Hermits and Experiences of Satan?

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you have any experience of the Devil?  I have never known what to do with the part of the faith that includes the Devil but I recently heard someone who claims the Devil messes with her all the time. She made it seem like the Devil picks on hermits and even uses them to "mess with" others. It sounded to me a lot like that old joke about "the devil made me do it" -- it's kind of an excuse for anything that goes wrong when the person doesn't want to own up to their role in it. I don't think you write about the Devil though I saw where recently you referred to Satan being called "the accuser". Do you believe in Satan or the Devil? Does he "mess with" hermits? Is that because they are more spiritual than most people?]]

Another first! Thanks for your questions, although I have to say they leave me kind of at a loss. You see, yes, I have experienced evil, but Satan? No, I have no experience with that at all. My own experience of evil was something I came (eventually) to regard as the person's illness, and I found that explaining what I had experienced made sense in terms of mental illness. What also helped me make sense of it around the same time was Paul Tillich's theology of the demonic. What Tillich does is to look at something sacred. When that is distorted, twisted, and diminished, it becomes what he calls the demonic. On the other hand, when it is raised to higher forms and even its highest form of perfection, there we have the holy. For something or someone to be raised in this way implies participation in God's life, love, goodness, and truth, that is, in the holiness of God. For them to be distorted and diminished in the way I have described means for them to move further from participation in God's life, love, truth, goodness, beauty, etc. 

Another way to think of this is how we are when we allow ourselves to be loved as opposed to who we become when we refuse to be loved and become self-centered and incapable of the truth. As human beings made in the image of God, we are capable of great good and, if that image is distorted, great evil. Tillich knew this very well and so he understood human beings as sacred and capable of great holiness in and through God. At the same time, he had watched human beings who had become seriously distorted and diminished; they were profoundly inhuman and inhumane, and Tillich identified this state as demonic. But this had nothing to do with a literal Devil or Satan. It occurred in complex ways through the influences upon and choices made by each person, just as sanctification occurs. 

Personally, I neither affirm nor deny the existence of Satan (though I do note that it is not part of the Church's creeds). I simply say Satan has little to do with my own faith which is centered on Christ and the One he called Abba in the power of the Spirit.At the same time, I don't see where human beings need a lot of help in becoming inhuman and setting genuine evil loose in our world. We are the source of systemic and institutionalized evil, and I don't think we need an external source beyond the harmful ways other human beings have treated us or encouraged and conditioned us to treat others (whether all these things occur directly or indirectly). I feel the same way you do about folks who carry on about how the Devil is messing with them, or how persecuted they are, etc. However, (though I too enjoyed the Flip Wilson sketch way back) it is not funny or entertaining to me; it is a tragedy because it involves a person who, it seems to me, has no real self-knowledge, no motivation to metanoia or change, and a limited capacity for honesty or love, including self-love and love of God.

Ironically, there is a side to this, that is even more tragic in a person who tends to blame the devil, and that is the tendency to attribute to God everything that can't be attributed to Satan. While it is true that everything good in our life ultimately comes from God and reveals God to us, it is not typical of God to speak directly to us as a rule of thumb, to come to us similarly in visions, or to will our suffering, much less to cause actual suffering. God does NOT cause suffering, nor does God will our pain. This approach to reality not only refuses to take appropriate responsibility for the things that happen to us and cause difficulties for us (which includes taking responsibility for getting appropriate help with the wounds caused by others), but it also tends to be a form of self-aggrandizement.

I know some psychologically healthy hermits whose lives are edifying, focused on, and filled with God. They are wonderfully happy. Some can occasionally reference the Devil as the power behind real suffering, but these hermits don't have a strong sense of the Devil's presence in their lives. Certainly, they don't see him lurking and ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity. Others rarely, if ever, think of Satan except as he perhaps comes up in lectio or discussions, though they are apt to be acutely aware of the reality of evil in our world. What I am saying is that it is not "normal" for hermits to be "taken" with the place of the Devil in their lives. It is not normal for hermits to deal with Satan, to want to understand Satan, (to desire to) spend time writing or speaking about Satan, etc. Hermits may certainly have experiences of real evil. They may have experienced occasions or periods of serious suffering, but blaming Satan (or God!) for these is simply not typical of these hermits. Their lives are full of the grace of God and a sense of wonder or awe at the way God has called them to Himself.

They recognize all the ways God has been at work in (and for!) them and are full of praise and love for this God. They also are well aware of their own failures and shortcomings in this and other relationships; Satan has nothing to do with these problems, though personal woundedness may well be at their heart. They work on these with their spiritual directors and others who are competent in doing this kind of work with them. They suffer, yes, as we all suffer, and they accept this suffering as a share in Christ's own suffering embraced for the sake of a new heaven and new earth where God will be all in all. What they do NOT do is blame Satan nor play Satan off against God with themselves as some sort of victim or pawn of either or both!! (Note, those who are also "victims" of God will frame their victimhood in pious categories of grace, or "mysticism", or they may even identify themselves as a "Victim Soul".) 

In either case, just as you recognize, such a person, for whom victimhood (whether Divine or demonic) is a defining category of their life, tends to disavow appropriate responsibility for their suffering and difficulties. This can include resisting or rejecting therapy or other forms of assistance for original or core woundedness, and sometimes rejecting getting help for an ongoing paranoia about being persecuted or harassed by everyone around them. From my perspective, such a person's relationship with God is distorted and becomes seriously disedifying. Whenever God is made the direct cause of suffering or the one who directly wills and brings pain, serious theological errors have occurred in the name of a significantly flawed "spirituality".  In any case, the hermits I know, though profoundly spiritual and usually experienced with an authentic sense of what the desert tradition calls struggling or doing battle with demons**, tend to see themselves as simply way too inconsequential for Satan (or, The Devil) to have any interest in. 

** Please see articles on battling or struggling with demons for the way I use these terms

Fruit of "the Accuser": On the Damage done by Anonymous Accusations

[[Dear Sister, I was thinking about the issue of anonymity and accountability and the way not using identifiable names contributes to confusion for readers. Let's say I know you are one of only two or three diocesan hermits in California and I read about a canonical hermit lady in California who is sociopathic, narcissistic, and personality disordered, for example. I would not associate you with the diagnosis and that could lead me to think perhaps the person making the accusation was talking about one of the other one or two hermits. That would hardly be fair to them, nor to me as a reader! 

What if I was considering asking one of you to work with me, either because I desired to become a c 603 hermit, or because I wanted spiritual direction? Or what if I wanted to manage my own disability and thought you had some answers I needed. It could keep me from asking you to work with me because of the uncertainties raised --- and that just might be a crucial misstep in terms of my own vocation! Do you hear what I am trying to explain? When "the Catholic Hermit," "Joyful Hermit," or "the Complete Hermit" or whoever it is is trash-talking some canonical hermit,  and refuses to say who they are by name, particularly when what is being said is inconsistent with what readers know of the person themselves it is uncharitable to them as well as to the hermits being tarred with the same brush. I don't think you have spoken about this aspect of the problem yet, have you?]]

Such a great analysis! My sincerest thanks for raising this perspective!! No, I have not done this myself before, and yes, I absolutely hear and agree with you. I have tried to approach related issues through the discussion of the nature of eremitical hiddenness and the fact that c 603 does not necessarily call for anonymity. I then broadened the answers to some questions I received to a discussion of not just the public and ecclesial nature of the c 603 vocation, but how accountability for those things can be inimical to the practice of anonymity. I probably took some persons' questions in surprising directions, but I still never managed to raise this dimension of the whole problem.

Yet, I certainly felt it! There have been several times when I have been reading something about a c 603 lady hermit writing a blog for x many years and thought, "That sounds like me (right number of years, right state, right sex!" and as I read on, the stuff there was so patently unrecognizable and inapplicable to me, that I dismissed the first thought as impossible. Anonymous accusations can be neither entertained nor responded to adequately, not by the one being referred to (whoever that is!), nor by anyone else. Eventually, people begin to doubt anyone who might be being accused, any group member (in this case, c 603 hermits), and the whole category of hermits comes under a cloud. It may well be that that is part of what the accuser really wants, that they are less concerned with discrete bad acts of a single hermit as they are out to get c 603 itself. The problem is none of this can be known because the accuser has insisted on remaining anonymous (therefore can't even be contacted for clarification), and has extended anonymity (of sorts) to others. In recent weeks one accuser began to post pieces that identified several c 603 hermits. Only a couple were praised for living their hermit lives authentically. This helped me to see that perhaps it is c 603 itself that is the target, but along with almost every c 603 hermit living consecrated eremitical life in the US as well. What had been happening by innuendo has now happened in a more open way. And yet not openly enough!!

Marymount Hermitage, Mesa, ID

Hermits have been easily identifiable by the information provided on Joyful Hermit Speaks. Several folks came to my blog that way and 2 of these asked about the truth. Several others wondered if this section of this or that video might be referring to Sister M Beverly at Marymount Hermitage, Mesa, ID (Diocese of Boise) or to the hermits in Fort Wayne (Diocese of Fort Wayne - South Bend) and asked if I had any knowledge of them or concern about them myself? (I have written about Marymount Hermitage in the past -- positively -- and have been told by a diocesan hermit I know well and trust implicitly that she personally knew one of these Fort Wayne hermits (Sister Jane Brackenbush), had worked with her in another capacity; this person affirmed that she does have a genuine eremitical vocation and that this was known years ago, but nothing more than that. So yes, writing negatively about someone anonymously (both the writer and the subject of their writing) does an injustice to readers, and to many others besides the person who was the subject of the piece. It causes doubt and confusion, creates hesitancy, and in my book, is sometimes simply dishonest. All of this reminds me of the reasons Satan is identified as "the accuser." Anonymity in all of this serves the demonic.

In your analysis and question, you addressed this from the position of a reader considering contacting one of the people who might or might not be involved in a report where the accused goes unnamed. Your question captured the vast harm that can be done by such practice, and far more effectively than I have done until now! Thanks very much for your question! It is important and one we may need to spend more time with. For instance, should canonical hermits who are mentioned on this blog be named? What about candidates who are seeking canonical standing? Should we at least name their dioceses or is all of this an invasion of privacy? How do we deal with the anonymous accusations being put up by someone on a blog or in their videos? 

A note on the accusations leveled against me: At this point I have to say my diocese has never mentioned the matter of Joyful's calls to them, neither to me nor to my Director. If Joyful ever called the Diocese of Oakland (and I believe she did because it seems she also called the Archdioceses of San Francisco and Detroit thinking I was responsible to my former bishops who had gone to those places as Archbishops) they told Joyful I am a c 603 hermit (meaning I was in good standing) and it sounds like they challenged her to take legal action if she thought she had a case. So, as far as I am concerned, the matter has been closed for five years. If Joyful continues to post on this, well, the matter is still closed insofar as both the Diocese of Oakland and I are concerned.)  Meanwhile, thanks for the challenge you have implicitly set!! I hope others will contribute their thoughts on the matter!