On Stricter Separation From the World as a Call to Love the World into Wholeness

[[Sister Laurel, I was asked where the "stricter" in "stricter separation from the world," comes from in canon 603.  Does it mean stricter than cloistered communities, stricter than other religious, stricter than other forms of consecrated life generally? I also was thinking about the idea of "the world" in the phrase in the canon. Doesn't this involve a kind of judgment (judgmentalism) on the world around the hermit? Because I take seriously the admonition not to judge others I wonder if Jesus would have condemned such an approach to something God created and Jesus  made new through his death and resurrection. Can you speak to this? ]]

In my understanding, the reference to "stricter separation from the world" in canon 603 is an intensification of c 607.3. That section of canon 607 reads: "The public witness to be rendered by religious to Christ and to the Church entails a separation from the world proper to the character and purpose of each institute." [Emphasis added]  Generally speaking hermits living under c 603 are called and obliged to live a separation which is stricter than that of other religious. Hermit's vows (or other sacred bonds) will qualify their relationship with the world in terms of wealth, relationships, and power (poverty, chastity, and obedience) but will, in conjunction with their Rule of life and the other requirements of canon 603, do so even more strictly than those of other religious. In particular, the hermit's ministry or apostolate will be very different because in the main it is a matter of being sent into the hermitage* in the ministry of prayer and not out in active ministry. I don't think it means more strictly than cloistered religious, however, because hermits are self-supporting and responsible for interfacing with her local, parish, and diocesan communities --- and even with the more extended support community I mentioned in a previous post.

I don't think the requirement regarding stricter separation from the world is a form of judgmentalism but it does require significant discernment on what, when, and how one will give one's heart to things -- first to God and then to all that is precious to God. Stricter separation from "the world" is meant to allow one to love and/or be loved by God in a way which leads to conversion and sanctification -- that is to authentic humanity -- and in light of that, to love all that God loves in a similar way. 

It is always important to remember, I think, that "the world" in canon 603 does not mean "everything outside the hermitage door" -- nor does it exclude dimensions of the hermitage itself as though "the world" is not present there as well. "The world" is a collection of attitudes, values, perspectives, and priorities which live in a hermit's heart just as they live in the hearts of others. Perhaps these have been more or less changed through the context of the silence of solitude and, more importantly, through assiduous prayer and penance, but they remain deeply inculcated and closing the hermitage door, especially when done while naively believing one has shut "the world" out, merely makes the hermitage an outpost of "the world".

As noted in earlier posts, The Handbook on Canons 573-746, notes that "the world" refers to "that which is not redeemed or open to the salvific action of Christ". I have added other dimensions to this definition: 'anything which promises fulfillment apart from Christ," for instance. Thomas Merton  warns against hypostasizing "the world" and sees it in terms of illusion which should be unmasked; it is that which has become a lie and which needs to be seen for what it is.** (see below) We do that when we see all of reality with the eyes of God, and that means seeing all of reality with the eyes of love, just as I noted in my homily for the Solemnity of Ascension.  What it does not mean is God's good creation generally. For that reason, the hermit does not reject the world outside the hermitage, nor even that which is antithetical to Christ. Instead her silence and solitude (i.e., her life with and in God) allows her to see things as they are and to help love them into wholeness. Stricter separation from the world is done for the sake of the hermit's capacity to see clearly and to love truly and deeply. This includes learning to see herself clearly and learning to love herself rightly and profoundly. 

So again, no, I don't think stricter separation from the world represents a form of judgmentalism any more than a physician's diagnosis in order to treat a disorder represents a form of judgmentalism. For the hermit, stricter separation from the world, means disentangling ourselves from all kinds of forms of enmeshment so we may see properly and love profoundly into wholeness. This is what I meant when I said it required significant discernment on what, how, and when we would give our hearts to things. I hope this is clear. So much spiritual writing treats "the world" as anything outside the hermitage, convent, or monastery doors or walls. But this is just careless and dangerous thinking. It neglects the very real dimensions of the human heart which are worldly and on which one cannot simply shut the hermitage door; it also neglects the Great Commandment of love and the profound relationship a hermit (for instance) must have with the world around the hermitage, especially in the silence of solitude -- as paradoxical as that sounds.

I agree with you that Jesus would condemn many writings that speak of "the world" as though it is a distinct objective thing outside a religious house. Especially I agree that Jesus would condemn any way of seeing God's good creation which ignores the victory of the cross over sin and death and over the powers and principalities of this world. We are challenged every day not to ignore "the world" but to see it clearly, to transform it with love, and thereby to eventually win its allegiance to Christ -- even if that allegiance is anonymous. Love provides the kind of unmasking which humbles without humiliating; it raises reality to its true dignity, and it allows the deep meaning possessed by reality to come through without idolizing this world or dimensions of it. It provides the lens through which we can see things truly and value them rightly. I think Jesus saw reality in this way and we who profess that we are in and of him, must be able to demonstrate that we have the capacity to see reality in the same way. 

Hermits separate ourselves more strictly from the larger world in order to cultivate this way of seeing, this way of loving. We do it so that we can be remade into a dimension of the heart of the Church; where others who share in the love of God in Christ are meant to be Jesus' hands and feet, hermits stand hidden and yet present as a representation of Jesus' own sacred heart. Once we think of ourselves in this way, stricter separation from the world will never again mean a sterile, much less judgmental, disengagement from the world. Instead it will be a new and paradoxical way of being engaged so the world may truly be and become all God calls it to be. Stricter separation from "the world" is about love for the world of God's great and creative goodness; it is not about "contemptus mundi" except to the degree we reject the ways the world itself has been falsified by human idolatry. It is this falsification (and the distorted human heart that created it) that must be unmasked, and this, it seems to me (and to Thomas Merton, I think) is the work of the hermit and her hermitage. 

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* The phrase "sent into the hermitage" instead of out into active ministry is borrowed with permission from Sister Anunziata Grace, a diocesan hermit for the Diocese of Knoxville. During a conversation we had several years ago she spoke this way and I found it particularly revelatory of the nature of the hermit's commission.

** And for anyone who has seriously entered into the medieval Christian. . . conception of contemptus mundi [hatred for or of the world],. . .it will be evident that this means not the rejection of a reality, but the unmasking of an illusion. The world as pure object is not there. it is not a reality outside us for which we exist. . . It is only in assuming full responsibility for our world, for our lives, and for ourselves that we can be said to live really for God." Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action.

Second Sunday of Advent: Embracing Sabbath and the "Way" of Jesus

Over the last three or four weeks I have been working on or giving presentations for a Women In Faith group in my parish. It dealt with our foundational vocation to become authentically human and the ability to be free and rest that our embrace of such a vocation results in.  I have the concluding half of all of this to do on Tuesday and so, it has been on my mind. Specifically, I will do a presentation on Sabbath as the "great equalizer", the day (period) when, in  God, we embrace the identity God gives and calls us to and allow ourselves to truly rest from all those "'essential' roles and burdens" the world defines us in terms of. On Sabbath we let go of competitiveness, workaholism, consumerism, and so many other ways in which we are set against our true selves and one another and we simply rest in who we are in God. The title for the second part of the presentations will be "Be still and know that I am God" from psalm 46:10. The title for the first half of the presentations reverses this to, "Know that I am God and be still". The two are inextricable from one another and together they present a symbol of the freedom of authentic humanity.

Additionally, last Sunday as part of the first Sunday of Advent I prayed with the ecclesial community of a couple of friends of mine who celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary during the week and who renewed their vows last Sunday. As part of the celebration they asked me if I wanted to renew my own vows and I did. As part of  doing that I had to compose a renewal formula which led me to thinking once again about  the term "stricter separation from the world" and how I would say that for a community who would be likely to misunderstand the canonical phrase in terms of a rejection of God's good creation. I borrowed the  overall structure of the formula from that of the Sisters of the Holy Family, and for the c 603 elements of my commitment, including "stricter separation from the world," I promised to: "devote myself to the service of God and all God holds precious in stricter separation from anything resistant or antithetical to God's love, in the silence of solitude, and in assiduous prayer and penance."

In both of these activities what canon 603 calls "stricter separation from the world" played an important role. Sabbath itself is a way of  standing aside from "the world" which often holds us bound by its values and perspectives, its way of viewing God, ourselves, and others, while making commodities of them (cf., Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance); it is a way of resting in God and both being and becoming the ones we are called to be in God. It is a symbol of freedom and is given to us as gift and responsibility in the Decalogue, the charter of freedom and covenant in the OT. but this freedom plays off against the bondage of something canon 603 calls "the world" --- again, that which is resistant or antithetical to God's love.

Pharaoh's Egypt was, for Israel, the very epitome of "the world" canon 603 calls me to separate myself from more strictly. The Jewish people were made to toil endlessly without even time to pray or worship. When they sought the time and space to worship their God, they were punished and the toil they were made subject to became even more demanding, even less fulfillable, and even more dehumanizing. Hours were long, food and time for rest short. Relationships deteriorated as did the Jews' own sense of their own dignity. Their behavior likewise deteriorated then and they fell into the kinds of things we expect among the dehumanized and starving: unhealthy competitiveness, theft, covetousness, dishonesty, murder, the failure to honor one's inheritance as one born with infinite dignity or to honor others in the same way, etc. In short, this bondage and dehumanization marked by endless toil and insufficiency was incapable of putting God first, resting in God's love, and loving oneself and others in God as a natural consequence. Israel became bond to an ethic of idolatry (for this was the Pharaoh's system and Pharaoh was a divine figure) and dehumanization --- an ethic resistant and even antithetical to God's love. (These two elements, idolatry and dehumanization, always go together.)

What I recognized is that quite often today we buy into the same bondage and the same forms of dehumanization. We buy into "the world" and in fact, we build that same "world"  and our own self-definition upon it. We do this in the form of a system that makes commodities of us all--- objects which can be bought and sold, used and disposed of as easily as one would do to a shirt or pair of pants. We become workaholics whose value is tied up with what we do rather than who we are, or shopaholics who fail to be in touch with the really new (kainetes) God is doing in our lives every day and substitute the merely new in time (neos) --- something which has to be replaced almost as soon as we have purchased it, or we become those who treat others in the same way through competitiveness, elitism, classism, an unhealthy capitalism, etc etc. What we are called to instead is the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom of God, the way which honors and delights in God's good creation but is also the world of Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, the world of the Great Commandment -- that is, the world of the love of God and all that God holds precious.

When I renewed my vows to live as a diocesan hermit under canon 603 last weekend, it was the all-too-common  but destructive meaning of "the world" I rejected and the "way of Jesus" I embraced again more intensely. As we enter more fully into Advent what I want to suggest is that this is the same commitment the Church and God are asking of each us --- not as hermits perhaps, but as those who recognize the Kingdom of God in our midst at the same time. I would encourage you to look carefully just as I am doing, at the way the canon 603 sense of "the world" plays a defining role in your own life, and that you build in real Sabbath rest where you allow yourself to rest in God and be just who he had made and calls you to be.  

Separate yourself more strictly from that false and idolatrous world. Let go of the consumerism, competition, division, striving to achieve (including religious striving(!),  and all of the other "-isms" that so represent the idols of our day, and try to do this in a focused or dedicated way for at least one entire day each week. After all, this is what the fourth commandment requires of us. Reject Pharaoh's ethic of ceaseless toil and embrace Jesus' ethic of God's gratuitous (and ultimately unearnable) love. Embrace "the great equalizer" of Sabbath which allows everyone and everything to rest and be the ones God calls them to be, the world of  genuine respect for all of creation, and of loving collaboration and unity in the Love of God.  I believe it will change the season for you and help it be what it is meant to be, but also, over time, it can change family life, life in our faith communities, and even the larger world in which we live.