On the Importance and Contemporaneity of the Eremitical Vocation (Part 2)

 [[Hi Sister Laurel, I was surprised to find your blog. To be totally honest, I thought that hermits died out a long time ago. It is not that I don't believe someone should be able to go and cut themselves off from the world of relationships if they want to. I believe everyone should be able to do whatever they want so long as no one is hurt, but why would the Catholic Church elevate something like this to the point of consecration? I am sure that most people I know would be quite surprised to find out people choose to live as hermits today, and even more surprised to hear the Catholic Church supports and even celebrates such a choice. After all, the church is about community, and a hermit's life is not, right? So my questions are about whether or not eremitical life is anachronistic. Doesn't it really belong to another time, but not to the 21st Century? Is it meaningful (is it relevant)? Does it have anything to offer the non-hermit (or those who seek to become hermits) besides an escape from everyday difficulties --- if it even does that!? Can eremitical life be justified? Should anyone (you) even try?]]

I sincerely hope the first part of this answer (Importance and Contemporaneity of Eremitical Life) was generally helpful. What I tried to do was to outline the way in which I and the hermits I know or have read regard this vocation and its general importance in the 21C, or any century really. What I would like to say more about here are the questions of this vocation's justifiability and ecclesiality, whether or not it is escapist, and in what senses that word might or definitely does not apply. I also want to say something about the notion of freedom you raise in your questions, and whether hermits cut themselves off from the world, or from the world of relationships, and in what sense those actions are true. Many of these have been addressed in other posts over the years, and I'll try to add some links where I can, but perhaps it will be helpful to write about these again within the context of your basic questions about eremitism's justifiability and contemporary relevance.

I have argued that this vocation is not only not anachronistic, that is, it doesn't only belong to past centuries in terms of relevance, but that it is an important and, in fact, a prophetic vocation for the contemporary Church and world. The Church herself recognized this when, in response to Bishop Remi de Roo's intervention at Vatican II it revised the Code of Canon Law and added canon 603, thus allowing for the first time in universal law, the vocation of the solitary hermit as an ecclesial vocation and call to the consecrated state of life. In your question, you recognized the significance of such a move on the Church's part when you asked why the Catholic Church would raise eremitical life to such a place in the Church's life. 

Bishop de Roo had been the bishop protector for about a dozen hermits in British Columbia. These men had left their various monasteries and accepted laicization after many years in solemn vows because they experienced a call to greater solitude and had to leave their monasteries to follow this call. (Let me be clear; these men were often leaders in their monasteries and were not unhappy with monastic life, their vows, monasteries, or anything of the sort. They simply had experienced a call to greater solitude, and found that this call could not be accommodated under the monastery's own (or proper) law. Eventually, they formed a laura or colony of hermits. Because Bishop de Roo knew these men, their motivations, sensibilities, theologies, and vocations, he eventually wrote an intervention at the Second Vatican Council listing the important positive reasons the church should recognize this vocation as a state of perfection. The reasons he provided in his intervention are listed in, Visibility and Betrayal and at least one earlier blog post in late 2006 or 2007. 

Canon 603 and Ecclesiality:

One way of summarizing all of this history and its meaningfulness, is to point out that c 603 governs a form of life that is ecclesial; that is, it is a form of life that is not only part of the Church's patrimony, but is part of the Church's own holiness and contributes to the Church's health, both generally and specifically in terms of her prayer life, religious life, mission, and ministry. The canonical hermit's life reminds the Church and other religious (especially those in apostolic congregations) that before active ministry there must come a profound relationship with God. It is this relationship that allows the religious man or woman to love others as they ought to be loved in the midst of apostolic ministry. It is also this specific relationship that is mediated along with any other forms of giving that the religious does. The hermit's vocation does the same for cloistered religious and reminds them of the real witness of their lives, namely, a life in community lived for the sake of God and God's place in this world. And of course, the hermit does this for the entire Church, reminding us all that God comes first and can fulfill lives that are not wealthy, powerful, or possessed of much prestige in worldly terms. As I have noted recently, while the hermit may do some limited apostolic ministry, it is the inner journey to union with God that is essential to and definitive for the vocation.

Ecclesial vocations aren't simply lived within the Church; they are also lived for the sake of the Church, that it might truly be the church Jesus calls it to be. Those hermits who accept canonical standing with public vows and consecrations mediated by the local Bishop also embrace this dimension of the eremitical vocation in a public way. Non-canonical hermits live their vocations within the church, but they do not necessarily accept this dimension we call "ecclesiality" in the same way. Canonical eremitism, of course, is not the only ecclesial vocation in the Church, but the emphasis on the inner journey made possible by assiduous prayer, penance, stricter separation from the realm that is resistant to Christ or to Truth, and by the silence of solitude, sets eremitical life somewhat apart from the others, and allows it to emphasize something the others accentuate to a lesser degree or in a different way. As noted in earlier posts, it is the inner journey that allows us to confirm that the Gospel of Jesus' resurrection and God's unconditional Love, from which nothing including sin and godless death can separate us, are real and encounterable today. This allows canonical eremitical life to serve these other vocations and the Church as a whole. When we speak about the relevance or contemporaneity of the hermit today, ecclesiality is an important way of describing this.

Eremitical Life and Freedom:

In your question, you said you believed that anyone should be free to do whatever they felt like, so long as no one was hurt in the process. I believe that is the notion of freedom many people in today's world have. Let me point out that this is not the idea of freedom Christianity understands or embodies. Instead, Christianity defines freedom as the power to be the persons God calls us to be. This, in turn, is made possible by the Holy Spirit and God's unconditional love for us. Hermits live a regular life of prayer and penance, study, lectio, and limited ministry because they live a life focused on their relationship with God and on becoming the persons God calls them to be. One of the most important witnesses the hermit gives others is the fullness of life that is possible whenever God is put first. Some who read here know that one of the persons I have contended with most often over the years is an online self-designated hermit who calls herself a victim soul and writes almost interminably about the suffering she is experiencing. I have sympathy for her, but it is my understanding of eremitical life that it is not about suffering or being what has sometimes been called a victim soul. It is about living life with God. Yes, there will be suffering, just as there is with any life in this world, but eremitism is not a life OF suffering; it is a life of joy, meaning, and fulfillment --- countercultural as each of those actually is.

Canonical hermits (and likely all authentic hermits) are truly free. They are not free to do anything they want, of course. Their lives are constrained by vows involving the main areas of life, including wealth, power, and sex, and still they live lives I recognize as fulfilled because they are full of life, love, and meaning. They live according to a daily schedule, maintaining regularity and balance. They live a stricter separation from "the world," which includes but does not primarily mean separation from much of God's good creation; and yet, they are interested in, committed to, and engaged with that world for the sake of its well-being and the furtherance of God's Kingdom, nonetheless. All of these point to a fundamental freedom the hermit has to live a life as full and meaningful as possible within the framework of a desert context. Freedom, from this perspective, is definitely not about doing whatever one likes so long as no one is hurt. It is about living a responsible freedom where one's life is not only received daily as a gift of God, but also is given daily for God's sake and the sake of all that God loves and holds as precious.

Relationships, Escapism, and Eremitical Engagement:

Most hermits are not recluses, and even recluses in the Catholic Church are only allowed to be so within the context of a loving religious community that provides for such unique vocations. (The last I heard of recluses, only the Camaldolese and the Carthusians were allowed to have recluses. The last Camaldolese recluse I know of died a number of years ago in Big Sur, while the most famous might be Nazarena, a recluse living with the Camaldolese nuns in Rome.) All human beings need to be loved and to love, and for that reason, we all need others in our lives. We hermits say that "God Alone is Enough" for us, and we mean that in two related ways. First, only God is capable of completing us as human beings. Only God is sufficient for this. We are made for God, who is the ground and source of life, love, meaning, truth, beauty, and truly personal existence. Secondly,  our openness to and need for God make us open and responsive to all that mediates God to us in the incredibly varied ways the created world and other beings do that. What this saying does NOT mean is that human beings do not need other human beings, or can become truly human in complete isolation from others. Eremitical life has never meant to affirm such a notion of human being or of the nature of eremitical solitude. 

In my writing on this blog over the past 18 years, I have always drawn a clear line between isolation and solitude. I distinguish these two because one is life-giving and the other can deal death to the human being. I am personally sensitive to the distinction between these two and associate isolation with alienation and forced separation from the community of others. Hermits are more or less physically isolated from others; eremitical solitude requires this in order to spend time with God and the inner journey to healing, wholeness, and holiness we are each called to. However, we are not usually personally isolated from others, though we may not be as social as most people or able to spend much time with the people who are important to us. We are assisted in living this solitude by the Church and her liturgical and sacramental life, by spiritual directors, pastors, members of the larger community of faith, family members, physicians, and many others. I include among this significant group of people, especially other religious, and members of the virtual laura I am part of, as well as those I do spiritual direction with. It is not that I interact with these people every day or even every week or month of my life, but they are all a significant presence, and each one helps to focus my life on the defining relationship with God that makes me who I am and who I am called to be.

You suggested not only that a hermit's life is cut off from the world of relationships, but that it is not about community. I would argue that it is about community, though it is lived in eremitical solitude. In fact, I would argue (and have often done that here) that eremitical solitude is a rare and unique form of community dedicated to building the human family and the community of faith from the most important and original relationship extant, namely, that between the human being with the rest of creation and God. As for escape from everyday difficulties, there is no way c 603 life allows for or encourages that. The (canonical) hermit is self-supporting, publicly responsible, committed to the Church and society, and engaged on their behalf. She lives with the same limitations any other person does and perhaps a few more besides. What is most important to remember about this vocation is that it is identified by the Camaldolese in terms of the Privilege of Love. Indeed, I am not going to run for political office or travel to (or even stay home to do) a job forty hours or more a week, but, because I am called to stricter separation from "the world" in the specialized way c 603 uses that term**, it also means I am committed to God's will for the whole of this larger world. Thus, I stay updated on current events, work to ensure my education remains up to date, and I engage in whatever ways I can within the limits of my state of life to make our world all that God calls it to be.

So, this is the second part of my answer to your question. I hope it clarifies some things and raises more questions for the future. As always, if I have been unclear, please feel free to get back to me with comments and questions. Again, thanks for your questions. I enjoyed thinking about them freshly. I will post this before adding the additional links, so in the meantime, you can look at the list of topics on the right-hand column of the blog for additional information. All my best.

** The Church recognizes that "the world" in the c 603 phrase, stricter separation from the world, refers to that which is resistant to Christ, and not first of all to the larger world we identify with God's good creation. As a result, while the hermit is thus more strictly separated from aspects even of God's good creation, she is also well able to engage with and on behalf of that world within the limits of her state of life.

Henri Nouwen on Loneliness

One of the most important dimensions of my own life is the transformation of isolation into genuine solitude. I do not understand solitude simply as being alone, but rather in terms of being alone with God, and therefore, through bonds of love, with all of those others God holds as precious. I believe that when Nouwen speaks of loneliness he is speaking of the experience of isolation and the transformation of this into solitude, it sounds very like the experience that stands behind what I write and understand about the silence of solitude of my own eremitical life and c 603 itself. 

Especially important for hermits, I believe, is the way Nouwen's understanding of the effects of trying to escape loneliness versus living it in the very concrete and exhaustive ways he describes leads to the redemption of that loneliness that transforms it into solitude. When folks write about the Desert Fathers and Mothers, they often note a point when the lone desert dweller's escape from urban and societal chaos and violence becomes instead, a search for something higher and greater, a search for God and the true self. I believe we are looking at the same moment as it comes to each of us whether through isolation, loneliness, or alienation; when transformed by the grace of God, we find ourselves and God (and eventually also the "other") as we come to know what c 603 calls the silence of solitude. 

I hope you enjoy this brief interview with Henri Nouwen on the notion of becoming a Wounded Healer.

To Be What One is Called to Be --- and to Become That Ever More Deeply

[[ Dear Sister Laurel, you wrote, [[It is this core identity that makes one a hermit, not the canonical designation per se. In other words, Canon 603 alone does not make one a hermit; it makes the hermit that one already is a canonical (consecrated solitary) hermit.]] You were writing about a situation in which someone described themselves as "sort of a monk/missionary" but not as a hermit. Is it possible to be professed under canon 603 and never genuinely become the hermit one is supposed to be? Does this happen very often? Do dioceses take care to be sure the persons they profess are hermits before profession? Is it important that they not make this mistake?]]

Good questions, but not ones I can mainly answer! It is possible to be professed under c 603 without ever truly becoming a hermit, yes (though of course this ought not be possible). Sometimes individuals seek to be professed under c 603 and known in this way but they have not, and may never, grow into the hermit they are called to become, yes. In the piece you are referring to I was writing about a priest who had had problems with his bishop (and vice versa) who sought to be established under c 603 and thus, freed from some of the constraints of his priesthood and for greater ability to follow his own values and vision of the way things ought to be. He recognized himself as "sort of a monk/missionary" but (rightly I think) could not call himself a hermit. And yet, he had sought to be professed under c 603. 

Canon 603 has sometimes been used by individuals to become religious without the constraints, challenges, or responsibilities of life in community. I think this motivation is usually kept fairly well-hidden, or at least not expressed to diocesan personnel. Dioceses have allowed this (that is, they have failed to uncover this motive in discernment) because 1) they themselves didn't know what a hermit is or, especially, what a solitary hermit is or how they are formed, and 2) they failed to see how it would matter if they professed a non-hermit. Mistakes are made for other reasons as well, even when the individual petitioning for admission to profession is sincere and well-motivated -- which happens when the person has a religious vocation but not an eremitical one. (The Episcopal Church allows for solitary religious who need not be or become hermits; the Roman Catholic Church does not.)

It is important that the church as well as candidates for profession under c 603 not make this mistake even as it becomes easier to make it, I think. Today's culture is highly individualistic, whereas paradoxically, eremitical life is not. Moreover, there is a strong current of what has come to be called "cocooning" which does not rise to the level of eremitical life, or the silence of solitude demanded by canon 603. It is more than possible for a person (and for diocesan personnel) to mistake these phenomena for the external characteristics of an eremitical vocation when they are actually contrary to such a life. There are external similarities between individualism and cocooning with stricter separation from the world and the silence of solitude, of course, but at their heart they are vastly different realities. Significantly, the characteristics of c 603 mentioned are at once solitary while being essentially communal and are meant to be rooted in and to support life in communion with God, with/in God's Church, and too, with God's good creation.

It is especially important that dioceses profess actual hermits who have embraced the values of c. 603 and show evidence of being committed to living into these ever more deeply so that c 603 does not become a cuckoo's nest where a different form of life is slipped into the heart of the Church's vocation to consecrated eremitical life. As with the life of a cuckoo's egg raised in another bird's nest amongst other hatchlings, this will be destructive of the solitary eremitical vocation itself and will render it incredible to the faithful seeking to understand and honor such vocations. Canon 603 is almost 40 years old at this time and we have only begun living down the destructive stereotypes associated with eremitical life; we must not, insofar as we are truly able, use it for anything but genuine hermits. 

It becomes particularly critical that c 603 life always be genuinely eremitical for those whose aloneness requires hope that their isolation can be transformed into deep communion lest they fall into despair. As I've said before, for those who must live alone for various reasons, but who are not called to be canonical hermits (or hermits of any sort for that matter), eremitical life can witness to the completion and joy that can come with a uniquely solitary expression of community; this is made less and less possible when dioceses profess non-hermits who may never actually become hermits at all --- and, despite having been professed and consecrated, may never discover (much less witness to) the deep consolation of such a vocation because they are not truly called to it.

In the "Bishop's Decree of Approval" for my Rule of life, the decree reads [[I pray that this Rule of Life proves advantageous in living the eremitical life.]] I appreciate my own diocese's humility in recognizing they had done the best that they could in discerning my vocation with me, and that my Rule might not truly prove advantageous to living eremitical life. Mistakes are possible, but it is important that these be minimized and if possible, that they not be made at all, especially given the importance of eremitical witness to God as the One who completes us in a culture that mistakes individualism for individuality and cocooning for eremitical life in the community the hermit experiences as eremitical solitude.

A Contemplative Moment: Solitude is not Separation

 

Solitude is Not Separation

by

Thomas Merton

  

Some (persons) have become hermits with the thought that sanctity could only be attained by escape from other (persons). But the only justification for a life of deliberate solitude is the conviction that it will help you to love not only God but other (people). If you go into the desert merely to get away from people you dislike, you will find neither peace nor solitude; you will only isolate yourself with a tribe of devils.

 

Man seeks unity because he is the image of the One God. Unity implies solitude, and hence the need to be physically alone. But unity and solitude are not metaphysical isolation. He who isolates himself in order to enjoy a kind of independence in his egotistic and external self does not find unity at all, for he disintegrates into a multiplicity  of conflicting passions and finally ends in confusion and total unreality. Solitude is not and can never be a narcissistic dialogue of the ego with itself. Such self-contemplation is a futile attempt to establish the finite self as infinite, to make it permanently independent of all other beings. And this is madness. Note, however that it is not a madness peculiar to solitaries --- it is much more common to those who try to assert their own unique excellence by dominating others. this is the more usual sin.

 

. . .True solitude is the home of the person, false solitude the refuge of the individualist. The person is constituted by a uniquely subsisting capacity to love --- by a radical ability to care for all beings made by God and loved by Him. Such a capacity is destroyed by the loss of perspective. . . Go into the desert not to escape other (people) but in order to find them in God.

 

. . .There is no true solitude except interior solitude. And interior solitude is not possible for anyone who does not accept (her) right place in relation to other(s). There is no true peace possible for the (one) who still imagines that some accident of talent or grace or virtue segregates (her) from other(s) and places (her) above them. Solitude is not separation. God does not give us graces or talents or virtues for ourselves alone. We are members one of another and everything that is given to one member is given for the whole body. I do not wash my feet to make them more beautiful than my face.

[I write a lot here about the difference between solitude and isolation, eremitism and individualism, and these are a couple of the things I am asked about most frequently --- especially as folks discern the distinction between being a hermit and being a lone or solitary individual -- no matter how pious. Similar questions are posed on the idea of eremitical hiddenness and the distinction between that and anonymity and disengagement. Thomas Merton speaks to all of these ideas. He wrote about Solitude in Seeds of Contemplation but in New Seeds of Contemplation he wrote a new essay called "Solitude is not Separation". The differences between the two are striking; while complementary essays, they show such incredible shifts and development in his understanding and experience of eremitical solitude! The above post consists of excerpts from that second essay.]