Followup Questions on Chronic Illness and Discerning a Vocation to c 603 Eremitical Life

[[Sister Laurel, I think one of the things that struck me [and raised the question about chronic illness and discerning an eremitical vocation] was somewhere you had mentioned being able to offer chronic illness as a gift in this call, and my knee jerk reaction was, "yes, we bring ourselves and our gifts, talents, sorrows, etc., but at the same time it is not what we bring that ultimately determines the truth of our call even if it shapes how we may live it." 

At the same time, as in any call, we are to bring forth our uniqueness as part of our self-gift, and disability is part of it. In other words, the truth of one's call is not determined by a unique gift one can give to God. I feared that the blog readers might use that idea of "unique" and feel inadequate in discernment. Put differently, if it takes the monumental ability to offer God disability to figure out that the eremitic life is for you, how is an able person to discern that it is for them as well because they don't have a unique gift?]]

Thanks for following up on your earlier questions. I am not sure what I actually said or what you read, so this will just have to look at the ways in which I might have been speaking about chronic illness and disability as gift. The first is the way you have taken it in your second paragraph. That's entirely valid, of course, and an important way of approaching the whole notion. We bring our whole selves as a gift, and chronic illness and disability might be part of that. However, another way of approaching it, and one I am more likely to have written about is from the perspective of allowing God to redeem chronic illness or disability, to make it a significant grace, to transfigure what was really simply a burden and personal weakness so that instead it becomes the ground for proclaiming the Gospel of God in Christ with a unique vividness and paradoxical power. 

I have no real sense of how I might be able to give God my illness as a gift, except to the extent I can allow it to become the basis of a divine victory of meaning over meaninglessness, and fullness of life over a diminished sense of living. In other words, I cannot see chronic illness being a gift unless it participates in God's promise of redemption in some way. This is the only way something so negative and life-denying could become a life-affirming gift. In part, this will depend on one's vocation and whether or not it serves to allow God to achieve the victory he does over absurdity (meaninglessness) and death (the diminishment or curtailment of life) in all the ways illness or disability cry out for. There are a number of vocations that would not have done this in my own life; instead, they would have accentuated my illness as a serious deficiency, possibly exacerbated it by judging it, but certainly have had no room for it --- or for me as one who suffers in this way. Eremitical life not only has room for chronic illness as an instance of desert experience, but it provides the space, time, and focus that brings one's entire life into a profound engagement with God so that it ALL might be redeemed and transfigured.

The motto I adopted at my consecration is from Paul's 2nd Letter to the Corinthians: [[My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness.]] (The second half of this is engraved on my profession ring.) While I can say I am inspired by that in several ways and aspire to letting it be true in those same ways, I can also say that it is the truth of my life in terms of chronic illness and disability. The fact and fruitfulness of God's loving mercy is something I know most fully in my weakness. God's mercy is an expression of a powerful love that can redeem any negative reality by bringing good from it. When I think of chronic illness as gift, it is that set of dynamics I am thinking about. Fr James Empereur, sj, once wrote a book on the Anointing of the Sick called Prophetic Anointing, in which he wrote compellingly about a vocation to being sick in the Church. I see the Sacrament of the Sick in the same way, and I also see chronic illness and disability themselves as potential vocations, not because God wills these things (he does not), but because he wills to be God With Us in every moment and mood of our lives.

I think you can hear how eremitical life provides the context and means to allow God to redeem my illness and transform it into a grace. In this weakness, God's love and mercy are perfected. I turn to God more and more fully in part because of my illness/disability. At the same time, I do so because my eremitical vocation calls for this as well. I turn to God in this way for God's own sake, so that his will to be God-with-us can be fulfilled. In the midst of this process, God's will for me is also realized, not only despite my illness, but even in and through it. My life comes, over time, to proclaim the Good News of God's sovereignty, God's Kingdom, not only in strength, but in weakness. In other words, Chronic illness becomes a gift, not only to me, but also to the Church and even to God.

At the same time, I am not saying that chronic illness is a prerequisite for discerning an eremitical vocation. Still, eremitic life is always about allowing God to redeem our weaknesses and frailties, our incapacities along with the realization of our potentialities. We embrace the silence of solitude, stricter separation, etc., so this redemption may be sought and received with a particular focus and intensity. Moreover, again, we do so for God's sake and the sake of all that is precious to God. We do it so that God's will and gospel may be fulfilled in our world. One traditional way of perceiving eremitical life is to accent its difficulty and the need for candidates to be able-bodied, strong enough to manage the rigors of the life. I see it somewhat differently. 

While the vocation still takes strength, perseverance, and courage, chronic illness and other frailties can provide the good ground out of which hermit life and God's redemption may grow. They are part of the penitential life of a hermit when the hermit is chronically ill or disabled. At the same time, no, I am not saying chronic illness is a necessary part of an eremitical call for everyone. I am thinking of a quote by Sister Kathy Littrell, SHF, who once said, [[One does not need to be a Sister to do what I am doing, but I need to be a Sister to do what I am doing.]] A variation of this, then, is [[While most folks do not need to be hermits to live chronic illness as God wills them to, I needed to be a hermit to do so.]]

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify some of this! I want to respond to your "kneejerk reaction" in another post and think about it a bit more before I do that. 

Third Sunday of Advent Mass: The Joy of Being Called to be Sick Within the Church

Yesterday's Mass was a special one for me in a number of ways and this is so each year at my parish. It being Gaudete Sunday, the focus is on joy, of course and this means calls to rejoice and reminders of a God who has come to dwell with us and will come again in ever greater fullness. But each year with the rest of the Church we also celebrate the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick in this communal setting; anyone in the parish who struggles with illness, is preparing for or recovering from surgery, and so forth, is welcome to come forward for the Sacrament. The presider lays hands on each person's head, anoints his or her forehead and hands with sacred oil and prays a prayer for healing and the forgiveness of sins. It is a powerful and immensely beautiful sacrament and I personally receive it at least once a year.

There is an irony in all of this for me. A paradox. On the Sunday we call Joyful I (and probably many others) regularly receive the Sacrament of the Sick because of chronic illness. For me, the difficult reality of illness is now something also marked by real joy. This shift, this move to paradox, began a number of years ago now --- around the time I was doing Masters work. About then I read Prophetic Anointing by Father James (Jake) Empereur on the Sacrament of anointing. At the time I had been struggling with this illness for a few years and it was proving medically intractable (it would soon prove to be surgically intractable as well). In that book Jake Empereur spoke of Anointing of the Sick as a "vocational sacrament" or "vocational anointing" similar to the anointings associated with baptism, confirmation, and ordination. It was an image that lit a fire in my imagination and took my own reflection on chronic illness in a direction I had never considered. In time, and buttressed first, by the Apostle Paul's theology of divine power perfected in weakness, and second, by Merton's Contemplation in a World of Action, it took my life in a direction I had never conceived.

Paul's theology led me to see my own weakness as potentially sacra-mental, potentially mediatory. Jake Empereur's work led me to consider it was possible to conceive of chronic illness as a specific and vivid way one might witness to the good news of God's redemption. Though I never believed and still do not believe God wills (much less sends!) suffering or chronic illness, I came to believe that one might have a "vocation to chronic illness", or rather, a vocation to be well in Christ in spite of illness and to proclaim the Gospel especially through the lens of one's illness. In this way illness becomes transparent to the reality of redemption. Especially I drew on Empereur's idea that the Sacrament of the Sick marks us as being called to be ill within the Church! It is a vastly different thing to be sick outside the Church and apart from the Gospel than it is to be sick within the Church as a witness to God's redemption!

Merton's work allowed me to take both of these related insights in the direction of the radical expression we know as eremitism, and eventually in the direction of consecrated eremitical life. The article I wrote for Review For Religious back then was about Chronic Illness and Disability as a [potential] Vocation to Eremitical Life. I add [potential] because didn't think many would be called to this (the eremitical call is rare in absolute terms) but relatively speaking, I did think that the chronically ill and disabled were one demographic group that might have a higher percentage of such vocations than average. Experience (and a number of diocesan hermits with chronic illness) have proven that to be the case.

Shifting Personal Perceptions of the Sacrament of Anointing

The Church is still appropriating the shift in the way this Sacrament is seen. It has moved from seeing it as extreme unction given only to the dying to seeing it as a Sacrament which strengthens and makes whole in illness so that one may live more fully. My own perceptions and use of this Sacrament have also shifted. Once upon a time I received the Sacrament of the Sick just to help get me through the next weeks or months of my life, or prepare for yet one more surgery, or to help me deal with injuries or depression. Today I receive it not only because I still, and apparently always will struggle with chronic illness, but because in my life this Sacrament is very much what Prof. James Empereur noted it might well be, namely, a sacrament of vocation. Certainly the Sacrament strengthens and heals, but in my own life it marks or symbolizes a call as well, the call to be sick within the Church and therefore, to come to know and rejoice in an essential and transcendent wellness that exists in spite of physical disease and (sometimes) psychological stress and dis-ease. The symbol of anointing has overtones of royalty and priesthood, and of course, the strengthening of those who will do battle or be injured. While I always pray for whatever physical healing might come through this Sacrament, I am more focused on the witness to wholeness and abundant life it calls me to as part of a royal and priestly People. Listen to the hymn (psalm) which focuses and explicates the promise we celebrate this day:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus ² it shall blossom abundantly,
    and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
    the majesty of our God.

³ Strengthen the weak hands,
    and make firm the feeble knees.
⁴ Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
    “Be strong, fear not!
Behold, your God
    will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
    He will come and save you.”

⁵ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
⁶ then shall the lame man leap like a hart,
    and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
    and streams in the desert

This describes what God has already done in my life, and what he does every day I open that life to Him. My "real" Christmas gift is renewed every year in this way and so is my own vocation, not only as a consecrated hermit but as one whose illness is meant for the proclamation of the Gospel and thus, the healing and encouragement of others. As my profession motto says, "My (God's) grace is sufficient for you; my power is perfected in weakness." 2Cor 12:9 That is what the Sacrament of the Sick summons me to and underscores in my life.
 

As I have also noted before, we (the Church) do a fair (but not a great) job of ministering to those with serious and chronic illness but we rarely give much attention at all to what might be called a ministry OF the chronically ill and disabled! (Consider the times you have met someone in your parish who is struggling with illness and the grace associated with their struggle has allowed things to "fall into" perspective for you! Consider the times you have been encouraged, raised to gratitude for all you have been gifted with, and moved to generosity and acts of patience, perseverance, and real sacrifice because of the joy and presence of someone suffering well within your faith community! Consider how much more these folks could give if only provided some format or other within the parish community.) The Church has made a move in the direction not only of ministering to the sick but of suggesting the importance of a ministry of the sick by including the Sacrament of the Sick during Mass on Gaudete Sunday. After all, the Sacrament of Anointing is a vocational sacrament! 

For me, the Sacrament of the Sick is, in its own way, as much a part of my vocation as my profession or consecration. It marks the special character or flavor of my desert experience and call to the witness of eremitical life; had it been possible I would have wished the Sacrament could have been incorporated into some part of my consecration liturgy --- though there are many good reasons it could not have. In any case, in a special way it is the Sacrament that marks me as gift of God when discrete gifts I possess might no longer be usable or must be relinquished. It calls me to remember that illness, as real and significant as it might be in my life is never the thing I am called to witness to. Instead it commissions me to allow illness to become transparent to the grace of God that makes whole and holy while allowing weakness to be transfigured as God's power is thus more perfectly manifested in our world. The call to be sick within the Church is no small matter --- and no easy one either. Even so, despite the struggle involved it can also be a joy because what once seemed utterly meaningless has been made to be profoundly meaningful.

We often think that the Sacrament of the Sick "doesn't work unless it heals us".  But consider that the call it is associated with is described precisely in the psalm: [[then shall the lame man leap like a hart,/ and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy./ For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,/ and streams in the desert.]] It is not as necessary that our illness itself is healed in this Sacrament (or that it need be healed in order to fulfill a profound vocation to proclaim the Gospel) as it is that we ourselves are healed as persons and our this- worldly illness is transfigured with eschatological life and significance. On one level we may still be lame or dumb, and our lives seem fruitless and barren, but on another level we are called to be people who, through the grace of God, leap like a deer or sing for joy as we ourselves are made to be the fruit of grace and the wellspring of love. This is the call celebrated and mediated in the Sacrament of Anointing; how appropriate we celebrate such a powerful and paradoxical summons to be "sick within the church" on Gaudete Sunday!