Eremitical Vocations and Their Place in the Life of the World

 [[Sister Laurel, I wondered if you ever feel called to greater degrees of ministry? You have a good education that could help the church and parishes and you must have been preparing for ministry, so do you ever feel like you should be doing more than you are? When I think of hermits the life doesn't make sense to me, not in a world that is in such awful shape as ours is. We need all the ministers we can get! I'm not so sure we need hermits!! (I don't mean to offend you, but I hope you hear what I am saying!!) I guess what I am also asking is if you are completely comfortable with your choice to be a hermit. Don't you sometimes want to do other things to help the world instead of separating yourself off from it?]]

Thanks for your honest questions!! I think you have captured the doubts of most people when they hear the word "hermit."  Most folks, if they have any positive idea of what a hermit is, will refer to us as prayer warriors. I have to say, while I agree that a hermit is first of all a pray-er and will pray for the well being of the world and everyone we know, and while we will "battle demons" (usually those of our own hearts), the phrase "prayer warrior"is one I personally really dislike and that for three reasons: 1) the term is too pugnacious for me, too bellicose, too adversarial, 2) it turns the hermit life into one that is first of all about doing rather than being, and 3) it identifies prayer as my doing, not what God does within me (as though I storm heaven to get God to respond when the situation is quite the opposite).** But most people do not even have this sense of who a hermit is. They tend to echo your questions about the meaningfulness and place of eremitical life in the overall scheme of things and come up with unconvincing answers.

And these are important questions!! I recently told the story of how I came to this vocation. I said that upon reading c 603, I had the sense that it could make sense of (that is, make meaningful) my entire life: richnesses and poverty, talents and limitations. In doing this it could cause my entire life to hang together (cohere) in Christ. At other times I have written about how a hermit must give up some of those discrete gifts she has been given to instead herself become the gift God wishes her to be for the church and world. Both of these are highly countercultural and even counterintuitive insights that are central to eremitical life. In living as a hermit I struggled for some time to "balance" ministry with my inner life and life in the hermitage. Eventually, I learned it was not precisely about balancing these,  but letting active ministry, to whatever extent there would be any, flow from the silence of solitude and call for it as well. I still do some limited active ministry including teaching Scripture and some faith formation, spiritual direction, mentoring, consulting on c 603, and growing this blog. 

But what you and others don't see and what is really primary to and defines my life is the inner work and prayer that help make me into the person God calls me to be. This is my primary ministry because what a hermit's life is all about is witnessing to what is possible when one allows God to love one as God wills to love us. Allowing God to love me as profoundly and unconditionally as God does, is "work" because so much militates (or did militate) against that. Hence it requires persevering prayer and penance -- though what counts as "penance" might surprise you! There is an amazing paradox involved here. When we think about what it means to love another person, we realize it means finding ways to allow them to be those they are meant and called to be. To reiterate, to help others to be themselves as truly as possible is what it means to love them and the same is true of loving God. To love God with our whole self is to allow God, who is Love-in-act and who has willed not to remain alone, to be God for us. We allow God to love us as wholly and fully as possible --- this is our vocation. To be persons who let God be God is a good summary of what c 603 hermits are commissioned, first of all, to be and then, to act from.

While that is a wonderful thing to focus our lives on, it is also not something that comes easily to us.  And for some, it can be more difficult than for others, of course. But what a hermit witnesses to, and in fact, what she gives her life over to is the completion or fullness of life that is ours with and in God. As I have written before, she reminds us all that [[we are made whole and holy by God. We are incomplete without God and our lives will not be truly human unless we are in a vital relationship with God --- and when we are, well, WATCH OUT, for then life and meaning will explode within us and everyone will know it! Part of the witness we give is to the possibility of every person living joyful and fruitful lives despite all of the various forms of poverty we also know well. My sense is that we give this witness, especially to those persons who, for whatever reason find themselves on the margins --- of society, of family, of meaningful community. We say this to the chronically ill and disabled, to those who have never been loved as they are meant to be, to the littlest, the least, and the lost.]]

All of this is the reason hermits, at least in the main, give up apostolic ministry. They commit to allowing God to do for them what is promised to everyone, including or maybe especially those who have only God to depend on. What we say to others, is much the same except we try to remind them of how critically important God is to each of us, to what it means to be truly human. Hermits say to each of us that prayer, which is God's work within us, is critical to being human; it is what Love does within us if we are merely able to open ourselves to that. For most hermits I know, there is still some limited active ministry. It flows from their lives of the silence of solitude and leads back to it. As I noted above, for me that includes a bit of teaching, and spiritual direction. Occasionally, I also work with candidates for c 603 profession and consecration for dioceses that consult in this, and I am working on a guidebook to assist dioceses in the process of discernment and formation of c 603 hermits. That is about the limit of what I can do while maintaining my prayer life --- a prayer life that is necessary as much for God's sake and for myself as it is for others.

I don't separate myself from the world exactly. I live within it in the silence of solitude precisely so I can love the world into wholeness. It would be a crucial mistake to think I am not engaged with the world and especially that I am not engaged on its behalf. I agree that this cannot be seen or even easily understood; it is what the catechism refers to as the hiddenness of the eremitical life, but it is real nonetheless. The difficulty of pointing to something I do directly for others is, I think, one of the reasons people insist on identifying intercessory prayer as the heart of the vocation. That too is a very significant part of this vocation, I agree, but more foundational or basic is living the whole of one's life so that God may be God and complete and perfect one as a human being because we are his very own, that God might affirm our lives as meaningful despite limitations and poverty of every sort, or, in other words, that God might be God with and in and through us. Will this spill over and change the face of the world? I can only trust that it will!***

In thinking about this hiddenness, I think it is important to remember c 603 reads stricter separation or withdrawal from the world; it does not read absolute isolation or strictest separation (reclusion) --- though some few may be called to that. World in this canon means, first of all, that which is contrary or resistant to Christ and only secondarily the larger world of God's good creation. The hermit's life involves withdrawal (anachoresis) from both but in differing ways and degrees. I feel called to a life of withdrawal from the world so that I am more capable of loving that same world as Christ loves. I can understand why the hermit life does not make sense to you; I struggled to understand it myself and especially to understand why it was not a selfish way of life. What I have come to know profoundly is that it is an intensely generous life when lived well (and thus, for the right reasons). I hope this is a fair summary of my perspective and the way it differs from your own. Please get back to me if it raises more questions.

**  I hold this despite what St Peter Damian says about this in Letter 28:46. Hermits in a colony are soldiers and their cells are their place of bivouac. I like Peter Damian in some things and I understand this image. It is cogent and has merit but I still dislike the phrase prayer warrior!

***  (I say this because two weeks ago my director shared a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, [[“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”]] We were talking about trusting that the eremitical life (or, in Sister Marietta's case, the apostolic religious life), for all its littleness and limitations in what we can do in the face of such great need, will become a flood that transforms the world. For me, this also recalls the motto of my eremitic life and consecration: "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:9)

Hermiting: A Life Lived Entirely for God is also a Life Lived Entirely for Others

[[ Hi Sister O'Neal, Congratulations on the Camaldolese leading Morning Prayer for the Synod! It must be exciting to know someone there -- almost like being there yourself in some way!! I read your post on readiness for profession and also the post linked to it on basic questions to ask oneself in writing a Rule, which I hadn't read until tonight. They're both very good but also kind of daunting!! I understand that they are part of an ongoing process of dialogue with formators so that sort of helps them seem less daunting. What struck me clearly was the emphasis on the hermit living her life for the other. I don't think it was ever so clear to me as it was in reading your post on readiness, what a difference it must make whether the hermit life is lived for others or whether it is just about oneself and one's own selfish approach to solitude. 

I've read your pieces for a while now and the "for others" dimension of your life is always there at least implicitly. I never got a sense that your life was selfish, but in thinking about a hermit candidate for profession "struggling" with the paradox of "stricter separation from the world" and being able to articulate how this vocation is really lived for the sake of others, I got a sense of how important it is to you and to the Canon governing your life that the hermit life not be a selfish one. How hard that must be!!! You are asked to separate yourself from the world and live a life of silence and solitude and yet to be engaged with it in a way that helps it be redeemed! Wow!! You know, I thought I had a question for you but now all I have is that "Wow"! 

Does it ever cease to be a struggle -- the balance between solitude and living one's life for others? Do all hermits succeed in not living a selfish life by going off into solitude? I don't know if those are the questions I really want to ask but maybe you could say a little more about all of this when you have time. Oh, I found my question! Do you have it in your mind all the time that your life is lived for the sake of others? Is it something that drives who you are and what you do?]]

Thanks for your comments and your (eventual!) questions!! Good that the one you really wanted to ask came back to you!! I'm glad the emphasis on a life lived for others came through so clearly for you. It is one of the most counter-intuitive pieces of the vocation --- at least when we are thinking of hermits the way most folks tend to do. Today we have a term being used by some, "cocooning", that essentially refers to the idea of shutting oneself away from others. It gained real speed during the pandemic and today is recognized, not as a fad, but as an evolving trend. Some recognize three distinct types of cocooning, some speak of hyper-cocooning to measure the way technology has kept up and combined with the drive to cocoon, but most see all of this as a contemporary version of hermiting. One of the things Canon 603 makes very clear is that this is not so, and one element of Canon 603's vision of ALL eremitical life that does this most vividly is its insistence that eremitical life is a life lived for "the salvation of others".

Yes, this idea is in my mind somewhere all the time --- though not always consciously. Usually, my thoughts go this way: [[This life is lived from, with, and for God, that is, on God's behalf in all of these ways. For this reason, it is also lived for the sake of those whom God loves, and for that reason it should edify and be a source of healing and redemption for them as well. It is unlikely that I will do this in the same way the apostolic Sister does, but hermiting should definitely be ministerial.]] Because I believe that hermiting witnesses with a kind of vividness to what it means to be truly human my sense of being human implies a responsibility to become and be that as fully as possible. One does that by allowing God to be God for us and within us as fully as possible --- even to the point of our becoming transparent to God as Jesus was wholly transparent to God. What we show others then is that human being is a task we are given to accomplish by the grace of God and in which relating to and with God is central. 

For some hermits, all of this will necessarily spill over in some way for the direct benefit of others. Some will write about Eremitical Life or Prayer, for instance. Some will teach Scripture to their parish community, some of us have blogs and do spiritual direction, and some serve as EEMs or Lectors. Even when the hermit's presence in these ways is minimal or she rarely leaves her hermitage or speaks to others, the hermit raises questions for those paying attention: How can she live alone like she does? Does God really call some to give their lives to others in this way? Who could pray all day, how silly (boring, empty, meaningless, etc.) is all that; so why does she do this? Why would she come to minister to us in such minimal ways when she is a religious; shouldn't she be doing more (teaching CCD, RCIA, or leading workshops for Adult Faith Formation, etc.)? Is it really true her life is a ministry all by itself? What can I learn from her?

What I hope you hear in all of this is that the hermit's life is first of all, all about God and all about letting God be God. But this also means God will love the hermit into wholeness. And because of this all of it also means that such a life will reveal to others the very nature of being truly or authentically human, whether this happens through active forms of ministry or not. If the hermit focuses on God and on allowing God to be God, she will become an expression of God's love and that will inevitably spill over in some way to others. Perhaps she never leaves her hermitage except for occasional shopping trips or attendance at Church. Even so, her very life is a ministry for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. At other times, the hermit's life with God will spill over into discrete ministries. Still, in either case, it is not about balance so much as it is about what must always come first, and what will invariably also occur in light of that.

And so it is with every disciple, everyone who desires to minister to others. What the hermit says to the entire Church of ministers is that it is always primarily about letting God be God and loving us into wholeness.  Active ministry must always be built upon this. I remember that (Arch)Bishop Vigneron noted in his homily at my consecration that what I was reminding everyone of on that day is that we each need a place within ourselves that is given over entirely to God. I would push that a bit further because I understand the truth is paradoxical. I would say instead that each of us must be, first and foremost, entirely (wholeheartedly) about letting God be God and then too we can and will also be entirely (wholeheartedly) about the other --- each in our own way as our state of life calls us to be. 

What I try to keep in my mind all the time is this paradox. (It is actually made up of the same thoughts I began this piece with above and both parts drive me.) It helps prevent my life from becoming one of self-absorbed navel-gazing and concern with my own holiness or spiritual 'progression', and on the other hand, it also helps me when I am tempted to say yes to too much active ministry. In this paradox, there will be both work and progress toward greater and greater holiness AND there will be significant ministry. I suppose it is the hermit's outworking of the scripture, [[Seek ye first the Reign (or empowering sovereignty) of God and his righteousness (that is, let God be God), and all of these things shall be added unto you (i.e., everything else will flow freely).]] It is also, of course, an exemplar of the Law of Love.