Purpose of Stricter Separation from the World

I have received an email asking a question I wrote about in 2011, so I am reposting this response here. I am hoping it leads to further questions, not least, those that will help to clarify the validity of stricter separation from "the world" in an eremitical life. I am thinking about a couple of sentences in a new document from CICLSAL re c 603 I believe this begins to address: [[The hermit who distances [herself] from the world does not flee out of fear or contempt. [She] lived in the world and is called, Christianly, to seek to love it and to look at it with the eyes and the love that God revealed to us in Jesus. . .one separates oneself from the world to save it, one moves away to integrate it. The exterior become interior, the distant becomes near, the excluded is desired included. This is why separating does not mean fleeing.]] par 24 The Hermit Life Form in the Particular Church. "Guidance" CICLSAL, 2022.

[Dear Sister, what is the purpose of "stricter separation from the world" in your life? You have mentioned it as an element of hermit life, but I really don't get it. The Sisters I know are deeply involved in this world and it seems to me it is what Christ was all about. Can you help me understand?]]

Great question! I have written a little about stricter separation from the world, especially what it does and doesn't mean, so I would invite you to check out labels leading to those articles for additional thoughts. But you are correct, I have not really written about the purpose of stricter separation, nor have I spoken explicitly about the validity of this approach in spirituality --- which does indeed seem rather different from Jesus' usual way of doing things. In fact, "stricter separation from the world" was not something I would have chosen myself without circumstances which led me to understand it differently than I did as a young Sister. As your own comment suggests, at first or second glance, it hardly seems to comport with a Christian perspective which honors the incarnation and the sanctity of all creation in Christ. For me it always sounded selfish and lacking in charity --- not to mention in generosity!

It is important to remember that separation from the world means first of all separation from that which is resistant or uncongenial to Christ, and that it involves detachment from that which promises fulfillment, meaning, and hope apart from him and the God he mediates. This sense of the term "world" refers to anything which is untrue, distorted, resistant to life, to love, and to all the rest of the values which constitute life in God. But it is not God's good creation, therefore, from which we mainly separate ourselves. It is "the world" of falsehood, chaos, and meaninglessness, and this means that it is not something distinct existing merely outside of ourselves, but instead a reality which is intimately related to the darkness, woundedness, distortions, and sclerosis (hardness) of our own hearts.

Keeping this in mind, there are several reasons then for embracing stricter separation from the world. The first is that such separation distances us from the constant reinforcement of values, behaviors, expectations, and so forth which bombard us otherwise. Consider all the things we each see every day that tell us who we are and must be --- despite the fact that almost none of them are consistent with the values of the Kingdom of God! The second reason has to do with allowing ourselves the space and time --- and the silence and solitude --- to meet ourselves without all the supports, props, and distractions of "the world." It is hard to see ourselves for who we really are otherwise. Once the props are down or removed, we come to experience our own poverty. When we are not measuring (and in fact CANNOT measure) success, integrity, fruitfulness, etc., according to the terms constituting, "the world" we come face to face with what we are really all about. So, the first part of stricter separation is all about reality checks. Conversion, after all, requires confrontation with truth.

The third and most fundamental reason for stricter separation from the world is to allow the space and time needed for a meeting with God. If our hearts (and so, our very selves) are, in part, darkened, distorted, sclerosed and untrue, they are also the place where God bears witness to himself and the truth of who we are. All the elements of the eremitical life, including stricter separation, are geared towards the meeting (and eventually, union) with God which verifies (makes true), heals, and brings to fullness of life. It is in this meeting that we learn how precious we are despite our very real human poverty, here that we learn how constant and secure God's love, here that we begin to have a sense of what we are really capable of and meant for. It is in this meeting with God that we come to know genuine freedom, come to experience an imperishable hope, and are commissioned to go out to others to summon them to something similar.

There is a fourth reason for stricter separation from the world then. We must step away from the distorted perspectives and values that constitute "the world" in order to love it better. We leave it in order to be made capable of affirming the deeper truth and beauty of the world around us. We come to know everything in God and that leads us to see with God's eyes. Hermits assume a marginal place so that they may also serve a prophetic function by speaking the truth in a way that affirms the world's deepest and truest reality. It will also summon to conversion. Stricter separation from "the world" allows us to love God's world into wholeness. It is a servant of true engagement and commitment. Stricter separation from "the world" is a tool for loving the whole of God's creation; it is neither escapist nor selfish and cannot be allowed to devolve into these. Abba Evagrius said it this way, [[The monk is someone who separates himself from all so that he can be united to all.]] Treatise on Prayer #124.

But why a LIFE of stricter separation from the world? Hermits witness to separation from the world as a basic dynamic assisting us to come to the freedom that results from being the person God makes us to be. The hermit reminds us again and again of the primacy of the foundational relationship that grounds our being, and of the task of individuation it summons us to achieve on a day-by-day basis for the whole of our lives. We are made for life with God and we are made for a life loving the whole of God's creation. That requires some separation from the world and the rejection of enmeshment with it. Hermits say this particularly clearly with their lives.

An Apologia for Contemplative Prayer

[[Dear Sister, Since you are a contemplative who prays contemplatively I wondered if you could respond to the following arguments against contemplative prayer? 1) it is rooted in a pagan, Neo-Platonic notion of God; 2) the revelation of God in Scripture becomes secondary. Awakening is rooted in the study of Scripture, not in contemplative prayer with its goal of mystical experience and its emphasis on postures and techniques; 3) Jesus and the early church did not practice or preach it. Instead the Lord's Prayer teaches us to verbally express ourselves, and to use dynamic relational prayers. Contemplative prayer is a substitute for what is promised as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I got these from the following article: Three reasons I Refuse to Pray Contemplatively. It came up on a list serve I belong to. Thanks.]]

 Sure, I can give it a shot. I believe a large part of the reason the author of your article distrusts contemplative prayer is its linkage to the mystics of the Roman Catholic Church, however. He is also suspicious of silent prayer opting instead for verbal dialogue. He says that in the intro to his article before he lists the three reasons you cited (good job with those, by the way): [[Contemplative prayer, emphasizing "silence," has roots that go back to the mystics of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The mystics were, in turn, profoundly influenced by Neo-Platonism, a pagan, mystical religion founded by Plotinus, a disciple of Plato.]]

While there is no doubt Platonism and neo-Platonism have been influential in Christianity, I don't see where the work of Plotinus (philosopher, pantheist or maybe panentheist), whom your author refers to at length, has any significant bearing on the practice of prayer including contemplative prayer. Moreover, even when there are similarities between mystics and some of the themes they might reflect in their prayer and Plotinus' thought, things like the transcendence of God, God's ineffableness (ultimate nature as Mystery which cannot be captured or adequately expressed in finite speech) or the capacity of one to know him to some extent in beauty or the good, this does not imply they have swallowed whole a pagan notion of God. It argues instead that we all do theology and approach similar notions of God even apart from the Christ Event. The fact is that Hellenism (especially Gnosticism) influenced Christianity in vast ways --- including both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Someone arguing a sola Scriptura position, as I think your author does in objections nos 2 and 3, needs to be aware of this influence among the sources of both Testaments. So, to the various objections to contemplative prayer cited in your question.

1) Contemplative prayer is rooted in a pagan notion of God. On the contrary, contemplative prayer, as I know it and practice it, is rooted in a profoundly Biblical notion of God. Often this prayer is occasioned by lectio with Scripture, often it leads back to Scripture at the same time. Its God is a transcendent God, yes, but S/he is also a God who grounds the whole of existence and resides in the human heart, constantly summoning each (and all) of us to completion in God. This is the God who sought a counterpart who would exhaustively and responsively incarnate his love in space and time, and who invites us each to share in the reality of such an incarnation achieved in Jesus. It is the God of Jesus Christ, the One Jesus called Abba. We meet (him) and know him --- and more, as Paul says, we are known by Him --- as we enter deeply into our own hearts and learn to open ourselves to Love-in-Act. As we enter into contemplative silence we drop our defenses, exercise greater degrees of trust and vulnerability, and learn to allow and listen profoundly for God's presence there. In short, we give ourselves to God for God's own purposes; we wait on and for God to reveal Godself on (his) own terms --- neither  more nor less than this.

2) These encounters with God involve pouring our hearts out to him in ways and to degrees which may begin with but eventually transcend speech. The purpose of contemplative prayer is to allow God "ownership" of our hearts and lives. We allow or consent to God's sovereignty; at least in part this is what it means to pray for the coming of God's Kingdom/Reign on earth as in heaven. It is emphatically not about mystical experiences --- though we may well experience God's love in ways which can be described as mystical --- ecstasy, the gift of tears, healing and wholeness, extraordinary joy, temporary detachment from bodily needs, inner locutions, images, and so forth. However, every genuine mystic and every spiritual director will caution about the dangers of expecting, much less depending on such experiences; they are never the focus in contemplative prayer. Still, some of us are naturally "visual" or "aural" in our insights and perceptions and may be predisposed to such experiences. Of themselves they are not a sign of maturity, much less giftedness, in prayer and should never be overestimated in importance --- especially for the contemplative whose focus is God.

Prayer posture is important but must not be misunderstood as manipulative or a matter of mere "technique". In fact, contemplative prayer requires that a person sit in a way which is at once relaxed and attentive; the criticism regarding a focus on postures is as unwarranted as that on mystical experiences since there is no such "focus". One simply learns the way/posture in which one is both relaxed and able to maintain attentiveness during a long prayer period --- just as we do whenever we do something important which requires our full attention. A couple of years ago, after some time of being unable to use my prayer bench because of an injury, I learned that sitting "seiza"  on a "zafu" (a sturdy cushion made for this) allows me to pray much better than sitting in a comfortable chair --- where, over time (i.e., during a prayer period), I tend to slouch and drowse and am uncomfortable and unfocused; others will be more relaxed and attentive in other postures --- though "seiza" is well-established for allowing both relaxation and attentiveness. In any case, please check out the following post, On Prayer Postures and Prayer Furniture, for more on this topic.

3) Relativizing the revelation of God in Scripture: God comes to us in many ways and is mediated to us through a world which is potentially sacramental at its core. We meet him in the Risen and Cosmic Christ who comes to us variously in Word and Sacrament, but who also can be met in one another and so many of the works of our hands that communicate truth, and goodness, and beauty, and meaning. Yes, the Scriptures are a privileged means of this mediation and they are central to God's revelation of Godself; they are normative and are a crucial way we measure and clarify other more partial revelations of God's power and presence. (Remember the NT itself points to other partial revelations of God than in Christ. cf  Heb 1:1-2;we recognize prophetic presences, speech, and actions today even apart from Scripture. So too do we find partial or fragmentary but real revelations of God's presence in other religions, the sciences, and so forth. We will measure and clarify these partial and more obscure revelations according to the Christ Event as revealed in the Scriptures, but we cannot simply deny them and still adequately honor the God of Creation or of the Risen and Cosmic Christ.)

Personal prayer (including contemplative prayer) is one of the ways God reveals Godself effectively and powerfully. (This is generally recognized by the author of the article you cite when he points to the dialogical or "relational" nature of prayer. I think it needs to be remembered however, that prayer is not relational because we bring ourselves into relationship with God during this time but because prayer is an expression of and opening ourselves to an already-existing relationship with and invitation by God. God is knocking at the door prompting us to open it in prayer. This is true whether our prayer is liturgical, silent, spoken, acted out, contemplative, etc. Prayer is always a graced and responsive reality, invited and empowered by the living God --- a responsive act which presumes an existing relationship, no matter how fragile or tenuous.

4) "Jesus didn't practice or preach it." It is impossible to prove a negative like this and affirming that Jesus never prayed silently and/or contemplatively simply goes beyond the evidence. On the other hand, we know he frequently went apart in the night; we know he poured himself out to his Abba in ways marked by significant inner (heartfelt) exertion and physical symptoms (think Gethsemane) --- all of which go beyond verbal expression; we know others slept while Jesus prayed to/with his Father. I don't see why any of this indicates Jesus -- whose intimacy with his Abba surely went beyond the limitations of words --- did not, much less that he could not have prayed silently and contemplatively as well as using the psalms and other common Jewish prayers. (Though I do not wish to follow this thread at this point, I should also note that the way Mary responded to God's activity in her own life was to "ponder (all these things) in her heart." I have always thought this  meant the whole of the Christ Event, not just Jesus' conception. Sounds like contemplative prayer to me!)

The single prayer Jesus taught his disciples is what we call "the Lord's Prayer" (LP) and generally speaking, it reprises the Jewish prayers Jesus was familiar with --- with the single exception of the invocation ("Abba" or "Pater") whose intimacy goes well beyond anything Jews would have been comfortable with. The Lord's prayer was known in a number of versions in the early Church (we have three now, those in Matt and Luke and the Didache) and so we have Greek translations and Aramaic as well. What we do not have is any indication we are meant merely to recite this prayer. Yes,  Jesus' instructions say, "When you pray, say (λεγετε). . .," but it is important to remember that prayer is the work of God in us and speech in such a context is more speech-act, a matter of saying and doing simultaneously, of making real in space and time, than it is merely a matter of recitation. (Whenever God speaks in the Scriptures things happen, things come to be or come to greater wholeness and perfection. To pray in the Name (i.e., the power, and presence) of God is never merely simply to recite words; it, in Christ, is to change reality, whether our own or that around us.)

Moreover, the LP differs in the versions we have, both in words and in number of petitions. If Jesus was giving us something he simply wanted us to recite (and accurately!) I don't think the early Church would have given us three different versions. And finally, the structure of the prayer corresponds to an outworking of Jesus' instructions, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God (part 1 of the prayer), and all things else will be given to you. (part 2 of the LP)" We pray by calling upon God by name, an act in which the entire prayer is already accomplished or "heard" (for what else can it mean for our prayer to be heard than to be brought into the intimacy accomplished and evidenced in invoking God by name? Invocation is a speech act which makes God's reign more fully real in history). Then we open (or continue opening) ourselves to God in more specific ways; we open all we are and hold within us to his holiness, his sovereignty or reign, and to his will. We seek the Kingdom first of all; we let God love us, empower us, lead, challenge, and enlighten us; we open ourselves to the coming of his Kingdom in and through our prayer and thus, to being remade in his Son's image and likeness. We seek the accomplishment of God's dreams and will, that is, to being made authentically, exhaustively, and truly human.

And, as the second half of the prayer indicates, with renewed mind and heart we now turn to the present moment without anxiety; we turn to the world of ordinary needs and challenges, the world of daily bread and the love we are called to today --- a love we can receive and rejoice in as gift but for that very reason never hoard; we turn to the world of sin, alienation, and forgiveness, of temptation and freedom, bondage and choice --- and we find we can now live more truly without fear (or the consequences of that fear) in this same world. In other words, the dialogue which goes on in the prayer is deeper than words; it occurs at the level of heart.

The dynamic is not that of speech only (though our words introduce us gradually into this dynamic) but of loving, being loved, and living in light of that love. In other words, when Jesus taught this prayer he was showing his disciples the essence of prayer, not simply giving us a text to recite; he was showing us what had priority in a Christian life devoted to allowing God's life, plans, and projects to come to fulfillment. The LP is more a paradigm of what a prayerful life rooted in the Gospel of God's Kingdom looks like and how it comes about than what prayer sounds like! This is because Jesus was more profoundly concerned with the prayer we would become than the prayers we would say; after all, as indispensable as prayers are and as it was for Jesus, prayer is always more about becoming the incarnation of God's own Word than it is about reciting prayers.

I sincerely hope this is helpful. Let me know if I have been unclear or raised other questions.

A Contemplative Moment: The Crimson Heart (Reprise)

 

"CRIMSON MYSTERY OF ALL THINGS"

 --- the Church speaks in a hymn by Gertrude von le Fort ---

"solitary Heart, all-knowing Heart, world-conquering Heart.". . .

 

The "heart" is the name we give to the unifying element in the human person's diversity. The heart is the ultimate ground of a person's being. Her diversity of character, thought, and activity springs from this ground. All that she is and does unfolds from this source. Her diversity, originally one in its source, remains one even in its unfolding and it ultimately returns to this unity.

The "heart" is the name we give to the inner ground of an individual's character, wherein a person is really himself, unique and alone. The human being's apartness, his individuality, his interiority, his solitariness --- this is what we call the heart. This characteristic of the heart reveals and at the same time veils itself in everything the person is and does. For the human being's total diversity in being and activity would be nothing if it did not blossom forth from the heart as from a living ground, and at the same time veil his hidden ground.It must be veiled because its water doesn't flow on the surface of what we commonly speak of as the human person's being and activity.

An individual's uniqueness, her individuality, is her heart. That is why one is always alone and solitary --- alone and solitary in the meaning that everyday life gives gives to the words, in the idiom of the marketplace, which no longer suspects the abysses concealed in human words. For there is a realm where the person is entirely himself, where he himself is his solitary destiny. In this realm where he can no longer bring himself and his fragmentary world to the marketplace of everyday life --- in the realm therefore where his heart is --- the person is alone and solitary because of this apartness. . . .

 

The center of our hearts has to be God; the heart of the world has to be the heart of our hearts. He must send us his heart so that our hearts may be at rest. It has to be his heart. . . .He must let it enter into our narrow confines, so that it can be the center of our life without destroying the narrow house of our finitude, in which alone we can live and breathe. And he has done it. And the name of his heart is Jesus Christ! It is a finite heart, and yet it is the heart of God. When it loves us and thus becomes the center of our hearts. every need, every distress, every misery of our hearts is taken from us. For his heart is God's heart. and yet it does not have the terrifying ambiguity of his infinity. Up from this heart and out from this heart human words have arisen, intimate words, words of the heart, words of God that have only one meaning, a meaning that gladdens and blesses.

 

Our heart becomes calm and rests in this heart, in his heart. When it loves us then we know that the love of such a heart is only love and nothing else. In him the enigmatic mystery of the world's heart which is God becomes the crimson mystery of all things, the mystery that God has loved the world in its destitution.

 

Excerpted from

 "The Mystery of the Heart" by Karl Rahner, SJ

The Great Church Year, the Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies

Sermons and Meditations

(Please read the entire essay! I have excerpted a text in which every word is important and none are wasted. Though not my intention it is a betrayal of Rahner's text.)

The Human Heart: Mystery at the Center of Self (Reprise)

(Preparing for Friday's Feast. Note that references to readings are for another year at this time.)

 Today's ordinary (daily Mass) readings use the text from 2 Corinthians I spoke about earlier this week, namely, "We hold a treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves." You may remember that in conjunction with that text and the Feast of Corpus Christi I spoke of Sue Bender's experience of seeing a broken and mended piece of Japanese ceramics. (Marking the Feast of Corpus Christi) She wrote, [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]

That image has been with me all this week in prayer and also as I have reflected on the various readings, especially those from Paul. It seems entirely providential to me then that this year today, the day we would ordinarily hear a reading about treasure in earthen vessels, is the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The image of this bowl --- broken, healed, and transfigured  reminds me of the Sacred Heart --- traditionally the most powerful symbol we have of the indivisible wedding of human and divine and of the power of Divine Love perfected and glorified (revealed) in both human and divine weakness; thus it has provided me with a wonderfully new and fresh image of the Sacred Heart and (at least potentially) of our own hearts as well.

The heart is the center of the human person. It is a deeply distinctive anthropo-logical or human reality --- at the center of all truly personal feeling, thought, creativity and behavior. As a physical organ it stands at the center of all physical functions within us as well empowering them, marking them with its pulsing life.

At the same time, it is primarily a theological term. It refers first of all to God and to a theological reality. Of course it cannot be divorced from the human (and that is the very point!), but theologically speaking, the heart is the place within us where God bears witness to God's self, where life and truth and beauty, love, integrity call to us and invite us to embrace them, reveal them in our own unique ways. As I have noted before, in some important ways it is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are and (we hope) are called to be.

Everything comes together in the human heart --- or is held apart and left unreconciled by its distortions and self-centeredness. It is in the human heart broken open by love that the unity between spirit and matter is imagined, achieved, and then conveyed to the whole of creation. Here the division between earth and heaven, human and divine is bridged and healed. It is in the human heart that the unity of body and soul is achieved and celebrated.

The vulnerable and broken human heart is the paradoxical place where everything is brought together in the power and mercy of God's love; it is the place where human life is transfigured and then --- through us and the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us in Christ --- extended to the whole of creation itself. It is in the human heart that prejudices, biases, bitterness, selfishness, greed and so many other things are brought into the presence of God to be healed and transformed. At least this is the potential of the heart which is meant to be truly human and glorifies God. The human heart is holy ground and despite its limitations, distortions, darknesses, and narrownesses it is meant to shine with the expansiveness of God's creative "Yes!" Here is indeed treasure in earthen vessels.

And if this is true anywhere it is true in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart is the symbol of the reunion of all of reality, the place in that unique life where human life becomes completely transparent to the love of God, the sacrament par excellence of the ministry of reconciliation where human and divine are inextricably wed.

Imagine then an image of the Sacred Heart similar to the image Sue Bender described, a clay pot broken and broken open innumerable times by and to the realities it dares to be vulnerable to and allows to rest within itself. Imagine too that God, that supreme potter refashions it, mends it with his love --- a love that allows the cracks to glow with the light of heaven, a light that transforms the entire pot and all who are touched by its transcendent beauty and truth. This is what we celebrate on today's Feast. The scars will remain, but transfigured --- as though mended with brilliant silver. Light and love, water and blood will pour from this heart and, in time, God will love all of creation into wholeness through Jesus' mediation and through the ministry of each of us who allow our hearts to become the Sacred places God wills them to be.  We "hold" a treasure in earthen vessels. In us the surpassing power of God in Christ is at work reconciling all things to himself.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations, a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes from beyond themselves, sometimes radically so. When this happens such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is also transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this same presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

Central Theological Insights around Which My Life Spirals Ever Deeper

[[Dear Sister Laurel, since you have studied Theology I wondered what are the most important lessons you have learned over the years. It may be these are theological or spiritual but are there certain lessons you keep coming back to, you know, points around which you circle and go ever deeper? Are any of these specific to your life as a hermit?]]

 What a terrific set of questions! I especially like the image of circling and going deeper because both my director and other friends and I sometimes speak of the spiral pattern to growth. We return to the same pieces of growth, the same insights, the same bits of clarity but each time from a different and deeper perspective. Each time the center is closer or I exist closer to the center. That happened once recently as I wrote about the gift of emptiness and the linkage between the hiddenness of the eremitical vocation and the work of God within us. At the time I noted that all the pieces had been there and I had written and spoken of each of them before --- often many times --- but I had never placed these two together in exactly this way before. They glowed for me with a kind of new incandescence  -- as though a blue piece of the theological puzzle and a red piece, once joined together, glowed with a purple light. A handful of the more significant lessons I have learned --- usually both theologically and spiritually --- are as follows:

The  human heart is a theological reality:

One of the most personally and professionally important pieces I can point to is the notion that the term "heart" is a theological term, and the human heart is, by definition, the place where God bears witness to Godself. The corollary is also important, namely, it is not so much that we have a heart and God comes to dwell there but that where God dwells we have a (human) heart! It was from this bit of theology taken from a footnote in an article on kardia (Kαρδία) in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament that a number of other emphases in my life and writing come. The notion that human beings ARE a covenant reality, a dialogue with God, a language event called to be Divine Word incarnate, comes from this insight (though they are related to other things as well). When coupled with the notion that God is ever new because God is eternal and eternal because God is ever new, this all led me to a notion of my own life which never allowed the sense that I was wounded beyond the capacity for new life, or the sense that there was nothing more to hope for.

The notion of heart as the place where God bears witness to Godself allowed me to see myself as having a deep place or reality within me where not even human woundedness and sinfulness can touch. There are darknesses in me, of course, but deeper than those is the light of God. There are distortions and untruths, but deeper than these is the God who is truth and who continually summons to truth, the One who creates new life with this Word and redeems the whole of reality. That God, whether I speak of him as Ground and Source of Being (cf. below) or as the center and depth dimension of my own heart, is the One who brings life out of death and makes hope rather than despair the pedal tone of my life.

God is Verb More than God is Noun:

As part of this theology is the notion that God is verb as much or more than God is noun. The dynamism of this idea, that God is not just Love but even more is Love-in-Act has been central for me. In thinking of the human being as a covenant or dialogical reality with Love-in-Act dwelling in the core of her being I also saw clearly that there was a dynamic and inalienable part of me that was constantly moving (or summoning) the whole of me towards abundant life and holiness. Speaking of God as a living God, thinking of the human soul as the constantly renewed breath of God, realizing that God was never summoned into action but was already moving, acting, healing, touching, etc, was important in the same way the idea that the word heart is a fundamentally theological term was important. Among other things, I realized I could never think of myself as wounded beyond the capacity to respond or beyond hope. There was always an unquenchable source of life living in my heart transcending the capacity of sin or death (in all its forms and variations) to stop or paralyze it. Moreover, this way of conceiving of God is both profoundly Scriptural while at the same time comporting with the "event nature" of the "true self" and the whole of reality we are dealing with more and more because of contemporary physics. It invites further theological reflection while taking quantum mechanics, etc, seriously. The same is true of the next bit of theology.

God is Ground and Source of Being; God is not A Being:

It is hardly possible to say all the ways this bit of theology has been crucial for me. Recently in explaining about the fact that miracles are not the result of a God who intervenes in and contravenes the laws of nature but is rather the revelation of the deepest "law" of reality I had occasion to refer to this famous bit of Paul Tillich's systematic theology. My understanding of and insistence that the whole of reality is at least potentially sacramental is rooted in this piece of theology. My work and reading regarding the relationship of science and faith --- the fact that these two are different ways of knowing the same reality, both with their own strengths and deficiencies, is built on this notion of God as Transcendent ground and source of being and meaning. The notion that God is the ground and source of all that is truly personal is another side of this foundational theological datum. Above all, perhaps, my sense that God is omnipresent but also summoning us each to enflesh "him" and bring him to a unique articulation in the ways only human beings seem able to do that is related to the notion of God as Ground and Source.

With regard to eremitical life it is the fact that union with God implies and in fact establishes our communion with others that is the primary key to my understanding eremitical solitude in terms not of aloneness so much as in terms of communion with God and all that is precious to God. Worldly solitude (and external or physical solitude) have more to do with being isolated from others than with communion and relatedness, but in Christian eremitical life solitude moves from and through this external solitude to a deep relatedness with God and others. Anyone can leave people behind and embrace a self-centered 'spirituality' marked by a selfish piety --- at least for a time --- but the paradox of authentic eremitical solitude is that when one embraces external or physical solitude in order to pray and be made God's own prayer, one also becomes more compassionate.

This is why canon 603 specifies a life "lived for others" --- not first of all because one's life is that of an intercessor (though one will surely pray for others) but because external solitude is the means to a literal compassion, a literal feeling with and for others involving the desire to alleviate suffering and mediate God and the hope God brings the isolated and marginalized to others. All of this is rooted in the fact that God is the ground of being and meaning; to move more deeply into union with God means to become more truly related to all else that is similarly related to and grounded in God.

Divine Sovereignty is the Counterpart of Human Freedom:

So often we pose our own freedom as something in conflict with the sovereignty of another but with God the opposite is true. The last three pieces of theology combine to reveal that human beings are truly themselves when God is allowed to truly be God. Because God is not A Being he never comes into competition with human beings --- as would inevitably and invariably happen if God were a being among other beings --- maybe especially as A supreme being. Instead though, God is the power underlying and within reality, the power driving and summoning to abundant life, to authenticity and to the reality of future and completion. This means (especially if the other insights are true) that if freedom is really the power to be the ones we are called to be, it must be seen as the counterpart to the sovereignty of God and God's call to be. So often it has been critically important that I understand that the will of God is the deepest law of my own true Self. Discerning the will of God means discerning where I am truly free, giving myself over to that will means giving myself over to my own deepest truth, giving myself over to the One who grounds my being and dwells as the core of my Self.  I am free when God is Lord. God is Lord to the extent I am truly free to be myself. So too for each and all of us.

Gospel Truth is ALWAYS Paradoxical:

When I began studying Theology my professor gave a lecture on two ways of thinking, the Greek way and the Biblical way, the way of compromise (thesis + antithesis ---> synthesis) and the way of radical relatedness where two apparently opposing realities are held together in tension and identity (thesis + antithesis does not equal conflict but = paradox). The most radical formulation of paradox living at the heart of Christianity is the Incarnation where Jesus is the exhaustive revelation of God to the extent he is exhaustively human, and where he is exhaustively human to the extent he reveals God. Jesus is strongest where he is weak, fullest where he is empty, richest where he has nothing at all to recommend him in worldly terms. The Trinity is also paradoxical rather than being some weird kind of new (or very ancient) math: where God is One, God is a Trinitarian Community of Love and where God is a Trinitarian community of Love God is truly One. Christianity is rooted in paradox and is always expressed in paradox: we have ourselves only to the extent we give ourselves away, insofar as we are mourners we will also know a deeper and more extensive joy, where we are rich in worldly terms we are poor in divine terms, etc, etc.

I always look for the paradox involved when I am doing theology --- so much so that I know if there is no paradox I have very likely transgressed into some form of heresy or other. Docetism, for instance, which takes its name from the Greek verb δοκεῖν (dokein) "to seem," takes the divinity of Jesus seriously at the expense of his humanity (he only seems human). Arianism, for instance, takes his humanity seriously at the expense of his divinity. The Christological task which confronts the systematic theologian, but also the ordinary believer in faith, is to hold the two things together in both tension and identity --- so that where Jesus is exhaustively human, there he is also the exhaustive revelation of God (despite the fact that humanity and divinity are not the same things).

Henri de Lubac once noted that one does not resolve or answer a paradox (to do so would compromise one or, more likely, both of the truths involved); rather, the only appropriate approach to paradox is contemplation. Pope Francis recently reminded us of the same thing. It is paradox which eventually allowed me to think of chronic illness as divine vocation (though I don't accept God wills illness), or to understand that in eremitical life the inability to minister to or love others in all the usual ways was, when lived with integrity, itself the ultimate ministry and love of others --- not in some bloodless and abstract way (not that that would be love anyway) but in the sense of living the deepest truth of human existence for the sake of others --- especially those who are without hope and those who, on the other end of the spectrum, believe they are their own best hope!

I am the Same as Everyone Else:

There were (and I guess still are) many things in my life which made (and make) me different from the people around me: family, interests, gifts, illness, desires and dreams and eventually even vocation. Though I always got on well with others, was well-liked, and did well in school, in athletics, music, work, etc, so I also stood out or apart. When I developed a seizure disorder it turned out not to be a kind of run-of-the-mill epilepsy (sorry, but some epilepsies really are kind of "run-of-the-mill" to my mind) but a medically and surgically intractable epilepsy whose seizures were rare and often initially unrecognized. Everything in my life seemed to point to my "difference". But at one point, perhaps 35 or so years ago I came to see myself clearly as the same as everyone else --- even in my differences most fundamentally I was the same.

As a result, I came to experience a profound empathy with others and a sense that the things which seemed to set me apart were, in one way and another, little different from the things which seemed to set others apart. I suppose I discovered paradox here too. I suspect when people write of Thomas Merton's experience on that street corner in Louisville, they are describing something similar to what happened to me. I can't point to a single event  as the focus of this shift, nor can I say I realized I loved everyone at that moment as happened to Merton, but the compassion and empathy Merton experienced sounds similar to what I experienced. Moreover, I believe Merton, especially as monk and (potential) hermit schooled in a "fuga mundi" way of approaching the world outside the monastery and wounded by his Mother's death and other circumstances from childhood and young adulthood, was coming from a place where he felt profoundly alien or different in many of the ways I had myself done. (N.B. Some Cistercians eschew the fuga mundi approach to monastic life on the basis of Trappist and Trappistine authors; Merton too seemed to eschew this approach when he wrote about "the problem" of the World, but my sense is he was still schooled in it in his early years at Gethsemani.)

In any case, the source of my worst suffering --- not least because it is self-reinforcing and self-isolating --- turned out to be seeing myself as different from everyone else, and the source of greatest joy came to be seeing myself in terms of my commonality with others. This is not an abstract truth (that would never have touched me) but is at least partly due to being profoundly understood by others who did not share the same differences (though no doubt they had their own). In any case, as a result (and to the extent I truly know this), I am not threatened by others' gifts, frightened by their differences, nor driven to despair by my own differences and deficiencies. Neither do I have a need to use my own gifts as weapons to humiliate others or prove my own superiority (or even my own competence). All of these are are part of our more profound "sameness" or commonality. This was a central piece of coming to truly love myself and others as myself.  It is the sine qua non without which no one can truly minister to others. Again, I am not entirely certain how I came by it, but I recognize it as a great gift and something that makes living Christianity and religious (and especially eremitical) life really possible.

Our God Reveals Godself in the Unexpected and Unacceptable Place:

I won't write a lot about this here except to say please check out posts on the theology of the Cross. There is no part of my life that is untouched by Paul's Theology of the Cross. Every part of my own theology is informed by the Cross. Recently I wrote about kenosis and the possibilities which still exist when one has been entirely emptied of every discrete gift and potential for ministry --- if only one can remain open to God. It is from such a position of emptiness, incapacity, and even certain kinds of failure, that Jesus' obedience (openness and responsiveness) to God opens our broken and sinful World most fully to God's redemption.

It is Mark's similar theology that gives me a sense that when all the props are kicked out God's faithfulness is the single thing we can count on, the thing that brings life out of death, communion with God out of godlessness, meaning out of absurdity and so forth. The notion that God becomes incarnate, that God does not hesitate to do what no other merely putative god would do, that the God of Jesus Christ accepts dishonor and shows a power which is truly perfected in weakness --- and that this God can be found in the unexpected and entirely "unacceptable" place --- is the source of all my hope and strength. It is an immeasurable mystery I am happy to reflect on, walk into and explore for the whole of my life. Such a God is paradoxical and so is such a gospel. In truth it is this theology of the cross and the paradoxical God it reveals that is the real source and ground of all of the other things I have already spoken about here.

There are probably a few other pieces of theology that are pivotal in my own life. One I haven't mentioned here is the notion that humility is a name we give the the dignity we possess as those accepting the God of Jesus Christ and ourselves in light of that God; humility is something God raises us to and the appropriate verb is to humble, not to humiliate. The second truth I have always clung to is that anyone seeking to do serious theology must come to terms with the Holocaust. It is here that the Theologies of the Cross of Paul and Mark and so many of the other pieces or insights I have mentioned find their ultimate test of theological validity --- far more, of course, than they do in the much smaller struggles of my own life. In any case, I will leave this here for now and  come back to finish later --- I need to think about which of these are specific to eremitical life. In the meantime I hope what I have written so far is helpful.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

Today's ordinary (daily Mass) readings use the text from 2 Corinthians I spoke about earlier this week, namely, "We hold a treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves." You may remember that in conjunction with that text and the Feast of Corpus Christi I spoke of Sue Bender's experience of seeing a broken and mended piece of Japanese ceramics. (Marking the Feast of Corpus Christi) She wrote, [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]

That image has been with me all this week in prayer and also as I have reflected on the various readings, especially those from Paul. It seems entirely providential to me then that this year today, the day we would ordinarily hear a reading about treasure in earthen vessels, is the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The image of this bowl --- broken, healed, and transfigured  reminds me of the Sacred Heart --- traditionally the most powerful symbol we have of the indivisible wedding of human and divine and of the power of Divine Love perfected and glorified (revealed) in both human and divine weakness; thus it has provided me with a wonderfully new and fresh image of the Sacred Heart and (at least potentially) of our own hearts as well.

The heart is the center of the human person. It is a deeply distinctive anthropo-logical or human reality --- at the center of all truly personal feeling, thought, creativity and behavior. As a physical organ it stands at the center of all physical functions within us as well empowering them, marking them with its pulsing life.

At the same time, it is primarily a theological term. It refers first of all to God and to a theological reality. Of course it cannot be divorced from the human (and that is the very point!), but theologically speaking, the heart is the place within us where God bears witness to God's self, where life and truth and beauty, love, integrity call to us and invite us to embrace them, reveal them in our own unique ways. As I have noted before, in some important ways it is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are and (we hope) are called to be.

Everything comes together in the human heart --- or is held apart and left unreconciled by its distortions and self-centeredness. It is in the human heart broken open by love that the unity between spirit and matter is imagined, achieved, and then conveyed to the whole of creation. Here the division between earth and heaven, human and divine is bridged and healed. It is in the human heart that the unity of body and soul is achieved and celebrated.

The vulnerable and broken human heart is the paradoxical place where everything is brought together in the power and mercy of God's love; it is the place where human life is transfigured and then --- through us and the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us in Christ --- extended to the whole of creation itself. It is in the human heart that prejudices, biases, bitterness, selfishness, greed and so many other things are brought into the presence of God to be healed and transformed. At least this is the potential of the heart which is meant to be truly human and glorifies God. The human heart is holy ground and despite its limitations, distortions, darknesses, and narrownesses it is meant to shine with the expansiveness of God's creative "Yes!" Here is indeed treasure in earthen vessels.

And if this is true anywhere it is true in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart is the symbol of the reunion of all of reality, the place in that unique life where human life becomes completely transparent to the love of God, the sacrament par excellence of the ministry of reconciliation where human and divine are inextricably wed.

Imagine then an image of the Sacred Heart similar to the image Sue Bender described, a clay pot broken and broken open innumerable times by and to the realities it dares to be vulnerable to and allows to rest within itself. Imagine too that God, that supreme potter refashions it, mends it with his love --- a love that allows the cracks to glow with the light of heaven, a light that transforms the entire pot and all who are touched by its transcendent beauty and truth. This is what we celebrate on today's Feast. The scars will remain, but transfigured --- as though mended with brilliant silver. Light and love, water and blood will pour from this heart and, in time, God will love all of creation into wholeness through Jesus' mediation and through the ministry of each of us who allow our hearts to become the Sacred places God wills them to be.  We "hold" a treasure in earthen vessels. In us the surpassing power of God in Christ is at work reconciling all things to himself.

Prayer Lessons Learned on a Bike Path

There's a sort of strange phenomenon that happens sometimes when one is riding a bike. If one is riding on a bike path, for instance, and comes to the place where the path crosses a road there will be posts which signal to the biker that they need to be wary. In the paths around my hermitage anyway, it takes real skill and more importantly, a particular perspective, to ride a bike through these posts without crashing into them! (They seem more narrowly spaced than in the above picture.)

You see, the interesting phenomenon is that if one focuses one's attention on the posts themselves and tries to avoid them in this way, if, that is, one looks from right to left and back again and again while thinking something like, "I must steer away from that post, and I must do the same here on the right," one merely ensures one will crash into them! But if the biker keeps focused on the place where the wheel meets the path and just keeps peddling, s/he will move forward smoothly and sail right through the posts. We heard the Biblical version of this dynamic last Wednesday when the Gospel from Luke had Jesus admonishing folks that, "One who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is unfit for the Kingdom." Jesus' point was also about perspective. To plow a straight furrow, to make a field fit for a huge harvest, one has to keep one's eyes on a distant point; otherwise the furrows one plows will veer off and leave the field unready, unplantable, and fallow. So much of the spiritual life is about maintaining a truly human (and divine!) perspective!

In today's Mass readings ** this whole problem shows itself again. In Paul's letter to the Galatians the Apostle is telling the story of  the making of Israel into a People of faith and a blessing to the nations. Abraham is the Father of faith and for him and for the rest of the OT and the NT as well we come to understand that real faith is about allowing God to be God and keeping a longer perspective; in that way of seeing things we trust that if we keep our focus on God while we remain open to his living presence within us God will then draw us beyond any obstacles and make of us a People who are a blessing (that is, who mediate God's presence and power) to all of the world! A piece of Paul's story is about keeping our eyes (and our hearts) focused on or centered in God. This is a lesson we ought to hear very clearly, especially if we seek to be people of prayer! For in the main, prayer is not something we do; it is something God does in us and something he MAKES of us! Often our only job in prayer is to sit down, shut up, fold our hands quietly (some of us fold them into our cowls to make the point more acute!), and allow God the time and space to do whatever it is God desires to do with and in us.

This attitude of prayer is really the heart of the Covenant. Remember its term and essential dynamic: "You shall be my people and I shall be your God!" This does not refer merely or perhaps even primarily to an external contract between God and Israel (though this, of course, is involved) but rather to the God-Events they will become if they allow God to really BE GOD within them.  In other words, let me be the fire that moves and empowers you, let me be the love that makes you whole and impassions your love for others, let me make you missionaries of MY presence and we will transform the world with my touch! The symbol of this covenant is the Law and it truly does indicate what such human beings look like: they love God above all else, they are other-centered and do not covet or steal or commit adultery or bear false witness or do murder, and so forth. In a sense the tablets of the Law are a bit like the posts on the bike path. They signal caution and mark when we have gone off course, but they are not supposed to draw our entire attention or become the focus of our spiritual perspective and efforts, much less are they meant to become obstacles causing us to stop all forward movement out of fear. That way lies disaster, just as it does on the bike path --- or in the field we are trying to plow!

And this is what Paul is describing in today's reading from Galatians. The Jewish leadership and through them much of the People of Israel have lost their perspective. They are not focused on simply allowing God to work in them or trusting that he will make of them a blessing to the nations. Their gaze has been drawn from God's presence to the Law he gave as a gift and like the biker who becomes focused on AVOIDING the posts and so inevitably crashes into them, they do the same with the Law. They are so focused on avoiding sin that they are drawn straight into it because they cease to trust sufficiently in the power of God and the perspective this faith gives them to move forward in their journey. In fact, so blinded have they become in all of this, so narrow and constricted their perspective, so concerned with the strictures of the law and the achievement and protection of an isolating personal holiness rather than the vision of life the Law celebrates, that when the very fulfillment of the Law, the living Covenant-with-God comes up to them from their midst, they condemn him for blasphemy and murder him in the name of the Law!

It is this same blindness, whether willful or not, which Luke also describes in today's Gospel. The Jews do exorcisms. Jesus does exorcisms. When Israel does them they consider this to be the power of God at work through them, but when Jesus exorcises demons, Israel considers that he does so by the power of evil! They see him clearly through the lens of the law, but it is this lens which prevents them seeing he is the fulfillment of the law; he is the human being who reveals covenant with God to be the essence of our humanity and covenant with us to be the fulfillment of God's will and Kingdom as well. Like bikers who get anxious about and focused on the posts in the bike path rather than the path, the distant goal, or the One who draws them inexorably to that goal, Israel's relation to the law ensures they crash big time! Christians. however, hold the cross and God's victory over sin and death before themselves at all times; we trust that precisely in Jesus' abject helplessness and openness to his Father's powerful presence, God has raised him from the dead, and therefore will continue to overcome every obstacle, every instance of sin and death. The cross is quite simply how Christians maintain a long view which allows them to move forward in justified confidence and the powerful love of God.

In our spiritual lives, especially, we really must keep focused on God, and not as a reality merely or even mainly external to ourselves. Like Abraham we must be people of faith, people who trust God to act within us and who allow God to do so in a way which will draw us past any obstacles that stand along our path. "Prayer" that is more focused on self than on God is not prayer; "prayer" that is full of effort and the need to achieve or control is not prayer. Prayer that is anxious and concerned with or focused on our own sin rather than simply mindfully bringing all that to the touch of God's powerful and transformative mercy, is not the prayer God calls us to! As Proverbs also reminds us: [[ 25 Keep your eyes straight ahead; ignore all (sideshow) distractions. 26 Watch your step, and the road will stretch out smooth before you. 27 Look neither right nor left; leave evil in the dust.]] If we do this the fire of God's life will be allowed to heal, empower, and inflame us so that we may transform the world with our presence! In short, we shall become the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham, a People saved by grace received in faith, a People as innumerable as the stars who are a genuine blessing to the entire creation!

** Galatians 3:7-14, Luke 11:15-26

Feast of Maximillian Kolbe (Reprise)

Today is the feast day of 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 Aushwitz 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 modelled 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.

I think it is easy to forget this fundamental vocation, or at least to underestimate its value and challenge. We sometimes think our humanity is a given, an accomplished fact rather than a task and call to be accomplished. We also may think that it is possible to be truly human in solitary splendor. But our humanity is our essential vocation and it is something we only achieve in relation to God, his call, his mercy and love, his companionship --- and his people! (And this is as true for hermits and recluses as it is true for anyone else.) Likewise, we may think of vocation as a call to religious life, priesthood, marriage, singleness, eremitism, etc, but always, these are "merely" the paths towards achieving our foundational vocation to authentic humanity. Of course, it is not that we do not need excellent priests, religious, husbands and wives, parents, and so forth, but what is more true is that we need excellent human beings --- people who take the call and challenge to be genuinely human with absolute seriousness and faithfulness.

Today's gospel confronts us with a person who failed at that vocation. Extended mercy and the complete forgiveness of an unpayable debt, this servant went out into his world and failed to extend even a fraction of the same mercy to one of his fellows. He was selfish, ungrateful, and unmindful of who he was in terms of his Master or the generosity which had been shown him. He failed to remain in touch with that mercy and likewise he refused to extend it to others as called upon to do. He failed in his essential humanity and in the process he degraded and punished a fellow servant as inferior to himself when he should have done the opposite. Contrasted with this, and forming the liturgical and theological context for hearing this reading today, is the life of Maximillian Kolbe. Loved with an everlasting love, touched by God's infinite mercy and grace, Father Maximillian knew and affirmed who he truly was. More, in a situation of abject poverty and ultimate weakness, he remained in contact with the Source of his own humanity as the infinite well from which he would draw strength, dignity, courage, forgiveness, and compassion when confronted with a reality wholly dedicated to shattering, degrading, and destroying the humanity of those who became its victims. In every way he was the embodiment of St Paul's citation, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness!"

Block 13 where the "starvation cells" were

In Auschwitz it is true that some spoke of Kolbe as a saint, and many knew he was a priest, but in this world where all were stripped of names and social standing of any kind, what stood out to everyone was Maximillian Kolbe's love for God and his fellow man; what stood out, in other words, was his humanity. Holiness for the Christian is defined in these terms. Authentic humanity and holiness are synonyms in Christianity, and both are marked by the capacity to love and be loved,  first (by) God and then (by) all those he has dignified as his image and holds as precious. In a world too-often marked by mediocrity and even outright inhumanity, a world too frequently dominated by those structures, institutions, and dynamics which seem bigger than we are and incapable of being resisted or changed, we need to remember Maximillian Kolbe's example. Oftentimes we focus on serving others, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless and the like, and these things are important. But in Kolbe's world when very little of this kind of service was possible (though Kolbe did what was possible and prudent here) what stood out was not only the crust of bread pressed into a younger priest's hands, the cup of soup given gladly to another, but the very great and deep dignity and impress of his humanity. And of course it stood out because beyond and beneath the need for food and shelter, what everyone was in terrible danger of losing was a sense of --- and capacity to act in terms of -- their own great dignity and humanity.

Marked above all as one loved by God, Father Maximillian lived out of that love and mercy. He extended it again and again (70 X 7) to everyone he met, and in the end, he made the final sacrifice: he gave his own life so that another might live. An extraordinary vocation marked by extraordinary holiness? Yes. But also our OWN vocation, a vocation to "ordinary" and true holiness, genuine humanity. As I said above, "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." In many ways this is precisely the gift we are called upon in Christ to be for our own times. Matthew's call to make forgiveness a way of life is a key to achieving this. May Saint Kolbe's example inspire us to fulfill our vocations in exemplary ways.