The Desert Fathers and Mothers on the Hermit's Need for Human Relationships to Achieve Holiness (Reprise)

In posting the last two posts on the relationship of eremitical solitude and chronic illness I forgot I had posted the following text from the sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers just last March. I consider this reprise a contribution to that recent conversation.

[[When one desert father told another of his plans to “shut himself into his cell and refuse the face of men, that he might perfect himself,” the second monk replied, “Unless thou first amend thy life going to and fro amongst men, thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone.”]] (Sayings of the Desert fathers and Mothers)

I think this Desert Father and Mother apothegm is fascinating and especially important because it explicitly forbids one to move into solitude and away from others merely in some attempt to perfect oneself. This flies in the face of the way many conceive of eremitical life as well as the way some would-be-hermits describe the vocation. But it should not surprise anyone who carefully reflects on the Great Commandment and the interrelatedness of its two elements, love of God and love of neighbor. Especially it should not surprise those who live eremitical life in the name of the Church; we know the communal nature of our eremitical solitude --- nuanced and rare as it may be. 

We know too that our formation as hermits generally comes after (and requires) years of life in community, whether religious or parish (along with all of the other forms of community we experience throughout life). Similarly, ongoing formation requires personal work with directors and delegates --- and usually some degree of life in a parish community. (As I have written here before, actual eremitical reclusion today (reclusion is a much stricter solitude than most hermits are called to) is allowed by the Church in only two congregations: Camaldolese and Carthusian, and even in these very rare cases it is important to recognize the community context, supervision, and support this vocation requires and implies.)

The genuine human perfection we call holiness is the wholeness of the reconciled and integrated person who is therefore alive in God and the fullness of his or her personal truth. This implies reconciliation with God, with self, and with all else in God. It implies a profound capacity for compassion, for the ability to see Christ in others, and the willingness to spend oneself for the sake of others while becoming more and more completely dependent upon God as the source of our Selves. Desert elders knew the desire to seek perfection in physical reclusion by simply turning one's back on people was doomed to failure; it is frequently badly motivated, is paradoxically guided by a spirit of perfectionism and competition which is a betrayal of genuine humility and can lack the preparation necessary for becoming a hermit and moving into, much less sustaining a healthy eremitical solitude. They knew that solitude is a demanding and dangerous environment and particularly so for those unprepared for or not called to it. Even in those who are called to it eremitical solitude can be the source of illusory and delusional thinking and perceptions -- especially about oneself and God. Thus, the requirement for ongoing direction by experienced spiritual directors and the supervision by bishops and/or their delegates.

The desert Fathers were convinced that the way human beings come to achieve the necessary experience leading to repentance for sin and amendment of life is through one's ordinary interactions with other human beings. Contrary to popular opinion perhaps, the authentic eremitical vocation is not one where an individual moves into the desert merely to pursue personal or "spiritual" perfection in some sort of "solitary splendor" or in an interpersonal and relational vacuum. One moves into solitude 1) because solitude has truly opened her door to one, and 2) because with the church one discerns this is what God is calling one to and is prepared to live for the whole of her life as the fulfillment of the Great Commandment. Discernment that one is called in this way will include a sense that one is healthy in terms of interpersonal relationships and that one has achieved relative maturity in one's spirituality and Catholic identity. This is a traditional stance. St Benedict, for instance, affirms that hermits must have lived in community for some time and, of course, not be in the first blush of conversion.

I want to emphasize the place of discernment here, not only the discernment we each do on our own but the discernment we do with the Church itself in the person of legitimate superiors and directors, i.e., bishops, vicars of religious, delegates, et al. Part of this discernment, and indeed initial and ongoing formation is meant to ensure that the hermit or hermit candidate's motives are not selfish or otherwise misguided and that solitude has indeed herself opened the door to this vocation. What this means is that the hermit/candidate is responding to a Divine call; the Church will also make sure the hermit/candidate is prepared not only to live in solitude but more, that she will grow and thrive in it in ways which will be a gift to the Church and thus, to others. There are subtleties involved here and nuances which the hermit/candidate may not appreciate until much later and may not be able to determine on her own. It is also important to remember that since a hermit does not do apostolic ministry** the ways she lives her solitude and the meaning her life embodies within and as a result of this solitude are themselves the gift God gives the Church through the hermit. Supervision and discernment (mutual and otherwise) are required not only early on for a candidate not yet admitted to profession but throughout the hermit's life. ***

One of the reasons I stressed the need for supervision and discernment and the way they are ensured is because they are a part of the hermit's integral need for others in her life. Whether we are hermits or even recluses we need others who know us well and are capable of assessing in a continuing way the quality of our vocational life, as well as encouraging and assisting us to grow in our responsiveness to God's call to abundant life. Canonical (consecrated) hermits are called to ecclesial vocations and the Church has the right and obligation to oversee these just as she expects us to continue to grow as human beings; canonical hermits have accepted the obligation to grow and participate in those "professional" relationships which help ensure that. Yes, hermits do grow in light of their experience of the love of God; they grow in authentic humanity and as hermits through their experience of Christ in the silence of solitude and the disciplined and attentive living of their Rule and horarium, but what growth there is in these things is often dependent on the hermit's work with her director and delegate, and also with her interactions and relationships with folks from her parish and/or diocese.

In eremitical (or any other) solitude it is simply too easy to say, "God wills this," or "God is calling me to that," when discernment is done by the hermit alone. In such a situation the temptation is to canonize or apotheosize one's own opinions, perceptions, tendencies, and so forth as the movement of the Holy Spirit. God does not literally speak to us as human beings do but instead does so through Sacred texts, sacraments, prayer, and the fruits of our choices and actions; since we learn to love and be loved in our connection with others, hermits must 1) be well-formed in learning to hear (discern) and respond to God in authentic ways, and 2) they must be adequately supervised and directed in this. This does not mean one meets every week or even every month with one's delegate, or spiritual director. "Adequate" means whatever is sufficient to allow the hermit/candidate to grow in her vocation first as a human being called to live from and mediate the love of God (and others) and to do this as a hermit in the silence of solitude.

** Hermits may do some very limited apostolic ministry but are not and cannot be identified in terms of this ministry as are apostolic or ministerial religious. The silence of solitude is always primary and a defining element for the hermit's life.

*** Some have written that the need for direction and supervision cease to be important when the hermit has lived the life for some time. I believe this is a false conclusion. It is true that the nature of direction and the supervisory relationships change with time and maturity, but it seems to me they may become even more critical over time. Whether that is generally true or not the need for ongoing formation and discernment continues through the whole of the hermit's life.

Once Again: On Infused Contemplation, Union With God, and Elitism

[[Dear Sister, if God can gift any person with infused contem-plation despite the obstacles they present, then why doesn't he? Have you experienced the gift of infused contemplation? Isn't it a special gift and sign of God's love given to only a few?]]

The first question is unanswerable. I don't know why God does what God does, why sometimes a gift is obviously prudent or necessary and other times it is not. Presumably one is not always ready for love in such a form. Some theologians reject the notion of infused contemplation because it strikes them as interventionist or elitist. Rahner does this and suggests that these experiences affirm merely that some people are more able to cooperate with God, perhaps have become more skilled in this, etc. However, I disagree with Rahner in this because yes, I have experienced "infused contemplation" --- something that seemed like the flooding of my heart, mind, and soul from within with the presence of God. It was a gift which had nothing to do with my skill or supposed "advancement" at prayer or my spiritual readiness for this gift. In fact, I have always had the sense that God gifted me in this way as an amazing (and amazingly gentle yet powerful) "kick in the pants" precisely to signal what I was ultimately meant for and to remind me that prayer is ALWAYS what God does within us, not something we manage on our own.

My experience had several dimensions to it but it began with my inability to pray or to cease "trying too hard". To assist with this my director asked me to rest my hands in her outstretched hands and then to pray as I always did. I did this, took a couple of centering breaths and God did the rest! Prescinding from the imagery involved it centered on two insights or divine affirmations:  1) that God was absolutely delighted that I was "finally" here with him in this way and had "waited" for a very long time for this (and that this had nothing to do with my own age). I had the sense in all of this that I had God's ENTIRE attention and was completely sustained by him and this was exactly what I was called to. (This last part was literally true since during the prayer (a period of @ 45 minutes or so) I ceased breathing for some time, and others had to be sure I was okay while not interfering with the prayer itself. (My director eventually told me to breath at one point, and, with some initial difficulty, I did. Otherwise she and I simply trusted to God and let things happen as he willed.) 2) At the same time I had the sense that God loved and was caring for EVERY PERSON in exactly the same way. It was an amazing and paradoxical experience and neither element (the specialness nor the universality of God's love) was less important or true than the other.


In the 30 years since that experience I have had  others which were similar but also were far less dramatic. What I have learned is that union with God is not necessarily characterized by such experiences; in fact, such experiences are not strictly necessary any more than orgasmic experiences are strictly necessary to or characteristic of  married love generally. Granted, I apparently needed this particular experience at that point in my life to teach me a fundamental truth about God's love for me and for all others, as well as to remind me of the fact that prayer is NOT my doing. Even more, it taught me that prayer is meant for God's delight more than it is for my own. I needed these lessons on a level theological work itself doesn't usually allow, but I have not really needed others like it to experience communion with God or a felt sense of God's presence.  I also learned that such experiences need have nothing to do with being in some "advanced state" of prayer (though I do agree with Rahner that once we learn to open and entrust ourselves to God and do so regularly, it is easier for him to give himself to us in this way). Such experiences are indeed a gift, freely given by God because he loves us and desires we know that in ways which will sustain us and allow us to live authentically with a foundational security and hope which is edifying and even inspiring to others.

I learned at least one other lesson from this experience and my reflection on it which I will mention here (for indeed, I return to it fairly regularly to renew not only my gratitude to God for his gift of self to me, but to allow it to speak more fully to me). Namely, God dwells within us, actively calling, loving, sustaining and waiting for us to open our hearts to him. He is never absent and our smallest choice of life is a choice we make WITH and FOR him. Union with God is the very essence of humanity. We are not human alone. At the same time that union can be experienced in many different ways so it is important not to associate it necessarily with ecstasies, etc. Some of my most profound experiences of union with God have involved moments when a bit of theology becomes clear, a client achieves a significant step of growth, or I sit quietly with God and a cup of fragrant hot tea and am at peace and grateful for who and where I am. At those times and many others I have a renewed sense of God's delight and joy that we are FINALLY together in all of this, that he is mine and I am his.

I sincerely believe these significant experiences of union/communion are open to everyone on this side of the eschatological divide. But of course, those of us who have experienced them cannot teach that they are meant for an elite few if we really want that to be true. And here is where one other central lesson of my own life of prayer becomes critical: whose experience do we focus on in prayer? Is it our own or is it God's? Better said, perhaps, do we stop with our own delight, joy, peace, and draw theological conclusions from those, or do we open ourselves to and consider what our prayer means for God?

If we do the latter, then we will be very clear that he desires us to help open EVERY person to this kind of experience, and to do so now rather than waiting for the eschaton and/or the parousia. NO authentic experience of union/communion I have ever had supports elitism. None of them suggests such experiences are open to only a privileged few or are even necessarily a sign of "spiritual advancement" --- whatever that really means anyway. The experiences are ineffably special, no doubt about it, and they witness to how very special I am to God but none of them have excluded that second element I mentioned at the beginning of this post, namely, the sense that God loves and desires, in fact loves and yearns to love EVERY person just as exhaustively right here, right now. I have actually wondered if the presence of this second element is part of what validates the experience as authentic. In any case, I can only hope my life is an effective sign of this truth!! Otherwise, I will have failed in a significant way in the very special vocation to which I have been called.

Paintings from Brother Emmaus O'Herlihy, OSB: Camaldolese Hermit in Reclusion and St Romuald receiving the gift of tears  from the series "St Romuald and his Followers."

The Silence of Jesus vs Eremitical "silence of solitude"

Throughout this last week of Lent and into the Triduum we will be confronted increasingly by Jesus' silence, indeed his muteness in the face of the world of powers and principalities arrayed against him. Increasingly the Word of God incarnate is rendered mute. In Mark's passion narrative this awful silence is rent only by Jesus' cry of abandonment --- that moment when Jesus' passion becomes even deeper than it had been and he suffers the loss of that relationship which is most foundational and intimate to him plunging him into an absolute hopelessness and helplessness. It is at this point, I think, that John's Jesus cries out, "I thirst!" And his thirst goes unslaked.

Because I have been writing and thinking about "the silence of solitude" in the past several months the contrast with Jesus' increasing muteness during his passion and what canon 603 refers to as "the silence of solitude" is more striking to me than it has ever been before. The hermit's silence is not one of powerlessness --- though indeed, in terms of the world's categories, a hermit is marginalized and relatively powerless --- nor is it one of absolute aloneness or abandonment. Instead it is the silence of covenant and friendship, of rest and essential peace in Christ. It is, as I have written many times now, a silence which sings of abundant life, a dialogical reality where God's love is the counterpart of human poverty and muteness, and the result is a sacramental silence which speaks powerfully and prophetically of fullness and completion.

But in the next three days especially we meet a vastly different kind of silence. It is the horrifying silence we all deeply fear, the silence we feel compelled with desperation to fill with even empty sound and trivial speech so terrified are we of being alone in the sense that Jesus was left alone; it is the silence which alternates with the music of love and affirmation and which presses us to seek companionship and reassurances we can never provide for ourselves alone. In the next three days Jesus, the Word incarnate, becomes increasingly subject to this silence. He enters increasingly into a loneliness which excludes all communication, all meaning, and all capacity for transcendence. His silence is the silence of one who has absolutely no one who can elicit or empower speech, no one who can summon him beyond himself --- one who is without anyone who can elicit or empower love, and is without the relatedness which is the ground and source of all meaning. It is the abyss of isolation which renders all speech -- including the speech or language event one is and is called to be -- absurd and impossible.

As I wrote in the piece on Jesus' descent into hell, hell is an abyss of ultimate and unremitting isolation, loneliness, emptiness, lovelessness, and inhumanity. It is precisely that impenetrable "place" or "space" within and outside us where speech, language, or communion becomes impossible and where, as Benedict XVI writes, no word of another can reach and no love can advance. It is this hell, this spiritual or personal black hole, into which Jesus is increasingly drawn in these last days of Lent, and during the Triduum especially. Despite superficial similarities, the silence, or better, the muteness associated with this state is precisely antithetical to the "silence of solitude" of the hermit; it is the silence against which one can see most clearly how rich and full the silence of eremitical or solitary life truly is. The hell of muteness crushes; the silence of solitude empowers song. These two different realities are what makes it especially important to discern the difference between those whose silence is that of isolation and those who are truly called to the silence of solitude as hermits. The first witnesses to hell and the sovereignty of death which blots out Life and Speech, the second is the background of heaven and the sovereignty of God who is Life, Love, and creative Word.

Whence the Name, Stillsong Hermitage??

Dear Sister O'Neal, the name of your hermitage sounds kind of new age or something. Why didn't your diocese pick something more religious and Catholic sounding?

Hi there!
Just to be clear, the name of my hermitage is something I decided on, not a decision of my diocese, so it is a personally significant name and one I (through the grace of God, I think) am wholly responsible for. Hermits generally name their hermitages. Perhaps it will help if I explain its origin and you can decide then if you think it is "new age" rather than profoundly Christian. I would ask you also read the heading at the top of this blog because it also helps explain the name.

In theology there is the notion that human beings are "word events" or "language events". This is a piece of understanding the communal nature of every human being, and especially of seeing the dialogical nature of our existence. We are not isolated monads, but instead are created and shaped by our interactions with every person we meet, with the larger world, and of course, with God. But most fundamentally we are shaped by the words addressed to us and by the ways in which the words we ourselves are are heard and received by others. In our earliest moment or before, we are given a Name which allows us to be called or addressed personally, and which gives us a place to stand in human society. We grow or fail to grow depending upon the ways we are addressed, and we grow in our capacity to respond to others' words (and to our own name) similarly. On the most profound level we are constituted by our dialogue with God. More, we are constituted AS a dialogue, not only with others, but with God whose very address constitutes an ongoing living reality within us. In other words, more and more as we mature, we become incarnate words, greater and greater articulations of that unique name God calls in the depths of our souls.

But of course, things do not always go as they should and sometimes life shapes us into something less articulate than this, something distorted and even defined by pain and woundedness --- something far less than the full expression of abundant life we are called to be. And in my own life there was a period where, when I reflected on who I was in terms of my identity as a language or word event I came to describe myself more as a cry or scream of anguish than anything really articulate. (Note that a scream neither communicates much nor is capable of responding to another's word of address; it is relatively inarticulate and unresponsive and, while effective in signalling great pain in the short term, in time it merely pushes people --- and genuine assistance --- away.) And then, through a lot of personal work, spiritual direction, and the grace of God --- part of which is a call to eremitical life --- I achieved a degree of healing which changed all that. In time I became (or came to see myself) not simply as an articulate language event (a word), but a song, a contemporary Magnificat or Te Deum --- if you will allow the metaphors.

When it became time to name the hermitage I chose to combine a word which signified peace, silence, solitude (and especially as these all come together in the hesychastic "silence of solitude") along with a word which reflected the joy, healing, and growth as language event this hermitage helped occasion and represented. I considered adding things like "of the cross" or "of the Incarnation," but in the end I chose simply Stillsong. It seems profoundly incarnational (and therefore also Marian) to me.

This last week on retreat I had an experience (or series of experiences) which reaffirmed the wisdom and deep appropriateness of this choice, an experience where it seemed my whole being was singing and which also may have represented the recovery of a part of myself which had, through trauma, been silenced. So, new age? No. Profoundly Christian? Absolutely.

More Questions: Does God Will ANY Suffering?

[[Dear Sister O'Neal. Again, thanks for your response. It is clear you don't believe God causes chronic illness, nor that he actively wills it. Do you believe that ANY suffering is the will of God?]]

Actually, I do believe that God wills some suffering. This would include forms of suffering that are simply part and parcel of being (or becoming) authentically human on and in their journey towards union with God. Such a journey involves struggle and struggle involves suffering. For instance, loneliness would be a form of suffering I think God wills because it causes us to be open to others, to our own sense that we are not isolated or non-relational monads. It also underscores the gift quality of the love relationships we share in; these are not things which are necessary (in the technical sense of that word). That is, they might not have been and in fact they might not be again. Above all this "existential" or "ontological" loneliness marks us a made in the image of the Triune God, relational and made for love in all aspects of our being --- solitary (eremitical) as our lives might also be.

I think that some non-pathological forms of anxiety are normal and willed by God, not only because such anxiety marks us as incomplete and finite of ourselves and also opens us to those things which bring comfort and actual joy, but because we find creative outlets for it. The peace of Christ is not the numbness that can come with drugs or other forms of artificial distraction, etc. It includes a kind of anxiety, a yearning for more, a sense of being made-for more and challenged to embrace it. Similarly, temptation is part and parcel of the human situation (temptation is clearly present in Scripture prior to sin) and leads either to sin or to self-transcendence. Of itself temptation is neutral but it can serve life and spiritual maturity.

Even death itself (the greatest cause of anxiety) is intended by God. But this is, as I referred to in my earlier post, death-as-transition, not sinful, godless, death-unto-oblivion. We are made for eternity. It is death as limit (and this includes all the limits of contingent being we meet each and every day) that reminds us we have but one life which we are called to live and in which we are called to achieve authentic humanity. We are made for eternity, and God sustains us eternally, but growth into authentic graceful humanity is a task we have only a limited time to complete. We need the spur of death to put things into perspective, to remind us who God is and who he is for us, who we really are and what the ultimate challenge before us is. But note well here that ordinary death does not call attention to itself, it does not serve itself. (Sinful death is a different matter.) Ordinary transitional death witnesses to the eternal "more" or fullness and abundant life we are called to. This is true with each of the forms of "existential" suffering I have referred to here. None of them call attention to themselves. They all witness to something other and more than suffering itself. They are life-serving and it is this that predominates.

What I think we cannot do is make a religion out of suffering. Our experience of the God of life and wholeness, the God who enters our existence exhaustively, must be what puts suffering in perspective, not vice versa. The living God can use suffering and transform it with his presence, but he does not wield it like a weapon nor does he send it directly; some of it it is built into the situation and structure of human life and is necessary for growth and development in authenticity and maturity. Other suffering is the result of sin and evil per se and we especially cannot trivialize this by minimizing its reality as evil and an example of the absurd. Especially we cannot attribute such evil to God. Ultimately, as those who proclaim the Gospel of the God of Jesus Christ however, our witness is to be to life, to wholeness and holiness, and to all the ways God empowers transcendence, not to suffering per se whether that suffering is existential or the result of sin.