as a c 603 hermit. All of those things can be achieved while assisting the candidate to write a liveable Rule of Life that truly reflects his/her own experience of c 603 eremitical life and the way God works in his/her life.

Sometimes dioceses (the Vicar for Religious or Consecrated Life, or the Vocations Director) contact me directly, most often they ask the candidate to contact me and then we (all) go from there. It is the case that you (or any potential candidate really) will need to write (email) me personally AND also speak with your diocese about working with me (more about that in a moment). Before this, however, you will need to check with these persons to see if they are open to professing anyone at all who shows themselves to be a suitable candidate who is adequately prepared for profession under c 603. If they are open to implementing the canon under these conditions and will commit to that, then you (or any potential candidate) are in a position to take next steps. Unfortunately, nothing can be done if your diocese is unwilling to implement the canon at all, but if they are open to it, then there are several ways of proceeding. All of these require someone from the diocese who will meet with you regularly and (less frequently) with me as well. Meanwhile, (mainly depending on the personnel the diocese has available) you and I would meet periodically as is helpful to us both.

What is optimal is to have a couple of people from your diocesan staff (a small team from the Vicar for Religious, or vocations office and perhaps a canon lawyer) meeting with you regularly or periodically (though not particularly frequently) to assess your progress. I can serve as mentor to you and/or consultant to your diocese or diocesan team for the process. We would need to work out the best and most helpful arrangement for all concerned. The idea, however, is that based on your background, your experience with eremitical life and c 603, and your ability to write a liveable Rule, the Diocese follows you either directly or more indirectly as we discern and help form you in a c 603 vocation. (All this presupposes you have already been living as a non-canonical hermit for at least a couple of years.) Once the diocese has determined you are a suitable candidate for a mutual process of discernment and for formation (not everyone is), the ongoing project of preparing to write and writing your Rule and covering how you do and will live the elements of the Canon provides the basis for regular conversations with and assessments by your diocese.

The next step would be for you to write me and tell me your story. If your diocese is open to implementing c 603 at all, they will need the same information as well as your sacramental records, etc. From there we will see how to proceed. (The details of this include working out general arrangements between you, your diocese, and myself to make sure we are on the same page.) It will partly depend on your theological background and background with religious life (if any), eremitical life and spiritual direction, and your age and motivation; it will also depend upon your own and your diocese's openness to working together in collaboration with me (and/or another c 603 mentor) in this way.  The process to be worked out will represent a journey of several years since it is based on your (or any candidate's) ability to write a liveable Rule of Life that adequately reflects c 603 life and its quality as a public ecclesial vocation. 

To do that you need lived experience of the elements of c 603, and you need to understand all of these well enough to write about them and determine how God is calling you to live them in a healthy way in a public and ecclesial vocation for the sake of God, the Church, and the salvation of others. (An ecclesial vocation is one that belongs first of all to the Church to whom God has entrusted it, and who then entrusts it to you first by admitting you to profession and then by mediating God's own consecration of you in the hands of the local bishop.) Meanwhile, by healthy I mean you will live the solitary eremitical vocation in the heart of the Church, in ways that edify and represent the eremitical tradition to and for the entire Church because this is the way God has called you to achieve human wholeness and holiness. In all this, you become a silent preaching of the Gospel of God in Christ. An adequate mutual discernment and formation process helps ensure all of that before admission to perpetual profession and consecration.

I  hope this is helpful. I'll be in touch. 

Followup on Does a Rule Need to be Perfect: More on Writing Several Rules over Time (Reprise)

[[Dear Sister, thanks for your reply to my question. What happens if I don't want to write more than one Rule and my diocese doesn't ask me to? What I have written so far seems fine to me and I can't see revising it. Besides I am not much of a writer.]]

Good questions and similar to others I have been asked (another person said they weren't much of a writer, for instance, and wondered what then?). The purpose of the suggestion of writing and using several different Rules over time is first of all to assist both the candidate and the diocese in maintaining a discernment process that is both long enough but not onerous to either relevant diocesan personnel or the candidate herself.

Sometimes it takes a while for the quality of the vocation to become clear to the diocesan staff working with the candidate. Indications of growth can be more clearly seen in the quality of the Rule (or portions of the Rule) being submitted --- especially since the hermit's life is lived in solitude and not in a house of formation with intense oversight and more constant evaluation. Moreover, dioceses are not responsible for the formation of a hermit; that occurs in solitude itself. Even so dioceses must evaluate the way the individual's formation in eremitical solitude is proceeding and they may be helpful in making concrete suggestions or supplying access to resources from which the candidate might benefit. Several different Rules written over a period of years will uncover areas of strength, weakness, and even deficiency and allow the diocese to respond both knowledgeably and appropriately.

What tends to happen when a diocese does not have such a tool to use is either the relatively immediate acceptance of candidates as suitable for discernment or a more or less immediate dismissal as unsuitable. Dioceses cannot usually follow the hermit's progress sufficiently closely otherwise and without such a tool they may have neither the time, the expertise, nor the patience to extend the discernment period sufficiently. Likewise they may not have the basis for helpful conversations with the candidate that such Rules can provide. I have always felt fortunate to have had a Sister work with me over a period of five years and during those years to actually meet with me at my hermitage. She listened carefully, consulted experts in the eremitical life and its formation and discernment, and generally did what she could in my regard; still, I believe the tool being discussed here would have assisted her and the diocese more generally. It would have helped me as well.

Of course, you are free to write one Rule and trust that that is sufficient in providing insight into your vocation for your diocese. Perhaps it will be sufficient to govern your eremitical life for some time as well. If you have a background in religious life and are familiar with the way Rules are written and function that is much more likely. Similarly, of course, your diocese is free to adopt whatever approach works best for them as well. I personally suggest the use of several Rules written over several years so that dioceses have 1) sufficient resources (including time) for discernment, so 2) the process of discernment and formation will not be curtailed prematurely or stretched endlessly and fruitlessly. I also suggest it so that 3) the candidate herself has a kind of structure which allows what happens in the freedom of solitude to be made clear to her diocese while assuring sufficient time for that to mature. (It is important to remember that the process of writing is a very significantly formative experience itself and contributes to one's own discernment as well.)

Ordinary time frames (for candidacy, novitiate, juniorate, and perpetual profession) do not really work for solitary hermits because the hermit's time in solitude is not so closely observed; neither does it have the degree of social interaction which is a normal element of growth in religious life. Beyond these there is a rhythm to life in eremitical solitude which will include both "tearing down" and building up and which occurs according to God's own time, not to a more or less arbitrary or even more usual temporal schema. Something must replace or at least approximate some of the functions the more usual elements of life in community serve but do so instead in terms of the diocese's relation with the candidate. It must allow and assist both candidate and diocese to have patience with this unique and sometimes counterintuitive process of formation. Moreover, both hermit candidate and diocese must recognize that the eremitical life is about the quality of the journey with God itself and not become too focused on destination points per se (postulancy, novitiate, juniorate, etc).

To summarize then, the use of several Rules written to reflect stages or degrees of growth as the candidate herself is ready to do this helps ensure both individual flexibility from candidate to candidate as well as sufficient length of time and patience on everyone's part to assure adequate growth and discernment. It is merely a tool, though I believe it could be a very effective one in assuring authentic vocations are recognized and fostered.