Personally Important Resonances of the Word Hermit

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered what you like best about the vocation called "hermit". I am not asking what kinds of things you do every day that you like, but what does the word "hermit" mean that you think is really important or meaningful. Is there anything about this term that is especially important in our contemporary world? I was reading some of what you wrote about stereotypes and about not being understood except by other hermits or contemplatives and I wondered if maybe you would call yourself something else instead of hermit. But then I wondered if this word points to something especially important, maybe, because of several things you also said, even something you would call indispensable for the Church in this time and place?]]

This is such a completely great question!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to read here and to write about that. I am certain this is a completely new question here, and while I have written and written about the word "hermit" (or eremite, from ερεμος, meaning "desert" dweller), I don't believe I have ever written about why or how the word itself (which includes @ 2000 years of tradition in the Christian Church alone) specifically resonates for me. So thanks for this chance! 

A couple of things come immediately to mind that really resonate with me and are especially important. The first is the idea of wilderness or desert, and the way that involves not just marginalization and a unique solitude, but a traditional implication of engagement and even battle. The second thing that speaks to me strongly with the word "hermit" is the way it can mean individual while strongly countering individualism. Linked to this is the fact that while stereotypes of hermits (and those who mistakenly embrace such stereotypes as their model of the hermit life) include misanthropes and personally unhealthy folks of all sorts, authentic hermits are associated with wholeness and strong relationships with (and related commitments to) one's deepest Self, one's God, and also with others (both Church and World). One significant word that bridges both of these and helps explain them is "ecclesial". 

Wilderness or Desert Dweller:

Rachel Denton, Er Dio

Recently, I wrote that it was in the hermit's marginalization that s/he was enabled to reveal the truth that nothing at all could separate us from the love of God. I wrote: [[A hermit lives her life in solitude with God for the sake of others, including all Christian ministers, servants, and shepherds, precisely to make clear the foundational truth all apostolic ministry is based on, namely, that every person is made for and called to union with God, and thus, that every person carries within themselves the spark of divinity and a unique capacity to image God, to be entirely transparent to God in our world. Everything in the hermit life marginalizes the hermit in ways intended to help her/him witness to this foundational truth, as no law, dogma, or doctrine can ever do. . . . In the hermit, marginalization serves the truth that in the risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, nothing at all can separate us from the love of God. In this way, the hermit witnesses to the nature and heart of the Church as it mediates the presence within our world of the God we know as Emmanuel and the way to the fullness of life that also represents Emmanuel.]]

The hermit's vocation (call) is countercultural, yet it is lived in solidarity with those seeking both life (greater fullness of being) and meaning in the innumerable ways, both valid and invalid, that such seeking is carried out. To let go of discrete gifts, to vow the evangelical counsels and embrace a life of loving simplicity without inappropriate ambition, and so forth, is a call to a voluntary marginalization mirroring the ways so many in our society are unwillingly marginalized, even as it is also lived in the very center of the Church and in solidarity with all to witness to God's inexhaustible and inescapable love (cf Rom 8). Modern deserts include illness, poverty, traumatic injuries of all sorts, racism and other forms of inequity and exclusion, etc. The hermit embraces marginalization beyond that which she naturally experiences, and journeys to the depths of her yearning for fullness of being and meaning, and there discovers the truth of the Gospel, namely, that in Christ there is nothing whatsoever that can separate us from the love of God (Rom 8). As DICLSAL's guidebook on the c 603 vocation reminds us, "hermits become sentinels of hope" that our world badly needs.

The word hermit automatically conjures up all of this, especially through the image of the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived as they did not only out of personal integrity and their sense of following Christ more closely, but who did so for the sake of the institutional Church they paradoxically distanced themselves "from" in important ways by moving out into the desert. Thus, again, marginalization serves a deeper belonging to and representation of the authentic heart of the Church in a way that served the Church by calling her to faithfulness to her own deepest vocation and nature. In the Church, the term "hermit" will always resonate with a chosen marginalization precisely so one can truly stand in solidarity with and minister to others --- both the Church and the larger world.

At the same time, the desert was the place of engagement and even battle. While one went into the desert to be alone, this aloneness was always qualified by the words "with" as well as "for". One went into the desert to be alone with God. The desert solitude was precisely the place where one's needs and vulnerability were clarified and intensified, and one could meet and rest in God in a more radical way. This is more of the paradoxical nature of the desert or wilderness the Jewish people knew so well. So is the battle with demons, which so marked life in the desert. Hermits met within themselves (and otherwise) the presence of the demonic, and they did battle with this, often as it resided in the hermits' own hearts and minds. Thomas Merton speaks of this in terms of getting rid of the illusions and pretenses that so characterize life elsewhere so that one can truly be oneself.

Eremites as Individuals Rejecting Individualism:

Stereotypes of the hermit tend to absolutize solitude, and some will read the Desert Fathers and Mothers'' withdrawal from the institutional Church as similarly absolute and a model to be followed today. Likewise, some might understand the prayer lives of hermits as elitist, a strange mystical giftedness very few have or are called to by God. And similarly, people might be intimidated by hermits, believe they cannot be spoken with, invited to share a meal occasionally, or enjoy the same kinds of conversation we might have with anyone else. All of this would be a mistake. Inauthentic hermits might be tempted to leave the Church behind, not in the sense the Desert Abbas and Ammas did when they went to the desert as those reflecting the heart of the Church in order to witness to the Church's truest nature, to love it and help shape it in greater faithfulness to its true Lord, but because they believe they are called to a higher, more truly "spiritual" calling, one allergic to the temporality and materiality of the world God made completely his own in the Incarnation. While this might work for Platonists and Gnostics, it is not Christian.

Such so-called hermits might forget that eremitical solitude means being alone with God for the sake of and in the midst of others, that is, that this kind of solitude consists of two poles, physical solitude and koinonia or community, separation and solidarity. The authentic hermit lives a life characterized by the relative tension between these, not in some form of solitary (isolated) splendor as though they neither need nor are related to the institutional Church or the larger world it participates in and penetrates as leaven in dough! They may be representatives of the contemporary phenomenon of "cocooning," or rugged individualists committed to living off the grid. They may be pseudo-mystics focused only on their own holiness. Or, they may be folks who use the term "hermit" to validate and justify various relational and other failures in life when they simply cannot live, work, or play well with others. Certainly, stereotypes apparently rooted in historical reality portray hermits this way.

As the Church understands the term, however, hermits are desert dwellers who give their lives in seeking God, and doing so for the sake of God, the Church, the larger world, and their truest self. They do this as an integral part of the Church known as the Mystical Body of Christ. This is the historical Church, the Church that mediates the presence of God in Christ to and within this world in Word and Sacrament, in print, speech, oil, water, stone, wood, wax, wheat, wine, glass, paint, and so forth. This is the Church in which heaven (the very life of God shared with others) is incarnational, not as a Gnostic reality marked by absolute dualisms, but as one that recognizes the sanctity, and so, the sacramentality, of all of existence given over to and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the Church that witnesses to the new heaven and new earth coming to be even now in our world. And hermits in this Church, whether canonical or non-canonical, live at its heart.

The lives of these disciples are highly individual without being individualistic. Canonical hermits live according to a vision and plan they write under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the supervision of the Church (via diocesan personnel). Their journey to God is truly hidden from everyone and shared with very, very few. However, it is empowered by the Church's life and worship, her Word and Sacrament, her people and leadership. The authentic hermit shares all of this with others whose life is shaped and empowered by the same realities, even if this does not look exactly the same as it does for others. 

The central elements of eremitic life within the Church are not absolutes embraced for their own sake. Solitude involves physical isolation, yes, and at the same time, it provides the space for profound solidarity with others. Stricter separation from the world involves some, even substantial, separation from the world of God's good creation, but "stricter" is not about absolute separation (even from that which is not of God). It refers instead to a separation that is stricter than that lived by other religious men and women, and which is lived so that one may see reality more clearly and love it more truly. Something very similar is true of assiduous prayer and penance, and the Evangelical counsels; these serve a highly individual life while protecting its ecclesiality as life lived for the sake of others.

Pope Francis at Vespers with Camaldolese

The word hermit, therefore, does not make me think of individualism --- except as a betrayal of the vocation. It is not about escape from, but a unique kind of engagement with and on behalf of. And that is particularly important in our contemporary world and culture, where individualism and "me first" attitudes and behaviors are epidemic, eviscerating everything from helping and service careers and vocations, to the dangerous and threatening behaviors of greedy politicians and oligarchs of every stripe, to a failure to stand up to injustice until it touches us directly. Individualism is rampant in our world, and I find it wonderfully and highly ironic that it is the hermit (and in this case, I will say the canonical hermit with her specifically ecclesial vocation and additional institutional (canonical) ties to Church and world) who stands as a radical countercultural witness to being oneself precisely without (i.e., by not!) falling into individualism.

These are the most immediate resonances or meanings the word hermit carries for me. Thanks again for the question. It took several days, but I loved doing it!

Deus Meus et Omnia! Feast of St Francis of Assisi

My God and My All! Deus Meus et Omnia!  All good wishes to my Franciscan Sisters and Brothers on this patronal feast! I hope it is a day filled with Franciscan joy and simplicity and that this ancient Franciscan motto echoes in your hearts. In today's world we need more than ever a commitment to Franciscan values, not least a commitment to treasure God's creation in a way which fosters ecological health. Genesis tells us we are stewards of this creation and it is a role we need to take seriously. Francis reminds us of this commission of ours, not least by putting God first in everything. (It is difficult to exploit the earth in the name of consumerism when we put God first, and in fact, allow him to be our God and our All!) 

Another theme of Francis' life was the rebuilding of the Church and he came to know that it was only as each of us embraced a life of genuine holiness that the Church would be the living temple of God it was meant to be. The analogies between the Church in Francis' day and our own are striking. Today, the horrific scandal facing a Church rocked by sexual abuse and, even more problematical in some ways, the collusion in and cover-up of this problem by members of the hierarchy, a related clericalism Pope Francis condemns, and the general exclusion of women from any part in the decision making of the Church makes it all-too-clear that our Church requires rebuilding. So does the subsequent scapegoating of Pope Francis by those who resist Vatican II and an ecclesia semper reformanda est (a church always to be (or in the state of being) reformed). 

And so, many today are calling for a fundamental rebuilding of the Church, a rebuilding which would adopt synodality as a means of governance and replace a too-highly-clericalist church with one which truly affirms the priesthood of all believers and roots the Church in the foundation and image of the kenotic servanthood of Christ. The parable of new wine requiring new wineskins is paradigmatic here (and part of the reason we speak of ecclesia semper reformanda est). On the other side of this "silent schism," some are calling for a Church that retreats into these clericalist structures and seeks to harden them in an eternal medieval mold. Other forms of Christianity find their faith allied with dominant political movements and forget that genuine Christians are always located on the margins where the strongest weapons are love and mercy. Yes, in some ways we are already a Church in schism; we are a divided household on any number of levels, so it is appropriate that on this day we hear the call to a prophetic existence we might want to shirk (as does Jonah initially) and Jesus' challenging commission to his disciples to see and make neighbors of everyone, including the most marginalized (Luke). During this time of pandemic, this particular call is especially urgent. If we can hear and live this single call, we will also embody and remind others of the humble world-shaking faith of St Francis of Assisi.

Francis of Assisi, despite first thinking he was charged by God with rebuilding a small church building (San Damiano), knew that if he (and we) truly put God and his Christ first what would be built up was a new family, a new creation, a reality undivided and of a single heart.  Like so many today,  Ilia Delio calls for the systematic reorganization of the church and the inclusion of women at all levels of the church's life, but she adds the need for a scientifically literate theological education as part of achieving the necessary rebuilding. So, in a broken world, and an ailing church, let us learn from Francis and his  Franciscan "fools for Christ" and begin to claim our baptismal responsibility to work to rebuild and reform our Church into a living temple of unity and love. Let us do the same with a society marred by division and discord where individual liberty has too-often replaced an authentic freedom exercised in love for one another. The task before us is challenging and needs our best efforts. 

Again, all good wishes to my Franciscan Sisters and Brothers on this Feast!