from Leo XIV's First encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas
18. . . .we [must] first clarify some fundamental principles concerning the way the Church exists in history and relates to the world. Failing to do so would expose social doctrine to the risk of being perceived as an undue interference in "worldly" matters or as an external code of ethics imposed from above. In reality, it stems from a Church that walks alongside humanity, recognizing the autonomy of earthly realities and the distinction between ecclesial and political communities. Indeed, it is for this very reason that she strives to serve the common good.
19. The Church is present in the world as a sign of unity for the entire human family. She recognizes today’s questions and challenges as the current setting in which to carry out her particular vocation of listening, dialogue and service, and of being responsive to everything concerning the lives of contemporary men and women. This involvement in people’s lives helps the Church understand ever more clearly that her mission has a historical scope and entails a responsibility for the way in which social relations are built. For this reason, she cannot consider herself a stranger to the forces shaping society. On the contrary, the Church actively participates in the processes by which society grows and is organized, and she offers her own contribution to the creation of a more just and fraternal society. Pope Francis emphasized this historical dimension of the Church’s mission: “No one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.” [Emphasis added]
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This is part of the chapter that the group reading Pope Leo's encyclical is discussing next week. I was very happy to see Leo address this problem since it is a common criticism put forth by those who do not understand either the incarnational and historical nature of the Church (which is NOT the Kingdom of God) or the role of the Pope in leading the Church. I should point out that as a canonical hermit, I take this encyclical seriously as a call both to being myself and to describing something of how the Church understands we are to live our eremitical lives in our contemporary world.
I realize some hermits speak or post extensively on embracing the "spiritual life" and leaving the "temporal world", including the "temporal Church", entirely behind them. (I'm never clear how that is supposed to happen when we each are spatio-temporal, i.e., historical (incarnational) beings through and through! At the same time, we are made and hunger for more than this! The paradoxical truth of Christianity is that the Spirit of God breathed within us, fits us for being profoundly in and of the world (cosmos) of God's good creation without also being of the world that distorts and destroys that good creation. Some also criticize Pope Leo XIV as being too political, and others, like President Trump, similarly demand that he "stay in his own lane."
After all, at the heart of our faith is the Incarnation and a God who willed to be Emmanuel, "God with us," in everything, including the depths of sin and death, and so, in the very midst of human history and beyond. Jesus was as profoundly spiritual as we can imagine a person being; he was also as profoundly historical and committed to the world (cosmos) of space and time that God had created and called "good." What Leo describes in the passage above is the vocation of every Christian, including hermits. We embrace this historical and incarnational "ecclesiality" in a unique solidarity with the human family. We do so in the silence of solitude and in stricter separation from "the world" constituted by the distorted values, projects, and goals that distort God's good creation in so many ways.
The way hermits embody this vocation to be part of God's good creation in our hiddenness will look different from the way many, especially many younger and able-bodied people or those in active (Apostolic) ministry, embody it. It is still a vocation we share and commit to living out carefully, thoughtfully, and prayerfully, precisely because it is lived out with and within the larger world (cosmos) Pope Leo calls "our common home".
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