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)

Living Solitary Eremitical Life in the Name of the Church

[[Dear Sister Laurel, do you write what you do in the name of the Church? Do other hermits have that authority? When you use the phrase, "in the name of the Church" what do you mean?]]

Hi, and thanks for the question. The answer is simple and very straightforward. No, what I write is my opinion, though I certainly strive to be sure that those opinions are well-informed and accurate in theological, pastoral, and ecclesial terms. Neither I nor any other hermit has the authority to write in the name of the Church unless this authority is specifically granted in the giving of what is called a mandatum. However, what I and other canonical hermits have been given is the authority (and more fundamentally, the obligation) to live solitary eremitical life in the name of the Church. To some extent that implies the authority to explore this vocation, to grow and mature in it, for instance, and even to share what we have come to understand with others, but it does not mean that I, for instance, write or speak in the name of the Church. Of course not.

Remember that c 603 is the universal Church's norm for solitary eremitical life. (Other canons apply to hermits living their vocations within a communal context.) It describes a vision of this form of eremitical life and adds to that the requirement that the c 603 hermit writes her own Rule of life based on her experience, education, and training. The diocesan hermits I know take this vision seriously and (to greater and lesser degrees) share with one another so that day by day we may grow in our embodiment of the vision c 603 represents. I tend to share based upon my own experiences, education, training, etc., on this blog and that means that what I write is a reflection of what I have come to know about this vocation and the way I am called to live it. Still, while what I write may be helpful to some folks (including members of the hierarchy or canonists reflecting on this vocation), it does not mean what I write itself is necessarily normative, authoritative, or done in the name of the Church.

The phrase, "in the name of the Church" comes from the idea that the Church commissions people to act in certain ways on her behalf and thus, with the Church's authority. Just as Kings, for instance, charged ambassadors with tasks to carry out in the King's name in various foreign kingdoms --- meaning where the ambassador spoke or acted according to orders, the King himself spoke --- so too does the Church commission each of us to proclaim the Gospel in ways that are appropriate to our own state of life. In fact, each of our lives is meant to be an embodiment of such a commission. Thus, each of us at baptism assumes the name Catholic. We are Catholics who live our vocations in the name of the Church. Those who are married in the Church are also commissioned to live married life in the name of the Church and to do this faithfully -- a rather important charge or mission! Religious do the same with religious life. And so forth.

The shorthand way of pointing to all of this is to say of someone, [[X is a Catholic nun (or priest), or is part of a Catholic (or Sacramental) marriage.]] I am a Catholic (diocesan) hermit, which is the shorthand way of saying the Church has commissioned me to live this specific vocation in her name. I do this in faithfulness to c 603, its traditional context, and the larger context of eremitical life. Simply to say one is a Catholic is to claim to have been commissioned to live a foundational vocation to discipleship in the Church's name. That commission was associated with our baptism and is renewed at every Mass as we are nourished in our faith and then sent forth as Christ's own disciples. Beyond baptism, however, we may be called to religious life (including semi-eremitical life), consecrated life as solitary hermits or virgins. These are ecclesial vocations which the Church herself directly entrusts to individuals through a second consecration and commissioning to live in the Church's name. Thus, these persons are Catholic hermits, nuns and brothers, and virgins, not merely Catholic AND a nun, brother, etc.

We see something similar when a theologian is given a mandatum by the Church to teach and do theology in the Church's name. In order to do this, a theologian must do their terminal degree at a pontifical institution and be granted the authority to call themselves a Catholic theologian. This authority can be withdrawn by the Church as well, something that once happened to Hans Kung. Note well, however, simply because a theologian cannot call themselves a Catholic theologian, this does not mean that person's theology is not faithfully and exhaustively Catholic. The same is true of non-canonical hermits. While they cannot call themselves Catholic hermits (i.e., because they are not authorized to identify themselves as living a normative (canonical) vocation), this does not necessarily mean the person is not faithfully Catholic. It simply means the Church has not authorized her to live eremitical life in her name.

Given your questions, what might also be clearer to people reading the posts on this blog over the past couple of months is precisely why I might be upset at someone calling themselves a "hybrid hermit" and not taking as seriously as the Church expects, the commission associated with being admitted to profession as a diocesan hermit under c 603. Acceptance of profession under this canon is associated with an acceptance of a commission to live the terms of the canon as faithfully and fully as one can. The vocation is not an excuse for doing active ministry. The central elements of the canon are normative for this life. If one lives a c 603 life honestly, then they will be hermits, not some form of "hybrid hermit" or "hermit monk". Yes, in time, they will grow into this life more and more deeply if they have truly given themselves over to the vocation the canon describes and defines, but they will never be (called to be) something other than a hermit. If one cannot answer this call or accept this commission to live this vocation in a normative way in which both the hermit and c 603 life itself thrive in them, then one will naturally (and rightly) conclude they are not called to this vocation.

To What or Whom is the Hermit Called and Sent?

[[Dear Sister, you wrote recently about anointing as a prophetic sacrament and one which marks one's call or "commission" to be sick within the Church. How do you understand your own call to eremitical life? Do you feel called to be a prayer warrior or to teach Scripture? You were commissioned at your profession but what were you commissioned to do? Was it to pray? To do penance? Because you do some limited ministry in your parish do you see these things as part of your commissioning or mission? To what and to whom is the diocesan hermit sent?]]

Thanks for your questions and observations. Because of a conversation I had with a hermit living back East (soon to be perpetually professed under canon 603!), I think I may have written about this in the past two or three years but I can't find the post so I'll just start over. In that conversation we talked about the hermit being sent, but not being sent out to teach or nurse or do pastoral ministry as a chaplain might, but rather, being sent into the hermitage.  I want to enlarge on this idea; in doing so I will speak of the hermit's mission and the charism of her life which I identify as canon 603's "the silence of solitude".

Three and a half years ago, as some readers will know, I began a process of focused personal formation with my Director. It was a process of spiritual formation, but also of personal healing (the healing of memories, of trauma associated with chronic illness, etc) and  personal growth which supported my maturation as a theologian and hermit. The process was (and is) an intense one which demanded time taken from other things on my part and on the part of my Director as well. I remember saying to her, that the Church had professed me to live this vocation in her name and that if we discerned that this work was a piece of growing in this vocation then the Church had implicitly given me permission to undertake this work. I felt entirely free to undertake something which would demand time, energy, and certain limitations on writing, study, and limited ministry in my parish. What I did not say to Sister M (though I'm sure she knew this anyway) was that I thought this was actually part of the charism of an eremitical vocation, and part of what I was actually commissioned to undertake.

So what is the hermit called to and what is the charism (unique gift quality) of her vocation? More, what is she commissioned or missioned to do/live? Most simply put I think, a hermit is called to witness to the fact that human beings are completed by God, that God alone is sufficient for us ("My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."), and that union with God is the goal and fulfillment of human life. I am not commissioned to go out into the world and teach or preach or do retreats, or even spiritual direction, etc --- at least I am not primarily called to these things! Hermits are not sent out into the larger world but into the silence and physical solitude of the hermitage so that in that desert environment -- with, in, and through Christ -- we may let God be God and be made into and be the human beings God calls us to be. If we succeed in this, then our lives will witness to Paul's affirmation about the sufficiency of grace in 2 Cor 12:9 and we will be a source of hope to those who need it most --- those estranged from God, themselves, and others, those who believe their lives are worthless or empty of meaning, those who have nothing to recommend them in terms of the powers and values of this world and who feel unloved and lost.

God alone is sufficient for us. No one and nothing else is. We are made for a love which is greater than anything we might have known or imagined apart from God. We are called to a life which transcends the limits and horizons of this entire world/cosmos. We are precious beyond saying, treasures in earthen vessels who are completed by the God who made all we know and summons it to fulfillment in Him. The love of/by others prepares us for this infinite, transcendent love but cannot replace it. Again, God alone is sufficient for us. Hermits are sent into the narrow confines of their hermitage in order to witness to the fact that this limited space (and this limited human life!) opens up onto eternity in God. They give themselves over to God in prayer and penance, study, spiritual direction and similar personal formation and, in every way they can, say yes to being God's counterpart, God's covenant partner. During this Advent season we prepare ourselves for a God called Emmanuel, a God who promises to be with us -- a healing, sanctifying, comforting and empowering Love-in-Act who will allow nothing to separate us from Him (Rom 8). Hermits say (and have been commissioned to say with their lives) that indeed God IS with us!!

The wholeness, peace, hope, and the cessation of all striving, fear, and anxiety in Christ, is what "the silence of solitude" refers to when it is seen as the goal of eremitical life. This "stillness" both leads to and is the result of eremitical solitude or communion with God. It is the essence of hesychasm. In a more immediate sense the silence of solitude is the environment of being alone with God, and in the more ultimate sense it is the gift (charism) which the hermit witnesses to/is for the whole church and world. We are each sent into the hermitage, a place of silence and solitude to allow God to make of us instances of "the silence of solitude" --- where solitude is defined in terms of wholeness and the fulfillment of individual truth/selfhood (holiness) in the Spirit of God.  Each person is a language event -- the embodiment or expression of the Word of God spoken within them to others. Hermits are a particular kind of language event, a contemplative instance of what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude",  something formed in and ever so much richer than mere silence and solitude added together. The Church commissions her hermits to proclaim the Gospel to others in a way which allows them to hope in the promise of their own lives and look to God as the ground and source of all their truest potential and yearning.

Beyond this I personally do not feel called to be a prayer warrior --- though of course I pray for others and otherwise. I have written here in the past that the hermitage is a place where the hermit battles with demons, especially those of her own heart, so that God might be God exhaustively in space and time. However, the "warrior" description is something I personally dislike because it sounds too much like prayer is something I do rather than something God does within me. Because my education is in systematic theology with a foundation in Scripture I have discerned a call to do some Scripture/theology in my parish so the answer to this question is yes, I feel called to do this as well as spiritual direction and (perhaps) Communion Services once a week in our parish chapel on our pastor's day off. I also feel called to do this blog and to write more systematically re eremitical life, especially under canon 603. What seems clear to me is that these limited instances of apostolic ministry are the consequences of life in eremitical solitude. They come from it and they lead me back to it so that my prayer, study, lectio divina, and the work I do in personal formation become a direct gift to others. Let me be clear though: they could not function in this way unless they were expressions of who I am in Christ -- and so they lead me back to the hermitage cell where God and I speak, love, laugh, dance, sing, and cry together for the sake of the salvation of the whole cosmos.

To whom or what is the hermit sent, then? The hermit is sent to her hermitage in order to be there for God's own sake, that God might be God. This is true so that others might know themselves as made for God and fulfilled by God alone. She is sent into the hermitage for God's own sake so that the true measure of her humanity may be achieved in Him  and she may serve as a model for others. She lives from God in the solitary Christ so that others may know who God is, who we each are, and what God wants us and our world to be about. For this reason it is particularly important that hermits not be caricatures or stereotypes, and that their lives not be focused merely on their own salvation or perfection. Will they be perfected? Yes, but only as they give themselves over to God for God's own sake and the sake of a world in desparate need of God and all that God makes possible and dreams for us.

a man fallen among thieves (partial reprise)

Today's Gospel reminded me of the following poem by e.e. cummings. He captures so very well, what being a good samaritan involves for us sometimes, and more, simply being a Christian for the least of the least amongst us.

a man who had fallen among thieves

a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back

dressed in fifteenthrate ideas

wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less

emancipated evening

had in return for consciousness

endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal

citizens did graze at pause

then fired by hypercivic zeal

sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook

of pinkest vomit out of eyes

which noticed nobody he looked

as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest

its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt

while the mute trouserfly confessed

a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke

i put him all into my arms

and staggered banged with terror through

a million billion trillion stars

ee cummings

10.July.2016.

One piece of today's Gospel struck me strongly this morning during Liturgy, namely, the fact that no one can answer the question we each might raise to Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" but we ourselves. The answer is not a given but instead a task and challenge Jesus leaves us with and empowers us to make true. The idea of neighbor is not a simple matter of physical address or ethnicity or naturally occurring commonality but instead an unfulfilled promise and apostolic commission associated with the coming of the Kingdom of God in fullness. What Jesus makes clear in today's gospel lection is the fact that we are each called to allow those who are aliens, those who are strangers (even if they live next door or in the same family) to become "neighbors". And more than allow, we are to make neighbors of those who are alien. This is the mission of every Christian.

As I wrote here a few years ago: [[ Yes, the Law allowed for intervening in life and death situations, but it also leaves a lot of room for casuistry: note the scholar of the Law's final question to Jesus: "who is my neighbor?" Jesus' own ethic leaves no room for such casuistry: the one who loves even the least as God loves has discovered who is the real neighbor, and has acted as one himself. There is nothing more important than this love, no piety which is more demanding. This is a love that law cannot legislate and is dependent upon a freedom law does not give or (sometimes) even allow. It is an extravagant love that calls for no compromises beyond the canny shrewdness of the Samaritan's generosity.]] The Samaritan makes of the injured man a neighbor in treating him as he does; in doing so he transforms reality. And so we are called to do! We are called to make neighbors of aliens and strangers, not because they are like us or live near us or even because they share the same creeds or codes or cult as we do, but instead because we love them as Christ does and as the Samaritan in today's gospel lection does so surprisingly and brilliantly.

"Who is my neighbor?" we ask, trying to wiggle out of the uncompromising truth and demand of God's commission to us.  "Whom have you made to be your neighbor?" Jesus might answer. "Whom have you loved in this way? Whose alienness have you transformed with a generous and attentive love? Whom have you made room for in your own life, your own heart, your own routine as the Samaritan did today? There is your neighbor and there too is the Kingdom of God among you."