On Selfishness versus Selflessness in Eremitical Life

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered if you could clarify how an eremitical vocation is not a selfish vocation, particularly in light of your last post on limited ministry and having an apostolate to the eremitical life/hermitage. Thank you.]]

Thanks for your question. I have been struggling to articulate the truth of this since August 2015 or so and gradually moving towards this important point in my prayer and reflection for a lot longer than that. One of the posts I wrote prior to the last post (01. October. 2018) dealt with the distinction between retiring to a hermitage out of selfishness and doing so out of a genuine love for others; it is found here: On the Question of Selfishness versus Hiddenness Lived for Others. I would urge you to take a look at this. I think it is clearer in some ways than my last post, but it does not use the language of "apostolate", a form of structured evangelization or proclamation of the Gospel to which one is sent (or with which one is entrusted) by the Church.

You see, hermits evangelize precisely by becoming whole and holy in their hermitages and thus witnessing to the fact that every human being, no matter how poor, is called to and can attain the same authentic humanity. We say that God completes us, that God alone is sufficient for us. I think this is what Merton was speaking of when he said (paraphrase) "the primary duty of the hermit is to live in (his) hermitage without pretense in a fundamental peace (and joy)," or, that the hermit makes "fundamental claims about nature and grace" which truly gives hope to others. What Merton saw, and I think what every authentic hermit sees is that his "apostolate" was exercised precisely within the hermitage. We are sent forth (made apostles) to proclaim the Good News with our lives, but the place within which that apostolate always occurs is the hermitage through  "stricter separation from the world," and "the silence of solitude" lived and achieved there. The Church is entrusted with this vocation and is responsible for sending hermits forth into their hermitages because she believes profoundly that commissioning hermits paradoxically advances the proclamation of the Gospel in our world.

I think it is relatively easy to substitute selfishness for the unselfishness of the authentic eremitical vocation. While people are free to choose lay eremitical life, it is easier to do so selfishly when hermits are not charged (commissioned) by the church with the mission canonical hermits are charged with, when, that is, someone simply chooses solitude as the environment in which they will live their lives. Whether true or not, this choice usually seems at least somewhat selfish to those looking at the hermit's life unless there are mitigating circumstances which make solitude a necessary context for living a life of wholeness and holiness. Here is one place admission to canonical standing helps clarify the motivation and meaning of the hermit's solitude. Moreover, since the external trappings are mainly the same for each one these do not clarify whether the life lived is essentially selfish or not;  thus too, determining selfishness and unselfishness is part of what makes discernment and formation both critical, difficult, and relatively time consuming. Over time the Church will see that the hermit's life is lived for God and for others, and that the hermit will persevere in the sacrifices needed in order to do this in "the silence of solitude" or she will find that the hermit is not called to eremitical life. The Church will find that she is meant to mediate God's own "sending" or missioning a person into stricter separation from the world and the silence of solitude, or she is not.

Certain things will be evident in the life of eremitical authenticity: faithfulness to one's Rule, perseverance in trust in the God who alone is sufficient for us, growth in wholeness and holiness as one undertakes one's life of prayer, personal work, lectio, and study in silence and solitude.  One's love for God, for others and for oneself will also grow; personal healing and maturation will clearly be present in an ongoing way. The capacity to securely hold onto the foundational vision of the life as one negotiates legitimate ministerial claims upon one's time and energies will gradually be revealed and strengthened. A deep happiness at being oneself as a hermit which is not the same as the superficial happiness of getting one's own way or "doing one's own thing" will be increasingly evident, and one will be entirely comfortable with the sacrifices the vocation requires because the grace of the vocation is so much greater and important to and for others.

Although not quite on topic, let me say here that the profound sense some bishops and vicars have that this vocation should not be rushed into, that formation and discernment both take time (at least five years for initial formation and discernment) are right on target. (I would suggest at least five years mutual discernment is necessary before one can be admitted to temporary profession but that this is not long enough to admit to perpetual profession unless there is significant religious formation and life experience before beginning the pursuit of profession under c 603.) In any case, it is only over time that the motivation and sacrifices which are part and parcel of the vocation become truly clear to everyone involved in the processes of discernment and formation. One of these sacrifices is active ministry except on a very limited basis; at the same time the conviction that life in the hermitage itself is our apostolate is something we will come to see clearly only in time.

The bottom line in distinguishing between selfishness and selflessness is rooted in the truth that it is a profoundly loving and ministerial act to accept the commission to become the persons God calls us to be in the silence of solitude. Because the hermit believes deeply in this paradoxical truth and embraces it wholeheartedly she will make every sacrifice including the renunciation of many discrete gifts and talents which would be tied to ministries outside the hermitage in order to live the truth of the completion and redemption  that comes to her as the fruits of eremitical life.  She will wholeheartedly embrace stricter separation from the world and life lived in and for the silence of solitude along with the other requirements of c 603 precisely because doing so will allow her own redemption and the unique proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ associated with her eremitical life. She will do so in order to witness to the power of the grace of God to transform every human poverty into the fullness of incarnational humanity. She will embrace and allow God to achieve in her life the self-emptying required to glorify God in the silence of eremitical solitude.

Moreover, she will do so for the sake of those from whom she is largely separated and to whom her life is largely hidden in order that they may also know the freedom and hope of life lived in communion with God. To fail in this is to fail to allow God to redeem one in the solitude of the hermitage; it is to fail to commit to the growth in wholeness and holiness the love of God makes possible and to live an isolated egotism rather than the silence of solitude. Beside the importance of the Church's "sending" of the hermit into "the silence of solitude," this is the reason the redemptive element is also so crucial for discerning authentic eremitical vocations.  When the hermit's eremitical life fails to reflect an experience of redemption in solitude there is simply nothing for her to witness to and she will have failed to live eremitical life successfully ---  or at least to demonstrate this was what she was called and sent to by God via the ministry of God's Church..

I sincerely hope this is helpful to you.

Questions on the Experience of Redemption at the Heart of Eremitical Life

 [[ Hi Sister Laurel, I began reading your blog once in a while a couple of years ago just out of curiosity about hermits. It never occurred to me that this was a meaningful vocation and I held a lot of the preconceptions and prejudices you have mentioned from time to time. But even as I let go of some of these I could not see the real difficulty or significance of the vocation. I mean I knew I was not called to it myself, but it seemed that so long as a person is an introvert then it wouldn't be all that difficult  -- especially if they didn't have something better to do! Like someone wrote you a while back, you just say some prayers, do a little gardening, stay away from people and what was such a big a deal? Okay, so now I am beginning to get it.

When you wrote about the "redemptive experience" that MUST be at the center of the life, or the activity of God which has to stand at its heart I began to see this as a real vocation. Then you said that unless that [redemptive activity of God] is there a diocese would have nothing to discern and nothing they could give to the candidate either. And then you also said that this redemptive experience could make sense of a life that was empty and absurd otherwise and something clicked for me. It's all about God and what we allow him to do with us! I was taught that in religion classes, but I just hadn't seen the hermit's life as an image of or witness to that same truth! And now I see that that is the ONE thing a hermit is called to witness to. The ONE and only thing!! That is really amazing to me! . . . How did you come to know this?  Did you learn about it in theology school? Was it because you were chronically ill? And what is the hardest thing about it, about living as a hermit I mean? Can I write you about this again when my questions become clearer?]]

Thanks for your patience in waiting for me to finally get to this. I think I can hear the excitement of discovery in what you write. The questions you asked are clear enough, I think, but more about that at the bottom! So is the insight you are so excited about (which I will tweak a little here), namely, it's all about God and what God DOES do with our lives if only we allow God to love us as radically as God wills to love us; that is the ONE thing a hermit is called to witness to, the ONE and only thing. Let me start there. There are many ways to describe the general and universal call involved. We can talk about glorifying God, being the counterpart and dialogue partner of God, being radically obedient to God, letting God be sovereign, living the love of God, allowing the mercy of God to do justice in our lives and world, letting God make us holy, "I, yet not I, but Christ in me," conversion, redemption, etc. In some ways we are each and all of us called to this vocation. It is what it means to be truly human.

How Does the Eremitical Vocation Differ?

It seems to me that what makes the call of the hermit different is that it is in becoming and being this [expression of God's redemption] and nothing else, and doing so in the silence of solitude that is the gift (or charism) she brings to the Church and world; it is the one "ministry" she is absolutely called to in the Church. Unlike with most other vocations, it necessarily occurs in eremitical silence and solitude and in some ways is completely hidden from others. She is called to be herself in God --- to be the prayer God makes of her and to do that in stricter separation from "the world" and in the silence of solitude. Everything else, including intercessory prayer, is secondary to this.  In this call she mirrors the radical solitude of Jesus who certainly lived for and ministered to others, but who first and foremost was the unique counterpart of the One he called Abba, and was most truly human only to the extent that he was profoundly and even exhaustively open and responsive to God thus revealing and implicating God in everything he said, was, and did.

Though this was true in the apparent failure of his healing and preaching ministry, it was most exhaustively true in the abject weakness, emptiness, and absurdity of his passion and sinful or godless death by crucifixion. Everything Jesus did and said was secondary to and an expression of his allowing God to be revealed (made known and made real in space and time) in and through every moment and mood of his life. Jesus revealed the extent to which the One he called Abba is "with us". He did so in what must have been a very painful solitude --- a solitude marked by misunderstanding and failure or even a refusal to understand him, by a sense of mission even his closest disciples contradicted, rejected, or betrayed, by the realities of failure, sin, shame, incredible physical and emotional pain, abandonment and godless death, but above all a solitude shaped by a remarkable life-giving intimacy with God. It is this vocation to be God's counterpart, to enter into and witness to a similar intimacy with God that stands at the root of everything else Christians live and do to which a hermit is called.

One point I should address here is the idea of paradigm or, maybe even better, that of icon. I do not mean to argue that the eremitical vocation is something special in the sense of it being elitist. Every human being is called to the same identity as God's counterpart, the same existential solitude, the same dialogue with God, the same humanity which occurs in union with God. Just as I recognize that Consecrated Virgins are icons of the Church as Bride of Christ, and just as I argue that they are equally icons of the nuptial relationship every person is called to eschatologically, so I argue that hermits are icons of the dialogical relationship constituting a humanity where Divine power is made perfect in weakness. They serve to remind people of a universal truth, a universal identity. They are paradigms of this. However, this also means that in many ways the hermit's path to this witness differs significantly from the path of others. Others are called to share God's love via different gifts and talents and to do so in a multitude of forms of active ministry. In other words the mission and charism of their lives is different from that of the hermit but the redemptive reality at the heart of their lives and identity as human is the largely same.

Here Paul's image of the single body with many members and different functions is critically important. The hermit vocation is not a higher vocation, a way in which one is elect and others are not. It is simply a path some are especially fitted for and called to by the combination of life circumstances and Divine love. The Church's proclamation of the Gospel requires priests and religious, mothers and fathers, doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists and others following innumerable paths in service of humanity, and in fact of the whole of creation. None of these are called to a "higher" vocation than any other. Each and all of us are called to know God and to reveal or witness to that "knowledge" to others. I say that genuine eremitical vocations are rare --- and they are. But their rarity is not a denial or contradiction of their universal relevance -- nor of the universal solitariness of human being.  It affirms these even as it poses with a particular vividness the question which human beings are and the answer whom God is.

Your Questions:

How did I come to know this? Was it through school, chronic illness or what? The answer is that I have come to know this in a variety of ways. Certainly college and graduate school were important for learning Paul and Mark's theologies of the cross and otherwise becoming familiar with Scripture. Though this is so much more than lectures and book learning it remains true that lectures and book learning have helped and continue to help keep me related to God, anchored in theological truth, as they provide language, categories of thought, and interlocutors who can help me reflect on my own experience and check my theologizing.

Prayer is a second source, especially contemplative prayer in solitude. There's no way to describe briefly all the ways this has been important though I have talked about some of this in the blog piece Central Formative Theological Insights. The insights described there were also profoundly linked to my experience of God in prayer --- or, maybe better said, to the experiences of reality and self supported and empowered by prayer. The notion of a God who is profoundly present within us, who is a constant source of life and meaning even when everything else seems to militate against these is as much a result of prayer as it is a theological insight. The place of prayer in my life is a source and foundation which makes the theological insights a good deal more than clever intellectual constructs. Prayer calls for theology and theology itself leads to and cannot really be done without prayer. The two are inextricable. It is possible to say that together they are a single source of my knowledge of God and the place God plays in my life.

Chronic illness is a third source because it is a significant piece of the context of everything else that happens in my life, of all that I am and do. It put an end to future plans and preparation, made a number of gifts useless, isolated me in significant ways, was often dehumanizing, and confronted me with my own weakness and complete dependence upon God for the redemption and transfiguration of my life. It was in this way I came to know that existing in isolation was dehumanizing while existing in solitude (that is, in communion with God and with others in God) made me truly human. Above all, chronic illness confronted me with the question of meaning; my life was a scream of anguish and in the infrequent times that scream became more or less articulate, the question it clamored for an answer to was, "WHY??!!" At the same time though, it made it important that I not adopt a "solution" which was merely a way of validating my isolation.

Once I became a hermit (long before becoming diocesan) I began to live, read about and reflect even more seriously on the eremitical vocation. That too was an important source of knowing that "it's all about God and what God DOES do if only we allow God to love us as radically as God wills to do" that is the ONE thing hermits MUST witness to precisely in stricter separation and the silence of solitude, the really meaningful and rare gift hermits bring to the Church and world. You see, it was eremitical solitude (not the isolation of chronic illness or the solitude of introversion) that convinced me of the vast difference between these two realities. It also, as you probably know since you have been reading here for a couple of years, taught me the difference between using gifts and talents and being made to be the gift precisely in being redeemed. My illness was not healed, many of my gifts and talents remain essentially unused and unusable but all of these and more become a larger gift which witnesses to the love and faithfulness of God that reconciles and makes whole.

Above all then it was the lesson I was taught by coming to know and be known by the love of God. That love received in faith transfigured my life in so many ways that of course I felt called to witness to this. What the other elements helped me learn was that, as you say, that was the ONE and only thing I was called to witness to with a kind of starkness eremitical life does best. I am not a hermit because, for instance and like some, I am mainly critical of the institutional Church --- though my solitude may provide the perspective from which I, like the desert Fathers and Mothers, may be critical and even prophetic. I am not a hermit because I think everyone is called to something similar --- though I would agree that solitude itself is the most universal of vocations and my life can point to the relatedness of which that solitude consists. It took me a number of years to come to the conclusion that this really was the ONLY thing I was truly called to witness to.

What is the Hardest Thing?

I am not sure how to answer this. Living as a hermit is an integrated whole and sometimes it is all easy while other times it is all hard. Perhaps the single hardest thing (sometimes) is giving myself completely to God in all things; there is such a pull to keep something "for myself" despite the fact that I understand the paradox that I only truly possess myself to the extent I: 1) give myself to God and 2) receive myself from God as complete gift. As I wrote here not too long ago, it is one thing to offer God my entire life in baptism or religious profession and to renew that offer each day, for instance; it's entirely another to actually give my Self to God as exhaustively as possible and as willed by God. But there is another paradox involved here which makes what is sometimes difficult a good deal easier and that is that to the degree I am forgetful of self, to the degree my discernment focuses on the life which summons me. That life is bigger than I am and yet it is something I can attend to and focus on without getting lost in self. Here giving my entire self to God means receiving the gift God gives --- the gift God is! --- and doing so without limit.

This distinction between giving one's life and giving one's' entire self by allowing God to love one exhaustively has always been hardest and is at the root of my writing or talking about the dangers (and temptation) of mediocrity and compromise in eremitical life. It is also at the root of moving from being justified to being made whole and truly holy or of standing in right relationship with God (being righteous) to living in union with God.  Another way of saying this is to point to the difference between praying and being made God's own prayer in our world. How much easier it is to pray at a number of set places during the day than to allow ourselves to become the word event which glorifies God at each and every moment.

Now let me be clear, or at least try to be clearer. I do not mean we are called to an obsessive kind of self-consciousness in which we become incapable of spontaneity or joy. Just the opposite is the case. I mean merely that the tendency to compartmentalize (or individualize) our lives and to see them in terms of the things we do ourselves and the things God does, or the things we do ourselves and the things we do through and with the power of God, is very easy for us. (It is also a symptom of our sinful state of estrangement and alienation.) Much harder to hold onto is an awareness that everything we do or are is meant to be done through, with, and in God. It is easy to think of ourselves as God's partners in this or that. Much harder to hold onto indeed is the truth that we are only human, we are only truly ourselves to the extent it is not us but Christ in us who is living this life.

One person (A. M. Allchin?)  puts it this way, "We are not individuals, we are persons!"  Living from this reality is a matter of mindfulness and real attentiveness, an awareness we can only acquiesce to, in, and through the grace of God. This truth and the process of realizing this truth in space and time is what the Eastern Church termed "theosis"; it is the result of redemption and the remaking of our minds and hearts by God but it also involves our conscious choice to live from and for this remaking. lt involves a trust in its truth, a continuing act of faith that this is really the way things are and are made to be by God's love. It depends on our allowing the true self (what Merton calls, "a spontaneity") to really be when it is more usual to live from the false self and its ingrained habits, resistance, and complacency.

The second single hardest thing is discerning the degree of active ministry I am truly called by God to do. My motives regarding doing active ministry are one of the more conflicted things I experience. Discerning when and where to do active ministry means moving through self-consciousness, to a much deeper consciousness of self-in-God and the ways in which I am called to live, and then finally, to a forgetfulness of self in Christ which empowers whatever choice needs to be made so it is truly for others. I try to live my Rule while staying open to patterns which may signal a need to change that occasionally or make something within it more concrete. I also try to accommodate those ways in which I am asked or may feel called to serve which are important both to those to whom I minister actively and to the enrichment and deepening of my eremitical life. All one can do is to continue choosing what is truly worthy of oneself and one's calling, to do so in God, and thus hone or purify that process with each and every choice.

You may have been expecting an answer about more concrete things that are difficult for me. If that's the case then yes, please do ask any specific questions that have been raised for you. I'll do my best to respond.

On the Question of Selfishness versus Hiddenness lived for Others

[[ Sister Laurel, are you saying it is unnecessary to use our gifts? Aren't hermits called to use their gifts? Also, how can one tell the difference between selfishness and the generous hiddenness of the hermit?]]

Thanks for your questions. I have been straining to speak of what is primary or most foundational in the hermit's life, what, above all, they witness to for the sake of others. To do this I have had to point to one dimension of the life --- although I think it is most basic, namely, that the hermit in her poverty and emptiness is called to live the relationship with God which is actually at the heart of every genuine act of ministry. Below all the gifts we are given to develop and use stands this relationship; it is, in fact, the very essence of what it means to be human. We ARE this relationship, this covenant with God, or we are simply not human. The hermit commits herself to a life of prayer, to the realization or perfection of this relationship. When we speak of human wholeness or holiness we are speaking of this fundamental covenantal relationship and its fullness and sufficiency in this person's life.

Of course we are called to use our gifts. I believe we will do that effectively to the extent this relationship with God is really the heart of our lives. Otherwise our "ministry" will be an expression of self-assertion instead of the mission of God. But there are few vocations in the Church which point to this truth in quite the same way as that of contemplatives and especially hermits and recluses. Our lives speak to the primacy of our relationship with God. They especially do that if we are made more fully human in the silence of solitude, if, in fact, we come to greater wholeness, greater capacity to love not only God but ourselves and others.

To sit in prayer is a gift of self to God and it is really something we do for the sake of others (first God, then all human beings). It means giving one's time, energy, attention, hopes, dreams, questions and desires to God so that God might have our lives as a dedicated place of personal presence. To sit in prayer extends the Kingdom of God in our world in ways which transcend our own small lives. It can mean foregoing more obvious gifts of self to others in order 1) to worship the God who deserves our entire attention, and 2) to at least raise the God/Meaning question in others' minds in a way which affirms we truly believe the inescapable love of God is the foundation of and impulse behind everything --- including every gift, ministry, and service we do for others. If we live our lives well then they may effectively invite others to entrust themselves to God similarly --- whatever the individual vocation.

On the Distinction Between Selfishness and Generous Hiddenness:

How do we tell the difference between selfishness and a hiddenness which is lived for others? One fundamental way is by the hermit's living of the Rule she has written and the Church has approved canonically. It is important to understand that a Rule is approved with the sincere expectation and hope that it will lead to the generous living of an authentically eremitical life under canon 603. Canonists look at proposed Rules with an eye to their canonical soundness but bishops look at a hermit's Rule for the sense that it is a sound expression of gospel life lived in the silence of solitude. It is a document that reflects a sense of the life defined in the canon as well as the individual hermit's own unique way of embodying that. Moreover, when a Rule is approved the hope it will serve in the anticipated way is often explicitly mentioned in the Bishop's formal document of approval. One of the reasons Rules are rewritten occasionally is to be sure they really serve the hermit in her authentic living of an eremitical life which truly honors the vocation (including the public rights and obligations) the Church has extended to this person.

Perseverance in prayer in solitude even when there is no palpable return on this, persevering in the daily life of a hermit when it is tedious, when the temptation to "go and do" argues loudly in one's head and heart, when one questions why one should persevere in such solitude when so many people are hungry in so many ways requires the empowerment of God. For this reason, so long as other the signs we speak of here are also present, faithfulness to one's Rule is a real sign that one is dealing with a divine vocation. By definition a divine vocation means it is lived for others even when  the hermit herself cannot see clearly HOW this can be so. (When we truly live for God our life will be lived for others as well because God is, by definition, the One "for others".) Again, in the case of canonical hermits the church herself vets and supervises the vocation to be certain that this sign and the others as well are truly present in this person's life. In fact, this is part of the initial discernment of the vocation. Absence of this sign of perseverance "for the sake of God and others" is reason for not admitting the person to public profession and consecration as a diocesan hermit. The bottom line is that the first sign of a hiddenness lived for others rather than as a form of self-centered indulgence or mere individualism is fidelity to one's approved Rule (which includes the hermit's horarium).

A second sign of a hiddenness which is lived for others is that the silence of solitude really leads to a more generous, more loving person who is more fully alive and more truly a mediator of the presence of God than was the case in a different context. I think it is easy to find so-called hermits whose lives and language have a coating of piety but who, in general, are unhappy, misanthropic, unfulfilled, and selfish. It is not enough to persevere in fidelity to one's Rule if there is no joy, no more abundant life, no signs of genuine growth and increasing personal and spiritual maturity. Faithfulness to one's Rule is important, even foundational,  but it must produce characteristic fruit in the hermit's life or it is much more likely we are dealing with a distorted and crippled individualism disguised as faithfulness and perseverance.

A third sign that we are not dealing with selfishness is the well-grounded conviction that this person is living this life so that they may witness to the God who meets our emptiness with his fullness.The life leading to this conviction has a number of faces, some more distinct than others, some less developed or explicit. In general though it has two aspects which are central to the hermit's lived commitment: 1) the sense that God can only be God in our world if we are obedient (open and responsive) to God's call; 2) the sense that we can only give what God empowers us to give which requires both prayer and penance (together these lead to an, emptying in preparation for, an opening to, and also a filling with the dynamic power of God). This lived commitment may include an experience of profound emptiness and stripping by the circumstances of life which God makes sense and use of --- not because God wills or "causes these circumstances", but because God transfigures them with his presence. This is certainly the message of the Cross with Jesus' descent into hell and subsequent bodily resurrection.

For the person of faith, suffering leads to obedience not because it breaks us down and makes us do the will of God rather than our own, but because it opens us to the profoundest weakness, incapacity, and emptiness and therefore, to the most fundamental and neuralgic questions of meaning. Suffering opens us to the "answer" we know as God. When we are empty and incomplete we can be open to being filled and completed by the One who bears witness to Himself within us. We cannot actually be open to being completed by God if we already know ourselves as complete, nor to the answer God is if we refuse to pose the question of our own existence in as radical a way as is possible. I see hermits, therefore, as people who pose the question(s) of God and meaning as radically as possible.

This also leads us to a sense that our very emptiness and the things which cause them open us to the greatest gift others need as well. We must come to know our own pain and need as a miniscule fraction of the pain and need of a suffering world and thus we know that our own consolation and redemption point to something the world needs. Our lives, redeemed and transfigured, empty perhaps of usable gifts, strength, worldly wisdom or expertise, and the opportunities to use these as apostolic religious do, reveal the God who freely completes and empowers us nonetheless --- if we will only entrust our lives to him.

The focus here, however, is God. If the hermit or hermit candidate focuses instead on her own suffering, her own pain and yearning for meaning, or if she begins instead to distract herself from these and thus from the God who reveals Godself in such circumstances, she has shifted from the authentic dynamic of the eremitical life and substituted an ungenerous self centeredness in its place. I should note that this is the primary reason essential healing and personal work needs to be done before one retires to solitude. It is also a central reason this vocation is recognized as a second-half-of-life vocation. One needs to have experienced the kinds of stripping and maturing that ordinarily occur in adulthood --- and especially in the demands of life with others --- to become open to God in the radical way eremitical life represents. One then needs to learn over time in solitude to truly turn to God, truly open to God in ways which allow his ever fuller indwelling and one's own transfiguration.

The fact is that there are some hermits whose lives do not immediately reflect one or the other of these aspects of the dynamic outlined. Some have not been stripped by the circumstances of life; generally, these hermits will open to God more slowly as the rigor of the life with its tedium and routine do as they are meant. But there are others who have been stripped of many things by the exigencies of life but, for instance, whose spirituality does not allow them to really open to the transfiguring presence of God. They may, for instance, resent and grieve the various forms of stripping and emptying life has required or occasioned but never commit to or undertake the work associated with healing these. When this is true such persons find it difficult indeed to open (or let God open them) to the even greater stripping and self-emptying involved in giving their whole selves over to God. In such situations the "hermitage" is a refuge from change and "the world out there" while in truth the hermit carries "the world" she is meant to separate herself from so deeply in her heart that genuine transfiguration becomes nearly impossible. Because of its pious veneer and the self-delusion at its core such a life can actually become an instance of the sin against the Holy Spirit rather than an authentic eremitical LIFE which is more and more wholly given over to that Spirit --- and thus lived for others.

A Postscript on the place of canonical standing in regard to your question:

To reiterate, the Church is responsible for publicly professing hermits who live lives of generous hiddenness, not lives of selfish indulgence and individualism. This is because truly generous eremitical lives serve God and others precisely in their profound emptinesses and stripping --- when God is allowed to meet these with his fullness. There is, for the hermit, no middle ground here I think. Either one commits to live for God and those precious to God by one's openness to being redeemed and transfigured or one fails to do so. For instance,  there is little or no apostolic ministry to attenuate the starkness of the choice here. Nor does one retire from being a hermit whose entire life poses (and is given over to posing) this fundamental choice as radically as possible. Canonical standing not only attests to the authenticity of the vocation but the graced state (the consecrated state of life), the relationships (legitimate superiors, diocesan stability, etc), and the public accountability such standing both indicates and helps insure but it supports one in living this out exhaustively with and for the whole of one's life.  Again, canonical standing in this matter serves love on a number of levels.

On Maintaining the Distinction between Utility and Value

[[Dear Sister, do you consider yourself "useless"? I read a post by a privately professed hermit who speaks of her own life that way. She believes that "doing is useful" and "being is useless." She also divides things into "good useless" and "bad useless." I am not sure I understand what she is getting at. What you wrote about "prayer warriors" and using prayer as a worldly "productive" tool reminded me of this hermit's posts and what I thought she might be saying. I wondered if you consider prayer useless or if you think of yourself that way?]]

No, I don't think of either myself or my life and vocation in those terms. I know both monastics and hermits who do use the term "useless" in a metaphorical or hyperbolic way to make the point that our lives are of value in a completely countercultural way, but when discussing the matter they are therefore capable of and are usually careful to achieve much greater nuance I think. Perhaps the references to good and bad uselessness as well as the distinction between being and doing is this hermit's way of trying to nuance her usage in this matter. In the sense that my life is not particularly utilitarian and cannot be used by anyone to support capitalism, consumerism, or any number of other "isms" for instance it is literally "useless." However, to the degree it is one of the most valuable ways of living, one of the most vividly countercultural, and one of the most hopeful for those who are isolated because of illness, bereavement, or other circumstances which marginalize or make relatively "unproductive," it is both prophetic and extremely "useful" in today's world --- though not in this world's ordinary or defining terms.

I have written about this before. One of the posts is the following:  Why Isn't your Vocation Selfishness Personified? I encourage you to check it out and if it leaves you with questions or raises more for you please do get back to me. With regard to prayer per se, no, of course I don't believe prayer is useless, but I would tend not to see it in merely or even primarily utilitarian terms. When we pray we allow God to shape and heal us, to call and commission us in all the ways God desires --- and thus too, in the ways our world really needs. Prayer is the primary way in which we become God's own persons, persons who love and speak and act as God would speak in our broken world. Even more strongly put, prayer is the way we become mediators of God's life and activity in this world. There is nothing "useless" in that but at the same time neither is prayer merely some tool we pull out of our utility drawer in order to shape and modify things (including God!) to our own specifications.

One thing I probably should comment on here is the motivation behind speaking of either prayer or eremitical life in these terms. If one really feels one's life is a waste of some sort, if one struggles with chronic illness for instance and is left feeling that her gifts are unused and her life is defined in terms of neediness while being unable to give back, then that person has to be extremely careful in the way she hears and adopts this language of "uselessness." No true monastic or eremite believes her life is valueless or worthless; instead she knows it is of infinite value -- and more, that her life is mysterious in the same way God is mysterious. She lives that life as graced and empowered response to the call of God. Even if she cannot immediately see the value of it she will trust that it is of immense value and contributes to God's overarching creation narrative.

There is no need to even see prayer or eremitic life as "useful". Because they are responses to and mediators of God's presence in our world they need no justification at all. Still, they ARE of value in our world and are gifts to it in ways and to an extent many other things are not. When a hermit like Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, speaks of the eremitical life needing no justification he is not in disagreement with me when I stress the charism of the eremitical life for the isolated and marginalized. Instead we are speaking of two different dimensions of our lives, the first that of utility and the second that of value. (We may also both be distinguishing between treating something as utilitarian and secondarily recognizing its usefulness.) In any case, the distinction between usefulness and value is a critical distinction in our world, a distinction we must always be careful to maintain, because to confuse these two realities is at the heart of so much destruction that occurs so routinely today.

When we treat persons in terms of mere utility we often lose sight of their true value and become guilty of dehumanization (including our own by the way) and even murder --- in all the ways that can occur. This is especially a problem in societies which are capitalistic and stress consumerism, productivity, etc, but it can also happen in forms of ministry or piety when people are treated as "assignments" or "problems to solve" and their essential sacredness and mystery are forgotten in the process. The same is true when we approach those we would call "friends" in terms of our own needs and it is often true in the exploitative and utilitarian way we often approach God's creation in general. Further, when we treat tools as having some kind of ultimate value (including technology of all sorts!) then we have crossed the line into idolatry and will also find we have become incapable of seeing the world in terms of more transcendent (and fundamental) value.

When Genesis reveals mankind as stewards of creation this reveals us as those within Creation who maintain a true sense of the distinction between mere utility and true value. More, I think it reveals human beings as those who subordinate utility to value and in so doing set an example of both sacrifice and selflessness. A culture geared to utility at the expense of value is, or will inevitably become, a compassionless culture of death. One that maintains the distinction between utility and value and the priority of the latter will be and remain a compassionate culture of life and light.

Radical Individualism vs Eremitical Life

[[Dear Sister Laurel, what is the difference between a radical individualist and a hermit according to Catholic teaching?]]

This is a question I have touched on many times in various posts, but not a direct question I have ever received before this. There are several posts which deal with the question  but see especially Why isn't Your Vocation Selfishness Personified?  and Eremitism or Exaggerated Individualism?  The essential answer to your question is found in the canon governing this life. This would constitute "Church teaching" in the sense your question means it. It reads ". . .[this vocation is lived] for the praise of God and the salvation of the world." 

There are many reasons for embracing solitude and all of them may benefit the one doing the embracing. Some of them are mainly or primarily meant for this and others are ONLY embraced for this reason. The vocation of the diocesan hermit (and any hermit living his or her life in the Name of the Church) differs in that it is, by definition, lived for the sake of others, first of all God, then others, and only then oneself. The hermit witnesses to a life lived with God as THE covenant partner; she witnesses to the completion or redemption of a covenantal life lived in and with God and she does so so that God might one day be all in all and others, especially those who might have been isolated by the circumstances of life, may be given hope for the redemption and transformation of these same lives. 

As I have noted before there is a great difference in living in a way which suits one (for instance, because one is a writer, an artist, or even someone gifted in religious experience, as well as for more negative reasons --- failure in relationships, chronic illness, inability to live in a complex contemporary world, etc) and living in a way which suits one BECAUSE it is a way of loving and serving God and others. Hermits embrace a desert vocation for this latter reason; the former reason (it suits her) is never enough to shape one's life or justify calling oneself a hermit in the Church's sense of this term; for that reason the Church does not tend to profess and consecrate people for such inadequate reasons.

On Spiritual priorities and the Lord's Prayer

Today's Gospel included Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer. It forms a kind of climax to texts we have been hearing and reflecting on over the past week or so, the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew's focus on a genuinely spiritual life lived in, from, and for Christ. Yesterday's Gospel included the admonition that we go to our room in secret to pray in secret, and also that our right hand not let our left hand know what it is up to. The idea was that genuine spirituality is forgetful of self, that it "gets out of the way" and lays aside self-consciousness. Today, Jesus (via Matt) provides a model of prayer in which a way to do that is demonstrated. It is a model of prayer in which we concern ourselves first and last with God's own needs, and with being there FOR HIM!

In the first three petitions (and the invocation too, though that is a topic for another time!) we concern ourselves with God's very self (holiness and name refer to God's own self, not to mere characteristics or tags); we ask that he might be powerfully present in our world (because both name and the hallowing he is refer to a powerful presence which creates and recreates whatever it is allowed to touch and consecrate). With the second petition especially, we open ourselves to his sovereignty, that is, to his very selfhood and life as it is shared with his creation. God assumes a position of sovereignty over that creation when his life is truly shared and that creation achieves genuine freedom in the process, but the reign or kingdom of God refers to God's own life once again --- this time as a covenantal or mutual reality. And, with the third petition in particular, we open ourselves to the will of God --- to the future and shape of a reality which is ordered by his sovereignty and fulfilled by his presence.

Now, it is true that God possesses what is called aseity. That is, he is completely self-sufficient and in need of nothing and no one. But that is only one part of the paradox that stands at the heart of our faith. The other side of the paradox is that ours is a God who has, from the beginning, indeed, from all eternity, chosen not to remain alone. He creates all that is outside himself and he summons it (continuing the process of creation) to greater and greater levels of complexity until from within this creation comes One who will be his true counterpart and partner in creation. At bottom this is a call to share in God's very life. In fact, it is the ground of an existence which can only be fulfilled when it shares in the Divine life and God himself becomes all in all!

All of Scripture attests to this basic dynamic, whether cast in terms of creation or covenant. All of Scripture is about God's determination to share his very life with us, and his creation's capacity in the Spirit to issue forth in, or become his own unique counterpart in the fulfillment of this plan. When God's plan is fulfilled, when his very life is shared to the extent he wills, everything he creates reaches fulfillment as well, but it is the human vocation in particular to allow this to become real in space and time. And afterall, isn't this what prayer is truly all about: allowing God's plans to be realized in his creation; cooperating with his Spirit in ways which let his own life be made PERSONALLY real here and now so that EVERYTHING acquires fullness or completion (perfection) of life in God?

Unfortunately, one of the most pernicious problems I run into as a spiritual director is the occasional inability of directees to "get out of the way" of the Spirit or to "forget self" in their prayer. (Note well, I did not say "lose self", for we are not called to lose our true selves, but rather to FORGET self and to BECOME (or find) our true selves in the process!) Prayer (and it goes without saying that I am quite often guilty of this too) seems always to be about us, our problems, our sinfulness, our needs and concerns in ways which contribute to our own self-centeredness. (Let me be clear: I am NOT suggesting we neglect this side of things, but I am suggesting that there are ways to pray about these things which are NOT self-centered.) Because of this, one of the most significant questions I can ask a directee (or myself) when probing the quality of their prayer (or my own!!) is, "what kind of experience was this for God?" Ordinarily this puts a full stop to the sometimes-problematical self-centered chatter about ME in prayer and puts the focus back where Jesus clearly wants it --- on God. What today's Gospel tells us in giving us this model of prayer, is that contrary to much popular thought and practice otherwise, prayer is really the way we give or set aside our lives for another, namely, for God and his own Selfhood and destiny. And while it is absolutely true that in the process our own hearts will and SHOULD be poured out and our own needs met, prayer is first of all something we are empowered to do for God's own sake!

Thus, on this day when we celebrate the Sainthood of Romuald, and especially when we pray the Lord's Prayer -- whether in preparation to receiving Christ in the Eucharist or during Office, etc --- let us allow ourselves to truly be here for God's own needs. Let us open ourselves to his life, his purposes, and his future even while we pour out our hearts to him. Afterall, it is the very reason we were created.