[[ Hi Sister O'Neal, what you wrote about the internet and privacy applies to more than hermits. I have wondered about the effect of the internet on everyone's sense of privacy and the way that diminishes our ability to respect ourselves and others. You said something like this in writing about hermits. It's almost as though people don't have a sense of their value anymore. What you wrote about your own "inner journey" recently interested me a lot because you were talking about something very intimate and personal, but you didn't let it all hang out there either. You had a clear reason for saying what you did, and I thought you did it for the sake of your vocation. I also thought that was risky and it made me ask if you were doing the opposite of what you had said you or any hermit should, but in the end, I thought you pulled it off.]]
Hi there, yourself! Thanks for your comments. Yes, I agree with you 100% regarding the internet and privacy issues. Thank you also for commenting on what I call a paradox, namely the need to write about certain deeply personal dimensions of my life while being appropriately discreet and so, without "letting it all hang out there" as you put it! I have done that because I think the inner journey I wrote about is the very heart of the eremitic vocation, and because I think it is only in making that clear that we can finally begin to lay to rest some of the stereotypes associated with the idea of hermits. It also provides a central core of content for those trying to discern and live this vocation or, perhaps, to discern another's eremitic vocation. This would apply to diocesan personnel and other c 603 hermits who might be assisting a diocesan team in accompanying or mentoring candidates or discerning this kind of vocation.
Once the emphasis is put on this kind of journey, many things fall into place in considering a call to this vocation. These include, but are not limited to, distinguishing between anonymity and hiddenness or privacy and hiddenness, recognizing that physical solitude is not the measure of eremitical life while existential solitude is, recognizing the distinction between praying for others (important) and the deeper journey of prayer a hermit is called to make. (As I have written before, I dislike the appellation "prayer warrior", not because I don't think intercessory prayer is important (it is), or because hermits are not called to do battle with the demonic (they are), but because the term is bellicose and puts the accent on individual things the hermit does rather than on the unifying, meaning-imbuing journey the hermit is called to make.)
As I have said many times, that journey is a profoundly human and humanizing one undertaken not only for the sake of the hermit's own wholeness or sanctity, but for God's sake and the sake of the Church
as Christ's own Church. (God wills to be Emmanuel, God with us, and we are committed to God's accomplishment of that will.) This journey is not only a universal one (i.e., every person is called to undertake it in some way appropriate to their state of life), but it is the highest act of charity we can offer God, because it is about providing (under the impulse of the Holy Spirit) the opportunity for God to truly be the God he willls to be for, with, and in us and God's Church. It is also an act of charity for ourselves since this is a profoundly humanizing process and commitment.
When you spoke about the effect of the internet and its potential to diminish our ability to respect ourselves and others I was aware of thinking that the internet tends not only to diminish our ability to respect social boundaries, but as part of this, it also fails to recognize the sacred and inviolable character of the human person. The Christian Scriptures remind us not to cast pearls before swine lest they be trampled underfoot. It seems to me that some of what I have seen on the internet is precisely about doing something very similar. While I don't believe persons are "swine", I do believe that if we put the genuinely holy out there as though it is just another bit of data about ourselves and our world, we invite people to become as swine and trample those sacred pearls underfoot as they root around searching for something more immediately appealing or "tasty". Acting in this way fails to recognize that these realities are deserving of protection and a sort of personal "tabernacling" --- if you can see what I mean. (In Judaism and in the Catholic Church, we reserve the holiest instances of God coming to us in a tabernacle. )
For Catholics, this idea of tabernacling refers primarily to God tabernacling with us and, in a related way, to the reservation of the Eucharist in an appropriate "tabernacle". However, the Church also reminds us that we are each tabernacles of the Holy Spirit, the sacred "places" where God himself abides inviolably. The way we treat our most precious journey with God should reflect the same kind of care we take with the Eucharist. We offer it freely to anyone in need of and truly desiring its nourishment, and at the same time, we take care that it is not profaned. We handle it with real care or devotion, signal in different ways that it is holy, and reverence it appropriately. This protects not only the Eucharist itself, but the person who might be ignorant of its true nature and thus, whether inadvertently or not, profane it and themselves at the same time.
Similarly, the very intimate personal inner journey we each make with God as we seek wholeness, healing, and Divine "verification" or "verifying" (i.e., being made true in our "dialogue" with the love and mercy of God) is a sacred journey made by sacred and potentially holy persons; it should be treated that way. Otherwise, everyone involved, even if they are only casual observers, can be demeaned and profaned in the process.
One of the strongest points of division in today's world is between those who fail to regard the dignity of every person versus those who regard some people as having dignity and others, tragically, as less than human. The requirement that we treat each and every person with the same inherent dignity has already been mentioned several times by our new Pope Leo XIV, just as it was a serious refrain in the writings and homilies of Francis, Leo's predecessor. When we fail to truly respect ourselves (and that means failing to see ourselves as and acting as sacred, as imago dei), so too will we fail to respect and denigrate others who are equally sacred and imago dei. The converse is also the case: when we fail to truly regard others as sacred (as imago dei), we will fail to appropriately regard ourselves as sacred (as imago dei).
This means maintaining boundaries and taking care with what we put up on the internet. In your experience of the internet and in mine as well, we recognize the fascinating quality of some videos, podcasts, or writing, and we are apt to recognize that as we allow ourselves to be captured by these, we have become less than our truest or best selves. When I wrote earlier, I mentioned becoming voyeurs in such a process, despite never having intended this. Those of us who write or put up videos on the internet, especially while representing ourselves (or our Church) as hermits, must observe appropriate boundaries especially assiduously. Doing so means "tabernacling" the inviolable core of ourselves, and opening the doors to that tabernacle reverently and with real care and discretion, not in an elitist way (everyone, not just a limited few, should be able to benefit from our sharing), but in a way which ennobles those privileged to engage with us in this way.
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