First Steps: Applying Hermit Lessons to Those with Chronic Illness and Disability

[[Hi Sister Laurel,  I am chronically ill, probably on the way to being disabled. I don't want to live as a hermit. I want to do as much as I can with my education and my talents. I also want to maintain my relationships with others, but there is no doubt that illness limits my ability to do all these things, sometimes more than other times. Does what hermits live still apply to me if I am disabled or chronically ill? Can you please explain how what you live could apply to me even if I am not a hermit and don't want to be one?]]  (Redacted some)

Yes, I can sure try at least to start doing so in this post!!! Thanks for your question! When I look at my life, I know that it bears witness to two different sets of conditions: 1) those appropriate to a hermit, and 2) those appropriate to someone with chronic illness and disability. What is also true, however, is that in my life and that of other hermits with chronic illness, for instance, these two sets of conditions overlap. They are both ways to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they are both examples of desert experiences, and even forms of desert existence. Both of these sets of conditions demand that I pose serious existential questions, questions of being and meaning, and that I am open to the most radical answer available to us, so let me start there.

Existential questions of Being and Meaning:

Questions of being revolve around the issue of being my true self. So, for instance (and just off the top of my head!) what does it mean to be truly human? Is it possible for me to be fully myself if illness (or hermit life) limits the gifts I can develop and use for others? Is it possible for me to learn to truly love others maturely if my relationships with others are curtailed by the limitations of disability (or hermit life)?  Questions of meaning revolve around the value and purposefulness of my life in Christ, whether as a Christian with a disability or as someone living in eremitical solitude. And largely, these questions can be answered positively and become a witness for others if the questions of being can be answered positively. For example, if I answer the question about the possibility of being truly myself positively based on my experience of disability or of eremitical life, then I can proceed to explain what the value or purpose of my life is or has been and why that is important. This essentially works out as Christian witness for the sake of others.

Whether one is a hermit or has no inclination to be one, disability and chronic illness impose a variety of existential questions of meaning. What kind of theology makes sense of both my suffering and the limitations associated with chronic illness? Does God will suffering? Could I love such a God? Why has this happened to me? Am I able to develop and use some of my God-given gifts? What if I am not? Am I able to value myself as a person with unique limitations or is that difficult for me? What makes it possible for me to affirm my beauty as a human being not only in spite of my limitations but perhaps because of them and what God is helping me to do with them? What do I do when other people seem to be repulsed by me? What do I do if I am repulsed by myself? Does my life really have value, can I really make a meaningful contribution, or am I a waste of skin? What if I am so self-centered and/or angry because of my situation that I can't really love myself or anyone else? What am I supposed to do? Am I just unloving and unlovable? Can I get past my limitations here? In whatever way we ask these kinds of questions about how we are to be ourselves, they are questions about the meaning of our lives and are some of the deepest existential questions we pose and/or embody.

A number of these questions are also raised by the solitary eremitical life, especially those dealing with our capacity and willingness to love ourselves and others, and those centered around letting go of specific God-given gifts in order to embrace a solitary eremitical life. Does the hermit really live a full and meaningful life when letting go of such gifts? Do they really make a meaningful contribution to the Church and world? Of course, all of the theological questions raised and many more besides will show up in some form. We are used to esteeming certain forms of ministry and valuing lives that make a contribution in strict Gospel language (preaching the Gospel, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick, etc.), but hermits are a different matter because of their hiddenness, and because the value of their lives raises significant questions, both for them and for those who know and regard them.

Finding the Answer to Our Existential Questions:

Hermits don't only live the deep existential questions of being and meaning. Over time, both through their studies (Scripture, Spirituality, and Theology) and through their experience (especially of inner work like that of spiritual direction and through their long history of assiduous prayer), they come more and more to know the answers to these questions. Your own chronic illness invites you to be aware of and pose such significant questions. It invites you to find the answers!!! You need not withdraw completely to do this. Good friends can help. So can priests, pastors, spiritual directors, some physicians and therapists, and the time you take exploring such questions in writing, work, art, music, prayer, etc. This kind of exploration is not selfish. It can serve others who also suffer from chronic illness and disability, or are marginalized in other ways. Of course, you could distract yourself from such things and never really grapple with them, but that would be a lot like someone calling themselves a hermit while watching TV many hours a day, or otherwise being taken up with screens, etc. It would be like a hermit who does not commit themselves to the long and ever-deepening journey to union with God, which is all about growth in a relationship that completes us, and witnesses to the truth of the Gospel we find in Romans 8, for instance.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j] 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What is critically important to both the hermit and to the person with chronic illness or disability is the fact that the "answer" to our existential questions is discovered as we learn who we really are, and that only happens in relationship with those who see us for who we truly are. This does not mean seeing our flaws and limitations, though they will also do that, but rather seeing us as God sees us. In monastic life, the wisdom of truly seeing is doing this with the heart, seeing a person with love. This is what it means to see someone (including ourselves) as God sees us. It is what the Magnificat refers to when it says that God regards Mary. He truly knows her and esteems her, despite her limitations. In journeying to union with God, one will journey to the depths of one's own darkness, one's own distortions, defences, selfishness, fear, and despair. The hermit is committed, however, to finding the Light that darkness could not overcome.  She trusts in the existence of such a Light (this is what we call faith), and she learns, in time, to trust that this Light is deeper and more real than the darkness and distortions that obscure it. When she meets this Light, she meets not only her truest self, but the God Jesus revealed to us on the Cross, the God from whose love nothing at all can separate us. Here is the source of real hope and the ability to live with chronic illness/disability as a source of grace. Here is the witness that both hermits and those with chronic illness or disability are entrusted to make.

Obviously, this God is not only available to hermits. Such availability does, however, mean committing oneself to developing a strong and regular prayer life in which one grows in knowing God and oneself as God knows one. It means committing oneself to the kind of inner work that allows all of those existential questions to be fully posed so that God might reveal himself as the answer God is, and to do so as fully as possible. It means discerning how best to live one's life while accepting unavoidable and painful limitations. Hermits can be something of an exemplar here, especially if they have their own disabilities, but even if they don't, they still choose to allow God alone to be and do in their lives what only God can ultimately be and do. They want, and, of course, they are also called to witness to the deepest truth of the Gospel with their very lives! 

For every person created, God is the One who completes us and is the very source of both Being and Meaning. In other words, God is the one in whom the unique existential question that we ourselves are is "answered" and resolved. God is the source of meaningful life, peace, hope, love, truth, beauty, wholeness, and holiness. The basic or foundational vocational task of every human being is to let God be precisely THIS God, the God without whom we cannot be truly human or truly whole. When we are "successful" in such a vocation, the God our lives reveal and witness to in Christ, is the God Jesus revealed fully, the One we call Emmanuel (i.e., the one who is known most truly as God With Us)!! To witness to the God who is really Emmanuel in everything we live, including the darknesses, suffering, and even despair, lies at the heart of every vocation, eremitical and otherwise.

Please treat this as a starting point for your questions. If you have other, more practical questions, please get back to me. There are probably other pieces from the last year or two that are clearer, so have a look at those as well.

The Heart of the Church Revealed: Pope Leo Blesses Disabled Child and is Similarly Blessed

After writing last night's post referring to potential vocations to Chronic Illness and Disability, I came across this picture of Pope Leo XIV with the headline "Pope Blesses Disabled Child". What I want to make clear is that this picture is a startlingly vivid picture of the heart of the Church. If you don't see a contemporary version of the Pietà in this picture, please look again. Spend some time in lectio with it! If you want to understand the mystery of the hiddenness of the solitary eremitical vocation and its significance, consider the life of this precious child and her relationship with God. What do you think most people see in or do with this question? What do you think Pope Leo saw as he held her? 

Chronic Illness and Disability: Allowing Jesus to come to Full Stature in our Lives

[[Dear Sister, thank you for writing about diocesan hermits with chronic illnesses and disabilities. I think I am beginning to understand why hermits desired legal standing or legitimacy. When you think of being about the salvation of the world or being ecclesial, are you thinking about modeling a life where the chronically ill and disabled become central to the life of the church? I am disabled and have never thought about becoming a hermit, but for sure I know what it means to live a life cut off from the rhythm of most people's lives. Are you saying that my life can be one in which Jesus comes to full stature?? That would really be saving for me!! I have mainly thought that since I couldn't work or produce much, my life was of little or no value, and it didn't matter that I am well-educated. 

I hear you saying that by making the hermit canonical and consecrating them, the church takes lives that seem to be of little value and affirms them at the very heart of the church!!! WOW!! If that is what you are saying, then that is amazing!!! It has nothing to do with arrogance or pride, does it? . . . until I read your last post, what you were actually saying hadn't clicked with me. Too, I hadn't realized that many c 603 hermits live with disability. Am I getting what you are saying?]]

Wow!!!  Many thanks for your comments!! I am so glad you read the recent post and decided to write!!! Yes, you have really heard what I was saying. Absolutely, I believe you can become a person in whose life Christ comes to full stature. I don't know the details of your disability; however, I do believe that you can, with the grace of God, become authentically human (the universal task every person faces) and someone whose life glorifies (reveals) God as Emmanuel. While, of course, you don't need to be a hermit to do that, I believe the example of c. 603 hermits -- whether or not they are disabled --- can provide an inspiring example to those whom our world marginalizes. Hermits live apparently unproductive lives of deep vulnerability and profound existential questioning. This is the way to authentic holiness. No, it has nothing to do with pride or arrogance. Instead, it encourages genuine humility (loving honesty) and raises to God-given dignity those whose calling is to live the way of the Cross in relative hiddenness.

Long ago I wrote that while the church may do well in ministering to the chronically ill and disabled, it was not at all good at recognizing or nurturing ministry of the chronically ill and disabled. (I now think even my first conclusion is questionable.) I published a single article in Review for Religious on Chronic Illness and Disability as vocation, and potentially as eremitical vocations, but am only now returning to this theology in light of my own experience, and also as part of other writing I am doing. Thanks for the links to the post on Bishop Remi de Roo and diocesan hermits. I stopped watching Joyful's videos once she stopped calling herself a Consecrated Catholic Hermit or a Religious (cf., Diocesan Hermits as Widely Accepted Pathway). . . .. I haven't yet listened to your links. I deleted them from your post until I can do that -- probably tonight and tomorrow. If there is something I should respond to in that video, I will do so after I have had time to digest the contents. Again, thank you for reading this blog and sharing some of your own situation. Sorry this response is so brief.

Proclaiming the Cross of Christ: On the Importance of the Desert and Desert Vocations

[[Hi Sister, I wondered why you stressed that your vocation was a desert vocation. What is so important about the desert? I know that hermits get their name from the Greek for desert -- I read that here, and other hermits talk about it too- but why is that so important? You don't actually live in a desert, and you aren't in some deserted place, so you are not saying a literal desert is necessary. You don't believe that God can only be met and followed in a desert vocation, do you? Do you think that God can be followed better in a desert vocation? And that brings me back around to my first questions. Why are the desert and the hermit vocation so important?]]

Thanks for asking these questions. Because you have already read some of what I have written on this topic, it helps me to see the somewhat different direction they are leading. I appreciate that. What is most important about a desert vocation is that it represents a place where several forms of essential encounter occur and, because the desert leaves one vulnerable in a way that doesn't allow for many distractions, these encounters cannot be easily avoided or left superficial. Thus, these forms of encounter are radical, foundational, and call for a relatively all-consuming commitment from the desert dweller. In the desert, one meets oneself, both one's true and one's false self. One also meets God, and in this encounter, is called to entrust one's entire self to Him in a process of self-emptying (kenosis) and transfiguration. Finally, one meets the existence of evil, the presence of sin and death, failure, distortion, temptation, and all that can lead us to choose or turn away from God and the fullness of life he offers. The desert is the place where the fundamental choices between life and death, freedom and bondage, and despair and hope are presented to us most radically. That means that it is also the context in which the choice for or against God and one's truest humanity can be similarly made.

One way to think about this whole process, and what is at stake in desert spirituality and desert vocations, is to see it as allowing Christ to come to full stature in our lives. Likewise, it refers to us coming to full stature in Christ. As one author puts it, the desert is a "Geography of Growth," ** and as is true in Christianity generally, the Cross is the ever-present measure and standard of desert existence. It marks an event of unprecedented abjection and alienation, and at the same time, it celebrates the divinization and consequent glorification of what had previously been known as godless. This means that in the desert, as was the case with the whole of Jesus' life, hermits are those committed to a life where God's power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), where Divine justice is done in God's mercy, and where self-emptying leads to the fullness of meaningful existence. 

In Christ, hermits are committed to posing the deepest and most searching questions of their lives. They confront and live out questions of life and death, meaning and meaninglessness, isolation and communion; in this way, they become those who receive and embody the answer whom God is for every human being and the whole of creation. The desert (which, in NT theology, includes mountains and seas, as well as the grassy slopes associated with the feeding of the multitude, etc.) is the privileged context in which all of this occurs. 

So, no, I am not necessarily speaking of a literal desert as the home of the hermit. Many human experiences are desert experiences and make it possible to live a desert existence. For instance, chronic illness and disability represent such an experience. So would poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and similar states of loss and deprivation. Whenever and wherever we are thrown back upon our own fragile and limited resources and are confronted by existential questions of meaninglessness and the threat of nonbeing, we have entered the desert with its critical invitation to entrust ourselves entirely to God and to allow the paradoxical Gospel of Christ's Cross to transform us into a new and truly free creation. While God can be met and embraced anywhere, I do believe that the desert, with the radical vulnerability it entails, is uniquely suited to encountering and being embraced by God at the depth that coming to radical faith and our truest humanity require. This is why the desert plays such a central role in both the Old and New Testaments.

Every vocation witnesses especially to some dimension or multiple dimensions of the Gospel. We call these dimensions "charisms" not only because they are spiritual qualities, but because they are gifts of God to us, to his Church, and to the larger world. The hermit vocation brings the desert and Christ's Cross right into the center of the Church with a unique vividness and challenge. As a result of the hermit's witness, it becomes and will continue to become more impossible to marginalize desert experiences like chronic illness, disability, poverty, etc., within the Church. This in turn means that those whom the world devalues, marginalizes, and otherwise excludes find a central place in the Church's life and proclamation of the Gospel of hope. It is no accident that many canonical hermits once considered "unsuited" for apostolic religious life because of chronic illness and physical disability found their true vocations as solitary hermits under c. 603 and identify profoundly with the Cross of Christ and the radical hope it brings to our world. 

** "Geography of growth": this characterization of the desert in the Scriptures is from The Wilderness Years by D. Michael Gross.

Why Not Describe Living With Chronic Illness More Often?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I wondered why you don't describe living with chronic illness more often. You don't give much sense of what living with intractable seizures and chronic pain is like. Isn't that important to you? Don't you think it would be important to your readers? I know you said that speaking about these things goes a long way and isn't necessary, but I am curious about how you live life as a hermit in such circumstances. I think that's important. Don't you?]]

Thanks for your questions. I am especially glad you have read what else I have already said about this, especially the part about how a little bit of this kind of sharing goes a long way and is usually not especially necessary except to signal lived experience, the need for prayer, or to indicate one might be helpful to others experiencing something similar. I do believe that the question of how one lives a hermit life in the presence of serious chronic illness is an important one. My own decision is to witness to the life I live, and to give less space to the obstacles/potential blessings that hinder and result from that life. Think of it this way. If I were traveling along a desert trackway and tripped over a rock, I might well describe how serious the fall I took was and how it changed my plans for the present. I would not necessarily speak about the rock's dimensions, color, composition, age, or rarity, and I would certainly not describe this every time I mentioned having once taken a serious fall that affected my life as a hermit.

I think that readers of this blog, and those who might be familiar with my other writing or teaching, will come to understand that over the years I have come to understand chronic illness as a potential vocational path, an example of desert existence and liminality, a way of life that marginalizes, provides unique perspective, opens one to the Gospel in significant and vivid ways, and intensifies the yearning we each have to become fully, authentically, and meaningfully ourselves in spite of our limitations. In other words, my experience of chronic illness points me directly to God and my own yearning for fullness of life with God in Christ. These are the things I write about, the things that are truly important to me and (I sincerely think!!!) to God. They are the things that allow me to write about the very full, even unimaginably rich life that c 603 involves in its hiddenness. They are the things that allow some aspects of uncontrolled seizure, the difficulty of managing medications and other treatment modalities, and the struggle associated with intractable chronic pain to assume places of grace in my life. This, in turn, opens my life to the white martyrdom (witness) of the hermit and enriches the life of the Church and others as well.

You have said you are curious. That's great. If you have specific questions about living with chronic illness, dealing with medications, or working with a huge variety of clinicians, please ask them. If you have specific needs to ask the question and understand the answer, please state those needs and ask the question!! If the question or answer violates boundaries of privacy, propriety, comfort, etc., I will be sure to let you know while saying what I can. (Mostly, of course, I'll just say what I can.) Some questions I could answer privately, but not on this blog. If that's sufficient for you, then great, ask away!! Your questions could really be helpful in indicating what would be useful for readers beyond what I have already written, and I would be grateful to you for them.