A Contemplative Moment: Everything that is, is Holy

 

"Everything that is, is Holy"

by Thomas Merton

Seeds of Contemplation

It is not true that all the Saints and the great contemplatives never noticed created things, and had no understanding or appreciation of the world and its sights and sounds and the people living in it.

Do you think that their love of God was compatible with a hatred of things that reflected Him and spoke of Him on every side?

You will say that they were supposed to be absorbed in God, and they had no eyes to see anything but Him. Do you think they walked around with faces like stones and did not listen to the voices of men speaking to them, or understand the joys and sorrows of those who were around them? Then you do not know what a contemplative is.

It was because the Saints were absorbed in God that they were truly capable of seeing and appreciating created things, and it was because they loved him alone that they alone loved everybody.

Do you think that a saint has to excuse his interest in created things by tripping himself up in his language and introducing a lot of uselessly explicit references to God whenever he talks or thinks about the world and what is in it? A saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit references to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love for God that the observations of someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an arbitrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so stupid they make you think there is something the matter with religion.

And the reason for the difference is that the saint knows the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don't bother about the question one way or the other because they are only interested in themselves.

The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy, and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and is scandalized at no man's sin because he does not know sin. He knows nothing but the love and the mercy of God, and he is on earth to bring that love and that mercy to all men. . . .

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own self-hood. (I do not say the body, because the body is God's temple and therefore it is holy), and enter by love into union with the Life Who Dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. In His love, we possess all things and enjoy the fruition of them, finding Him in them all. And thus, as we go about the world, everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, purifies us and plants in us something more of contemplation and of heaven.

Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" with Heather Cox Richardson at Tanglewood

One of my favorite sources for historical and contemporary commentary and analysis is Heather Cox Richardson. In this Tanglewood concert, Richardson narrates Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait. Given the current circumstances in which this country finds itself, I have never heard this done so powerfully or effectively, not least because I know what passions Richardson holds in her own mind and heart regarding the importance of our democracy and the dangers that threaten it today. Be inspired by this brief but truly significant performance!

Solemnity of Mary's Assumption: Heaven is Not Only a Spiritual Reality!! (Partial reprise)

During last Summer, the Scripture class I did for St P's was reading NT Wright's Surprised by Hope. On this day, we began chapter 7, which begins with a discussion of the Ascension and especially, the importance of believing the ascension of Jesus is a separate event from his resurrection. One of the things Wright wants to get across is that with Jesus' ascension, humanity (embodied, glorified humanity) assumes a place in the Divine "space" or life. If there was no ascension or if ascension and resurrection are collapsed into a single event, among other problems, we might be able to think of heaven as a purely spiritual reality for disembodied human beings, but in light of Jesus' ascension, we must affirm that heaven looks a lot different than most of us were taught and that is a pretty big surprise for many! It is a place where God takes glorified, embodied humanity into his own life or "space", another step towards the day when God will dwell with us in a new heaven and a new earth where God is all in all.

Wright says: [[The idea of the human Jesus now being in heaven, in his thoroughly embodied risen state, comes as a shock to many people, including many Christians. Sometimes this is because many people think Jesus, having been divine, stopped being divine and became human for a while, stopped being human and went back to being divine. . . More often it's because our culture is so used to the Platonic idea that heaven is by definition a place of "spiritual," nonmaterial reality so that the idea of a solid body being not only present but also thoroughly at home there seems like a category mistake. The ascension invites us to rethink all this; after all, why did we suppose we knew what heaven was? . . Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture. This applies in particular to the idea of Jesus being in charge not only in heaven but also on earth, not only in some ultimate future but also in the present.]]

I had prepared this chapter earlier in the week and that included rereading Chapter 6 in preparation, which uses a number of Scriptural references and images dealing with what God wills for the world, namely, that one day heaven and earth would become one realm where God is all in all. We humans will have glorified bodies, just as Jesus does now, and the whole Cosmos will be recreated with Jesus as the first fruits of this new life. I was not, however, thinking of today's Feast or the importance of a theology of Mary's bodily assumption. However, when I prepared for today's Feast, it became clear that this dogma supports and underscores the early Church's conviction that heaven is not about disembodied beings and an entirely spiritual reality in this Platonic sense. It is about embodied glorified persons who have assumed a place in the very life or "space" of God and are both absent from us and our world as it is, and also present to and for us in a new way!

This was a new way of thinking about Mary's assumption for me --- though it certainly seems pretty obvious now. I love that it underscores this "new" (and very early Christian) way of conceiving heaven and the future of the cosmos. I also appreciate how getting the ascension right rules out any misguided attempts to make of Mary a mediatrix, even as it allows her to be honored appropriately. This is also a point Wright makes as he discusses the consequences of getting the ascension right.** It was also an incredibly timely Feast for me because of recent encounters I have had with Gnosticism and those who are seemingly allergic to the goodness and sanctity of the material and spatio-temporal world. I am posting this not only because I am presently spending time on this theology, but also because I wanted to celebrate this aspect of today's solemnity as a gift of God I had simply not expected or seen coming.

(August 15, 2025) What does it mean to be without sin? It seems to me that one of the things it means is that the sinless one is authentically human and in touch with all parts of her being without obstacles or distortions. That includes, of course, one's bodiliness. Moreover, I believe it means being fully aware of and comfortable with the fact that our bodiliness is the primary way we mediate God's presence to others in our world. It is the primary way we express our spiritual nature in so many creative and concrete ways. (The act of sexual love, though often trivialized and distorted, is one of these, of course.) When Aquinas wrote about the soul, he identified it as the form of the body (the body is not the form of a formless soul). When Pope Benedict XVI wrote about this, he discussed the way a soul "builds a body" about itself. The body is not a mere and passive container for the soul, something to be dismissed and discarded at death. The relationship between the two is much more dynamic and integral than that!! When I think about this relationship, the word that comes to mind is "sacramentalizing".  Our souls (and so, the very breath of God) are "sacramentalized" through the action of embodiment.

When I was working on an MA in Theology (@1974), I had a Summer class on Grace with John Dwyer and Kenan Osborne, a Franciscan theologian. One day, Kenan picked up a straight chair and clamped it tightly next to his side. He then strode back and forth across the front of the classroom, and up and down some rows of desks, saying repeatedly, "I don't just HAVE a body; I AM MY Body!!!" I have no idea what the lesson of that day's class was, nor whether I understood much of it at that time, but I never forgot Kenan doing this, and it is one of those things that comes back to me from time to time illustrating some puzzling piece of theological reading I am doing, or some enigmatic bit of this Feast or that one. Today, along with Kenan's teachings on Sacraments, this memory is strong in me as I reflect on Mary's Assumption and the way our bodies sacramentalize the very breath of God in our world.

In the past weeks, I have been working around my hermitage to discard so much "stuff" I no longer need. Papers, books, etc., just so much stuff that is now in the way of the work I feel called by God to do. I have been busy building (i.e., assembling) furniture (mainly filing cabinets and shelving units, but also a ladder for my library), and have been freshly surprised by just how much I enjoy such work. At the same time, I have had to face the way age is slowing me down, or illness has weakened me.  Yet, there is an underlying joy in all of this "bodiliness", all of this "negotiating space and time" in light of the eternity of God's love!! 

It is all profoundly spiritual, even something as mundane as finding the right (and affordable!!!) hardware to secure a library ladder to shelving or drilling holes, driving screws, etc. because God is with me and delighting in the project and processes involved --- not just the creative work it involves or prepares for, but the aging, the chagrin (I accumulated SO much "stuff!!), the laughter (personal conversion occasions a lot of humor and even some appropriate laughing at oneself!!), the wisdom that comes in the midst of it all, and the celebration of life with God in all its spatio-temporal aspects!! In a sense, all of this work is the natural outpouring of a soul that builds a body around itself in so many ways, including not only our physical bodies, but a home, a body of writing or other work, a series of relationships, and so forth.

The Feast of Mary's Assumption has become an important one for me in ways I could never have anticipated. The celebration of bodiliness and its underscoring of the way God creates room for us within Himself, not as disembodied persons or souls, but as those who ARE, by definition, embodied in every way! All good wishes to you all on this amazing Feast!

** Wright's work here is dependent on Douglas Farrow's,  Ascension and Ecclesia, On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology. (Cf, especially pp152ff) My sense of Farrow's work is very positive; this is a usual "go to" work for anyone reflecting on the Ascension.

Feast of St Maximillian Kolbe (Reprised)

Today is the feast day of Maximillian Kolbe who died on this day in Auschwitz after two months there, and two weeks in the bunker of death-by-starvation. Kolbe had offered to take the place of a prisoner selected for starvation in reprisal when another prisoner was found missing and thought to have escaped. The Kommandant, taken aback by Kolbe's dignity, and perhaps by the unprecedented humanity being shown, stepped back and then granted the request. Father Maximillian sustained his fellow prisoners and assisted them in their dying. He was one of four remaining prisoners who were murdered in Block 13 (see illustration below) by an injection of Carbolic Acid when the Nazi's deemed their death by starvation was taking too long. When the bunker was visited by a secretary-interpreter immediately after the injections, he found the three other prisoners lying on the ground, begrimed and showing the ravages of the suffering they had undergone. Maximillian Kolbe sat against the wall, his face serene and radiant. Unlike the others he was clean and bright.

The stories told about Maximillian Kolbe's presence and influence in Aushwitz all stress a couple of things: first, there was his great love of God, Mary the Imaculata, and his fellow man; secondly, it focused on the tremendous humanity he lived out and modelled in the midst of a hell designed in every detail to dehumanize and degrade. These two things are intimately interrelated of course, and they give us a picture of authentic holiness which, extraordinary as it might have seemed in Auschwitz, is nothing less and nothing more than the vocation we are each called to in Christ. Together, these two dimensions of true holiness/authentic humanity result in "a life lived for others," as a gift to them in many ways -- self-sacrifice, generosity, kindness, courage, fidelity, etc. In particular, in Auschwitz it was Maximillian's profound and abiding humanity which allowed others to remember, reclaim, and live out their own humanity in the face of the Nazi's dehumanizing machine. No greater gift could have been imagined in such a hell.

It is easy to forget this fundamental vocation, or at least underestimate its value and challenge. We sometimes think our humanity is a given, an accomplished fact rather than a task and call to be achieved via attentive responsiveness to God. We also may think that it is possible to be truly human in solitary splendor. But our humanity is our essential vocation and it is something we only achieve in relation to God, his call, his mercy and love, his companionship --- and his people! (And this is as true for hermits and recluses as it is true for anyone else.) Likewise, we may think of vocation as a call to religious life, priesthood, marriage, singleness, eremitism, etc, but always, these are "merely" the paths towards achieving our foundational vocation to authentic humanity. Of course, it is not that we do not need excellent priests, religious, husbands and wives, parents, and so forth, but what is more true is that we need excellent human beings --- people who take the call and challenge to be genuinely human with absolute seriousness and faithfulness.

Today's gospel confronts us with a person who failed at that vocation. With extended mercy and the complete forgiveness of an unpayable debt, this servant went out into his world and failed to extend even a fraction of the same mercy to one of his fellows. He was selfish, ungrateful, and unmindful of who he was in terms of his Master or the generosity which had been shown him. He failed to remain in touch with that mercy and likewise, he refused to extend it to others as called upon to do. He failed in his essential humanity and in the process he degraded and punished a fellow servant as inferior to himself when he should have done the opposite. Contrasted with this, and forming the liturgical and theological context for hearing this reading today, is the life of Maximillian Kolbe. Loved with an everlasting love, touched by God's infinite mercy and grace, Father Maximillian knew and affirmed who he truly was. More, in a situation of abject poverty and ultimate weakness, he remained in contact with the Source of his own humanity as the infinite well from which he would draw strength, dignity, courage, forgiveness, and compassion when confronted with a reality wholly dedicated to shattering, degrading, and destroying the humanity of those who became its victims. In every way he was the embodiment of St Paul's citation, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness!"

Block 13, where the "starvation cells" were

In Auschwitz, it is true that some spoke of Kolbe as a saint, and many knew he was a priest, but in this world where all were stripped of names and social standing of any kind, what stood out to everyone was Maximillian Kolbe's love for God and his fellow man; what stood out, in other words, was his humanity. Holiness for the Christian is defined in these terms. Authentic humanity and holiness are synonyms in Christianity, and both are marked by the capacity to love and be loved,  first (by) God and then (by) all those he has dignified as his image and holds as precious. In a world too often marked by mediocrity and even outright inhumanity, a world too frequently dominated by those structures, institutions, and dynamics which seem bigger than we are and incapable of being resisted or changed, we need to remember Maximillian Kolbe's example. Oftentimes we focus on serving others, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless and the like, and these things are important. But in Kolbe's world when very little of this kind of service was possible (though Kolbe did what was possible and prudent here) what stood out was not only the crust of bread pressed into a younger priest's hands, the cup of soup given gladly to another, but the very great and deep dignity and impress of his humanity. And of course, it stood out because beyond and beneath the need for food and shelter, what everyone was in terrible danger of losing was a sense of --- and capacity to act in terms of -- their own great dignity and humanity.

Marked above all as one loved by God, Father Maximillian lived out of that love and mercy. He extended it again and again (70 X 7) to everyone he met, and in the end, he made the final sacrifice: he gave his own life so that another might live. An extraordinary vocation marked by extraordinary holiness? Yes. But also our OWN vocation, a vocation to "ordinary" and true holiness, genuine humanity. As I said above, "In particular, in Auschwitz it was Maximillian's profound and abiding humanity which allowed others to remember, reclaim, and live out their own humanity in the face of the Nazi's dehumanizing machine. No greater gift could have been imagined in such a hell." In many ways this is precisely the gift we are called upon in Christ to be for our own times. Matthew's call to make forgiveness a way of life is a key to achieving this. May Saint Maximillian Kolbe's example inspire us to fulfill our own vocations in exemplary ways.

Feast of the Transfiguration (Reprise)

Have you ever been walking along a well-known road and suddenly had a bed of flowers take on a vividness that takes your breath away? Similarly, have you ever been walking along or sitting quietly outside when a breeze rustles some leaves above your head, and you were struck by an image of the Spirit moving through the world? How about suddenly being struck by the tremendous compassion of someone you know well, or seeing their smile in a new way and coming to see them in a whole new light because of this? I have had all of these happen, and, in the face of God's constant presence, what is in some ways more striking is how infrequent such peak or revelatory moments are.

Scientists tell us we see only a fraction of what goes on all around us (and this is without accounting for the reality that can only be properly perceived by faith). It depends upon our expectations.  In an experiment with six volunteers divided into two teams in either white or black shirts, observers were asked to concentrate on the number of passes of a basketball that occurred as players wove in and out around one another. In the midst of this activity, a woman in a gorilla suit strolls through, stands there for a moment, thumps her chest, and moves on. At the end of the experiment, observers were asked two questions: 1) how many passes were there, and 2) did you see the gorilla? Fewer than 50% saw the gorilla.  Expectations drive perception and can produce blindness. Even more shocking, these scientists tell us that even when we are confronted with the truth, we are more likely to insist on our own "knowledge" and justify decisions we have made on the basis of blindness and ignorance. We routinely overestimate our own knowledge and fail to see how much we really do NOT know.

For the past two weeks, we have been reading the central chapter of Matthew's Gospel --- the chapter that stands right smack in the middle of his version of the Good News. It is Matt's collection of Jesus' parables --- the stories Jesus tells to help break us open and free us from the common expectations, perspectives, and wisdom we hang onto so securely so that we might commit to the Kingdom of God and the vision of reality it involves. Throughout this collection of parables, Jesus takes the common, too-well-known, often underestimated and unappreciated bits of reality which are right at the heart of his hearers' lives. He uses them to reveal the extraordinary God who is also right there in front of his hearers. Stories of tiny seeds, apparently completely invisible once they have been tossed about by a prodigal sower, clay made into works of great artistry and function, weeds and wheat which reveal a discerning love and judgment which involves the careful and sensitive harvesting of the true and genuine --- all of these and more have given us the space and time to suspend our usual ways of seeing and empower us to adopt the new eyes and hearts of those who dwell within the Kingdom of God.

It was the recognition of the unique authority with which Jesus taught, the power of his parables in particular, which shifted the focus from the stories to the storyteller in the Gospel passage we heard last Friday. Jesus' family and neighbors did not miss the unique nature of Jesus' parables; these parables differ in kind from anything in Jewish literature and had a singular power which went beyond the usual significant power of narrative. They saw this clearly. But they also refused to believe the God who revealed himself in the commonplace reality they saw right in front of them. Despite the authority, they could not deny they chose to see only the one they expected to see; they decided they saw only  the son of Mary, the son of Joseph and "took offense at him." Their minds and hearts were closed to who Jesus really was and the God he revealed.  Similarly, Jesus' disciples too could not really accept an anointed one who would have to suffer and die. Peter especially refuses to accept this.

Looking at Today's Gospel:

It is in the face of these situations that we hear today's Gospel of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain apart. He takes them away from the world they know (or believe they know) so well, away from peers, away from their ordinary perspective,  and he invites them to see who he really is. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is at prayer --- attending to the most fundamental relationship of his life --- when the Transfiguration occurs. Matthew does not structure his account in the same way. Instead, he shows Jesus as the one whose life is a profound dialogue with God's law and prophets, who is in fact the culmination and fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the culmination of the Divine-Human dialogue we call covenant. He is God-with-us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. This is what the disciples see --- not so much a foretelling of Jesus' future glory as the reality which stands right in front of them --- if only they had the eyes to see.

For most of us, such an event would freeze us in our tracks with awe. But not Peter! He outlines a project to reprise the Feast of Tabernacles right here and now. In this story, Peter reminds me some of those folks (myself included!) who want so desperately to hang onto amazing prayer experiences --- but in doing so, fail to appreciate them fully or live from them! He is, in some ways, a kind of lovable but misguided buffoon ready to build booths for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, consistent with his tradition, while neglecting the newness and personal challenge of what has been revealed. In some way, Matt does not spell out explicitly, Peter has still missed the point. And amid Peter's well-meaning activism comes God's voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!" In my reflection on this reading this last weekend, I heard something more: "Peter! Sit down! Shut up! This is my beloved Son! Look closely!! Listen to him!!!"

The Lesson for Us Today:

The lesson could not be clearer, and yet, how hard it is for us to see what is right in front of us! Recently, I wrote about a view that sees the Church as "too temporal." This perspective is not merely concerned with the Church buying into models of power more appropriate to princes and potentates. It sees the entire Church, insofar as it is committed to this world, as having given itself over to something that is "not spiritual." But this perspective forgets it is speaking of a Church that lives in this world and mediates the Spirit to that world, a Church that mediates Christ's presence for those with eyes to see. It is not an either/or way of seeing, but a both/and way: both ordinary and extraordinary, both material and spiritual, both temporal and eternal. Central to this Church is the notion of Sacraments; in fact, the Church herself is a primordial sacrament, a sign where ordinary reality is allowed to shine forth the power and presence of God. They take the ordinary matter of our world and in them, see this transformed into the very power and presence of God. And yet, it requires the eyes of faith to perceive and appreciate this transformation. The either/or perspective I referenced above tends to see reality in a particularly Gnostic or neo-Platonic way. What it cannot see, and what remains scandalous to it is an incarnational God who is fully present in the ordinary matter of our world, divinizing it with God's presence. How very different is the Sacramental way of seeing reality!!

Here I am reminded of a story I once told of a video of a man who was given Enchroma glasses --- a form of sunglasses that allows colorblind persons to see color, often for the first time in their lives. By screening out certain wavelengths of light, someone who has seen the world in shades of brown their whole lives are finally able to see things they have never seen before; browns are transformed into yellows and reds and purples and suddenly trees look truly green and three-dimensional or the colorful fruit of these trees no longer simply blend into the same-color background. The man was overwhelmed and overcome by what he had been missing; he could not speak, did not really know what to do with his hands, was "reduced" to tears, and eventually expressed it all as he hugged his wife in love and gratitude. Meanwhile, family members were struck by just how much they themselves may have taken for granted as every day they moved through their own world of "ordinary" color and texture. The entire situation involved a Transfiguration almost as momentous as the one the disciples experienced in today's Gospel.

Like Peter, like the Gnostic or neo-Platonist who divvies reality up into the temporal and the spiritual. And like the colorblind man who needed to wear the glasses consistently enough to allow his brain to really begin to process colors in a new way, we must take the time to see what is right in front of us. We must learn to see the sacred, which is present and incarnated in ordinary reality. We must listen to the One who comes to us in the Scriptures and Sacraments, the One who speaks to us through every believer and the whole of creation. We must really be the People of God, the "hearers of the Word" who know how to listen and are obedient in the way God summons us to be. This is true whether we are God's lowliest hermit or one of the Vicars of Christ who govern our dioceses and College of Bishops. Genuine authority coupled with true obedience empowers new life, new vision, new perspectives, and reverence for the ordinary reality God makes sacramental. 

There is a humility involved in all of this. It is the humility of the truly wise, the truly knowing person. We must be able to recognize how very little we see, how unwilling or unable we often are to be converted to the perspective of the Kingdom, how easily we justify our blindness and deafness with our supposed knowledge, and how even our well-intentioned activism can prevent us from seeing and hearing the unexpected, sometimes scandalous God standing there right in the middle of our reality.

On Hermits and the Genesis 2:18 Observation That it is not Good that One be Alone

[[Sister Laurel, I wondered if anyone has ever asked you about Genesis 2:18 and the statement that it is not good for human beings to be alone? It was for that very reason that God created a woman to complete a man. How can you live as a hermit and claim to be living God's will for you if God recognized that it is not good for people to be alone? My questions also refer to making a vow of celibacy or chastity instead of getting married. Isn't it, like being a hermit, unnatural?]]

Thanks for your questions. No, I haven't written about this before, though your first question, especially, is a very good question and points to the reason there are so few hermits. This is not because living as a hermit is unnatural (solitude is really the most universal of human conditions), but because eremitic life is a unique way of revealing the nature of the human being who is both essentially solitary and made by God for community. (As I will note below, I believe the Genesis passage you refer to reflects both of these aspects of human life.) The interesting thing about eremitical life is that it is lived as an expression of one's obligations and commitments: 1) to be oneself and 2) to allow God to be God (Emmanuel) as an essential part of that. The hermit chooses to live both of these sets of obligations and commitments 3) so that others might be made whole and holy in God as well.  In other words, eremitical life is lived in relation to and for the sake of others, and, when healthy, is profoundly embedded in community --- that of the Church, of the larger world, and the whole of God's creation. Aloneness or existential solitude is experienced by every person. It is part of the way we are made, and Genesis affirms that. In eremitical life, however, though this may surprise some, there is also a strong sense of community and relatedness to others.

There is certainly a tension between being a solitary hermit and being in communion with others, but what my own experience and the writing and teaching of other hermits, both ancient and modern, tells me is that we are each of us solitary;  hermits are meant to reveal the essential nature of the human being. That includes not just our solitude, but the paradoxical fact that this solitude is lived out in relationship, first, of course, with God, and then with everyone else and the whole of creation. This means the hermit does not give up on people or the Church, nor is she doing something heroic in living a life of solitude with God. She is simply living the way human beings are born, die, and, in fact, the way most people live their lives in between these moments. Her life knows and expresses the reality with which every person struggles whenever they let go of the illusions and distractions of this world. (The illusions and distractions are a symptom of trying to escape this underlying struggle.) We are each of us solitaries. This is true even when we are married sacramentally and made one flesh!! Some, a relative few of us, are called to live an eremitic vocation in order to reveal the true nature of the human being and God. The accent in what we hermits live and reveal is on the existential solitude of the human person and the will of God to be Emmanuel, God with us. Even so, this does not allow us to omit the relational or communal nature of human being; still, the accent is not there as it is in community or married life.

When we read Genesis 2, we must see that mankind is created as a solitary creature. This is the source of what we call existential solitude. That is never changed by God. God does not decide his creation is bad and then start over again. God sees that there is something about existential solitude that needs "the other" and really cries out for community, but the substrate of existential solitude remains and conditions the whole of the human being's existence. Hermits journey to the depths of that solitude for the sake of a revelation of both human nature and the Divine will. There is a starkness about this revelation, and yet, the hermit does not disparage the need for community or live her special brand of solitude as though it is about some higher form of spirituality, some superior form of humanity in need of no one else. No. She is alone and without God, and the intimacy of that relationship, as well as the ecclesial context and the place of rare friends and colleagues, her "vocation" would indeed be an unnatural one. 

But the authentic hermit says very clearly that existential solitude is about being made for communion with God first and foremost. Secondarily, and also significantly, it is about giving ourselves for and to others who are our equals and our helpers. Isolation and even a radical uniqueness that isolates one from the whole of God's creation is not good. Eremitical solitude witnesses to all of this as it accents the existential solitude we each know and fear whenever the illusions and delusions, distractions, and comforting busyness we grasp at are stripped away from us. It seems to me that hermits confront us with the need for others in our lives in a way different from other vocations --- say those to community or marriage. Eremitical solitude is always about being alone with God, and for the sake of (along with the assistance of) others. That is why I always speak of it as the redemption of isolation.

When Thomas Merton wrote about this, he said: [[For we must remember that the Church is at the same time community and solitude.. The dying Christian is one with the Church, but he also suffers the loneliness of Christ's agony in Gethsemani. Very few . . . are able to face this fact squarely. And very few are expected to do so. It is the special vocation of certain ones who dedicate their whole lives with wrestling with solitude. An "agony" is a "wrestling."  The dying man in agony wrestles with solitude. But the wrestling with one's solitude is also a life-work -- a life "agony" (Disputed Questions, "Notes on a Philosophy of Solitude")** Merton's comments on a dying person can apply to each one of us struggling to live (or learn to live) fully and to be our truest selves, not least because doing so without the benefit of distraction, illusion, and the delusions often fostered by culture, is a central dimension of dying to self and eremitical "stricter separation from the world".

Thanks for your patience. I consider these thoughts the beginning of reflecting on Genesis 2:18. I hope they are at least a bit helpful given their still-chaotic nature! I'll come back to the question on the naturalness of a vow/life of consecrated celibacy in the next few days.

** Agonia, or agony, is actually a warm-up period before a difficult athletic contest. Jesus' agony in the garden was a period of profound "wrestling" to prepare himself for the awful contest that stood in front of him. It may involve physical and emotional pain, but this is not its first meaning, nor does the story of Jesus' prayer in the Garden imply physical agony. It is about the struggle of faithfulness and integrity in service to the will of God and God's sovereignty.

Reflections on a Retreat with Ilia Delio (reprise from 2018)

 I returned from a weekend of retreat on Sunday afternoon. I had ridden with another Sister to Santa Sabina Center, a ministry of the San Rafael Dominicans, to hear Ilia Delio, OSF who gave five sessions on the new cosmology and the coming to human wholeness which is both an evolutionary drive rooted in God Who is the depth dimension of all existence and the result of life in the risen and cosmic Christ.  I like Sister Ilia's work generally, but in the last number of years have spent more time on books like Franciscan Prayer, The Humility of God, Ten Evenings With God, Saint Claire, Compassion, and Simply Bonaventure than I have with books like A Hunger for Wholeness, or The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, etc. Well, it's time to catch up!

My systematic theological foundations are strong, and I was delighted to find the work of Paul Tillich pervading (though usually implicit in) the discussions this weekend. My own teacher introduced me to Paul Tillich as an undergraduate (my senior majors' project was his Systematic Theology vol 1-3), and I did more work on Tillich as a doctoral student (his theology of the cross).  And now, the theological insights of Tillich, especially his focus on ontology, his method of correlation, and his notion of God as Ground of Being and Meaning, will help carry theology into the future of an unfinished and evolutionary universe. At one point during the retreat, Ilia quipped that those with degrees in theology would need to go back for another degree -- the demands of the new cosmology would require it! That does not tempt me, nor is it necessary. My major professor saw clearly, I think, the place of Tillich in the future of theology and spirituality --- and the capacity of his theology to transcend the boundaries of older theological paradigms. I am feeling very grateful that John Dwyer assigned Paul Tillich to me all those years ago; it was providential and far-seeing of him.

So, this weekend was exciting for me in these ways, but even more exciting was seeing the importance of who I am and what I am about in a fresh context and in an even more intense way. All of the Sisters I know are committed to being a contemplative presence in our world as well as to providing ways to deepen the contemplative dimension of the lives of those they work with or otherwise touch. We know God not as A Being, but rather as being itself and as the source, ground, and/or depth dimension of all that exists. This is not a new theological idea, not even for Tillich (though he pretty much came to own it), but it conflicts with some traditional theology which treated God as A being --- though the most perfect and superior being. Unfortunately, as Tillich and others (including Ilia this weekend) point out, if God is A being, no matter how powerful or perfect, that God will come in conflict with other beings. It is inescapable. If, however, God is the ground and depth dimension of all that exists, one truth is that to the extent we are and become truly ourselves, God will be allowed to be truly God (and vice versa). The only conflict that will exist, to whatever degree it does exist, will be between authentic and inauthentic, loving and unloving, and that which is rooted in life vs that which is rooted in death.

Physicists representing the new cosmology have come to the conclusion that there is an underlying ground, dimension, or field to reality which can be described as consciousness. Theologians and contemplatives know this dimension, ground, or field as God; they know we participate in this ground, that, in fact, it is the deep dimension of ourselves which gives us ourselves as call and task at each moment of every day. They know that increasing consciousness, a growth in awareness and community in and through this ground we also know as love-in-act, is precisely the essence of the contemplative (and profoundly human) vocation. Traditionally, contemplatives describe this increasing awareness and growth in consciousness, this coming to oneness in and through the Love-in-act, which/Who is God as "union with God." Traditionally, we also know that growth in union with God will result and manifest itself in increasing union with others and all of creation. In the NT we hear this as the eschatological goal of everything -- it is described as "New Creation" and "God becoming all-in-all". But in all of this we may not hear as clearly as we need to that this New Creation is coming to be as we speak and that we are responsible for allowing it to occur in fullness.

I have often written here about heaven (God's own life/love shared with others) interpenetrating and transforming or transfiguring this world of space and time. I have written here about God as a constitutive part of our own being. Similarly I have written about hermits (and all persons, really) not merely being called to pray but to become God's own prayers --- the embodiment or incarnation of God's own life, love, will, dreams, breath and word --- in our world; related to this I have written often about eremitical solitude as essentially communal and to isolation or individualism as antithetical to genuine solitude. Especially, I have written about why it is eremitism is not essentially selfish but, in the traditional language of canon 603, lived "for the salvation of the world". What I found being stressed time and again during this last weekend's retreat, was a context supporting and calling for all of these ideas, but from a new perspective, the perspective of the new cosmology with a theological dependence on Paul Tillich's work in systematics and more explicitly upon the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It is one thing to understand one's life as a response to a personal call by God, but it is something much richer and more profoundly true to come to see that same Divine call and vocational response as having cosmic implications and cosmic import!

The Camaldolese write about the Sacred Hermitage (Sacra Eremo) in Tuscany as "a small place opening up to [universal or cosmic] space". What I came to know this weekend in a new way was that my own vocation, small, solitary, and relatively singular as it is, is part of the universe's movement toward an eschatological conclusion --- a critical part of the whole of existence coming to consciousness in God as God gradually comes to be All-in-all. We each have our own small but infinitely meaningful parts to play in this process; in us creation comes to consciousness and more, to articulateness as reality is made Word. It is at once humbling and energizing to begin to look freshly at one's vocation in these terms, to have one's eyes opened in the way my eyes were opened more fully this weekend, and to have before me a whole field of theology I now need to attend to more carefully, diligently, and explicitly --- not simply because it is new (in many ways it is not), but because it is part of the way the dialogue between faith and science and the movement of God to make all things one in and through the risen (and therefore, the cosmic) Christ is taking place --- not just generally, but at Stillsong Hermitage more specifically.

Feast of Mary Magdalene (Reprise)

While I first published this piece in 2016, it remains appropriate and timely, not merely for today's Gospel, but because our Church is still struggling (or refusing to struggle) with the importance of allowing women's voices to be heard as those capable of proclaiming the Gospel with power and sensitivity to the needs of all. It was genuinely great that Pope Francis preached on the importance of hearing women's voices and allowing them positions of real authority in the church, and it looks like Pope Leo will continue in this same direction.

Jesus, however, went further still. He called Mary by name and "sent (her) out" (the root meaning of the word apostle) to proclaim his resurrection to the male apostles. I think we must never forget that the first proclamation of the Risen Christ was a woman's message, rooted in the intimacy of a friendship that spanned Jesus' entire adult life, and proclaimed at the very heart of the Church. This year (2025), that piece of the reason for our even having a Feast of Mary Magdalene resonates especially for me because of the (part of the) inner journey I have recently made into "the shadow of death and despair" to discover both God and myself newly alive and whole there. (cf., Why Does the Church Need Hermits?) Mary Magdalene met the Risen Christ face to face and, in the face of disbelief and even scorn, helped give birth to the Church. The inner journey hermits and other contemplatives make, little understood though it most often is, contributes to the life of the Church in the same way.

                                    * * * * *

(First published 22. July. 2016) Probably everyone is aware by now that today's commemoration of Saint Mary Magdalene is indeed a FEAST. I heard a great homily on this from my pastor last Sunday --- it was on both the raising of Mary Magdalene's liturgical celebration from a memorial to an actual feast and Pope Francis' move to create a commission to look into the historical facts regarding the ordination of women as deacons in the church. Change comes slowly in the Catholic Church --- though sometimes it swallows up the Gospel (or significant elements of the Gospel) pretty quickly, as it did with last Sunday's story, which was originally about Jesus' treating Mary of Bethany as a full disciple sitting at his feet just as males (and ONLY males) did. As we know, that story --- when read without sensitivity to historical context --- has been tamed to make it say instead that contemplative life was the greater good or vocation than active or ministerial life; still, once the stone has been rolled away as it is in today's Gospel, and we are able to hear the radicality of the good news and the call to apostleship, we may find the Spirit of God is irrepressible in bringing (or at least seeking to bring) about miracles.

One sign the stone is being rolled away by Pope Francis is the raising of Mary Magdalene's day to a Feast. For the entire history of the Church, Mary Magdalene has been known as "Apostle to the Apostles" but mainly this has been taken in an honorific but essentially toothless way with little bite and less power to influence theology or the role of women in the Church. But raising the Magdalene's day to the level of a Feast changes all that. This is because the Feast comes with new prayers -- powerful statements of who Mary was and is for the Church, theological statements with far-reaching implications about Jesus' choices and general practice regarding women (especially calling for a careful reading of other stories of his interactions with women), a critical look at the way the early church esteemed and ministered WITH women and not merely to them --- especially as indicated in the authentic writings of Paul, and the unique primacy of Mary Magdalene over the rest of the Apostles (including even Peter) as a source of faith, witness, and evangelism.

The Church's longstanding and cherished rule in all of this is Lex Orandi, lex credendi, literally, "the law (or norm) of prayer is the law (norm) of belief", but more adequately, "As we pray, so we believe." And what is true as we examine the new readings and prayers associated with today's Feast is that the way we pray with, with regard to, and to God through the presence of Mary Magdalene has indeed changed with wide-ranging implications as noted above. The Church Fathers have written well, and I wanted to look briefly at a couple of the texts they have given us for the day's Mass, namely the opening prayer and the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer.

 The Opening Prayer reads: [[O God, whose Only Begotten Son entrusted Mary Magdalene before all others with announcing the great joy of the Resurrection, grant, we pray, that through her intercession and example we may proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in your glory. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
R. Amen.

What is striking to me here is the very clear affirmation that Mary was commissioned (entrusted) by Christ with the greatest act of evangelization anyone can undertake, namely, the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus' Resurrection from the dead. This is a matter of being summoned to and charged with a direct and undisputed act of preaching the one reality upon which is based everything else Christians say and do. It is the primal witness of faith and the ground of all of our teaching. It is what allows Paul to say quite bluntly, if this is false, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, then Christians are the greatest fools of all. It is this kerygma that Mary is given to proclaim. Moreover, there is a primacy here. Mary Magdalene is not simply first among equals --- though to be thought of in such a way among Apostles and the successors of Apostles in the Roman Catholic Church is a mighty thing by itself --- but she was entrusted (commissioned) with this charge "before all others". There is a primacy here, and the nature of that, it seems to me, especially when viewed in the context of Jesus' clearly counter-cultural treatment of women, is not merely temporal; it has the potential to change the way the Church has viewed the role of women in ministry, including ordained (diaconal) ministry. The Preface is as striking. It reads:

Preface of the Apostle of the Apostles

It is truly right and just,
our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
whose mercy is no less than His power,
to preach the Gospel to everyone, through Christ, our Lord.
In the garden, He appeared to Mary Magdalene
who loved him in life, who witnessed his death on the cross,
who sought him as he lay in the tomb,
who was the first to adore him when he rose from the dead, and whose apostolic duty [office, charge, commission] was honored by the apostles, so that the good news of life might reach the ends of the earth.
And so Lord, with all the Angels and Saints,
we, too, give you thanks, as in exultation we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts. . . (Working Translation by Thomas Rosica CSB)

Once again, we see two things especially in the Preface: 1) the use of the term Apostle (or apostolic duty [office or charge]) used in a strong sense rather than in some weak and merely honorific sense --- this is, after all, the Preface of the Apostle of the Apostles!!! (Note how this translation brings Mary right INTO the collegio of Apostles in a way "to" may not; here she is definitely first among equals) --- and 2) a priority or kind of primacy in evangelization which the apostles themselves honored. In the preface, there is a stronger sense of Mary being first among equals than in the prayer, I think. Still, the lines stress that Mary adored Jesus in life, witnessed his death on a cross --- something which was entirely unacceptable in ordinary society and from which the male disciples fled in terror --- and that she sought him in the dangerous and ritually unacceptable place. In contrast, the rest of his disciples huddled in a room still terrified and completely dispirited, these lines make the following reference to "apostolic duty" --- which Mary also carried out in the face of general disbelief --- and thus, to Mary's temporal (but not merely temporal) primacy over the other apostles all the stronger.

Do Not Cling to Me: Another Sign the Stone has been Rolled Away

 

Part of today's gospel is the enigmatic challenge to Mary's address of Jesus as "Rabbouni" or Rabbi -- teacher. In response Jesus says, "Do not cling to me!" He then reminds Mary he has yet to ascend to his Father and her Father, his God and her God. What is going on here? Mary honors Jesus with a title of respect and great love and Jesus rebuffs and reproves her! The answer I think is that Mary identifies Jesus very specifically with Judaism and even with a specific role within Judaism. But Jesus can no longer be identified with such a narrow context. He is the Risen Christ and will soon be the ascended One whose presence, whose universality (and even his cosmic quality), will be established and freshly mediated in all sorts of unexpected and new ways. To be ascended is not to be absent but to be present as God is present --- a kind of omnipresence or ever-presence we must learn to perceive and trustingly embrace. This too is a critical part of Mary's commission or officio; she is called to proclaim this as well --- the eschatological or cosmic reality in and through which the Gospel of God's presence is opened to all the world.

Jesus tells Mary Magdalene, who is already aware that he is difficult to recognize as the Risen Christ, not to cling to old images, old certainties, and narrow ways of perceiving and understanding him. He reminds her he will be present and known in new ways; he tells her not to cling to the ones she is relatively comfortable with. And he makes her, literally and truly, Apostle of and to the Apostles with a world-shattering kerygma or proclamation whose astonishing Catholicity goes beyond anything they could have imagined.

And so, it is with us and with the Church herself. On this new Feast Day, we must understand the stone has been rolled away and the Risen and Ascended Christ may be present in ways we never expected, ways which challenge our intellectual certainties and theologically comfortable ways of seeing and knowing. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, as we pray so we believe. What a potentially explosive and ultimately uncontrollable rule beating at the heart of the Church's life and tradition!! The stone has been rolled away and over time our new and normative liturgical prayer will be "unpacked" by teachers and theologians and pastoral ministers of all sorts while the truth contained there will be expressed, honored, and embodied in ever-new ways by the entire Body of Christ --- if only we take Jesus' admonition seriously and cease clinging to him in ways which actually limit the power and reach of the Gospel in our world.

Like the original Apostles, we are called to honor Mary Magdalene's apostleship so that the "good news of life [can] reach the ends of the earth." We pray on this Feast of St Mary Magdalene that that may really be so.

Thomas Merton: Was his Electrocution God's Judgment?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, have you ever heard the idea that Thomas Merton was "plucked out of life" by electrocution, because he was interested in non-Christian religions, or because he had an affair? Does this make sense to you? I have heard from a number of people that Merton was not the real deal, but you seem to believe he was a real hermit and monk despite his affair or the limited time he lived as a hermit. Do you still believe that?]]

Wow, now that first question is one I had never expected to hear!  Merton's death was a tragic accident. I don't believe he was murdered (as some have opined), nor that God "plucked him" out of this life, particularly for any sinfulness, faults, or failures he may have been responsible for. God's relationship with death is much different from what this notion provides for, and the way God deals with sin is also radically different. Remember that in 1 Corinthians 15, death is described as the final enemy to be put under God's feet. In other words, death is not the will of God, nor a tool that he wields, or even a punishment he doles out, but a consequential power or principality turned loose in our world through human sin. Likewise, it is a power or principality which the God of life and love seeks to overcome and, eventually, destroy through his Son. to summarize this position, death intervenes in human life, and the God who is the source of Jesus' resurrection and ascension, intervenes in death to bring life, hope, and a new creation out of it.

I have written a brief defense of Thomas Merton years ago (cf Thomas Merton, a Brief Defense). I have not changed my mind on this. I understand his work and his monastic and eremitical life to be the "real deal," even though I also recognize that Merton was significantly flawed in some ways. His intellect was significant, and his later interests in contemplative life spanned different religious traditions -- something contemplatives and monastics today also tend to embrace and contribute to in interreligious dialogues on contemplative life. The Camaldolese with whom I am associated as an Oblate participate in such an ongoing dialogue with other contemplatives from Eastern traditions; it does not detract from the Christ-centered nature of their lives.

Although Thomas Merton only lived as a hermit for a few years, his exposure to solitude within the Cistercian monastic context was significant in preparing him for the greater silence and solitude of eremitical life. Moreover, Merton's hunger for these things was present throughout most of his monastic life and various Abbots made accommodations to allow Merton to get more solitude than the usual Trappist schedule allowed for. He writes about the inner journey hermits make with real insight and wisdom. I believe much of this was rooted in his own experience, both of his hunger for eremitical life on the "negative" side of things (as in a photographic negative) and, on the more "positive" side of things (again, in a photographic sense), because of his experience of living as a hermit when he was finally able to do that. 

Thomas Merton's affair was a serious mistake. His attempts to justify it were sophomoric, selfish, and badly reasoned. Even so, I believe he was generally faithful to his vocation and that he was able to get back on track after the affair ended. Thomas Merton lived his adult life and died as a Trappist monk and hermit, nothing less and nothing other. Again, it was a tragic accident that cut his life short when it did. Just for my own curiosity's sake, where did you get the idea that God "plucked Merton out" of this world in punishment for his sin and faults? I started a book a few years ago contending Merton's death was orchestrated, but as noted above, I never heard this notion!! Even as a misunderstanding of the nature of the relationship between God and death, it doesn't sound particularly Catholic to me. Let me know if you can.

Another Look at Eremitical Silence and Solitude in Light of "Ponam in Deserto Viam"

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I don't want to start a fight, but when c 603 talks about the silence of solitude, isn't it talking about being quiet, not speaking or listening to music, or watching TV and worldly things like that? [One online hermit] says that the idea of solitude means being alone, and like that, the word silence is simple and is about being silent and living in silence. . . .What's hard about that? But when you write about these things, you make them way more complicated than that!. . . I think you are trying to talk around the simple meaning of the words and [the online hermit] does too -- though I am not trying to speak for her! . . . My question is, where do you get the idea that silence means more than being silent and living without sound? Why doesn't "the silence of solitude" mean the silence that happens when there is no one else there?]] (Questions redacted by Sister Laurel)

Thanks for your questions.  Over the years, I have written a lot about "the silence of solitude," and I indeed understand both the term silence and the term solitude to mean more than the absence of sound or the absence of company, even though it may begin with some form of these. (Note well that sometimes we will have a deep insight that then calls us to external or physical silence and solitude to truly hear this insight, but in the main, our ability to truly listen to our own hearts requires external silence and solitude.) Moreover, I understand the silence of solitude as the state of inner quies (rest or peace) or hesychia (stillness) that obtains when one is not merely living alone, but, more primarily, is living with and in (or at least toward!) union with God. It is about the journey to become who we are made by God to be. This state of solitude is not simply about being by oneself with and in God, but necessarily implies the community of the Church and of the world of God's creation as well. The relationships implied are the result of our being in and with God as ground and source of all being and meaning, and therefore, with all of creation that is also related to God in some degree of communion. It is in exploring what it means to be in communion with God that I have come to understand the fundamental terms of c 603, but especially terms like silence, solitude, and the silence of solitude.

What you are asking about is what seems to you to be an idiosyncratic usage of such terms, no? I know that some have taken exception to the way I understand such terms and they have continued to object to this through the years. Thus, the question of where I get the ideas I write about is also a question about how I justify my literally eccentric (out of the center) usage and the way I live my eremitical life itself. I want to spend a bit of time then, trying to respond to that specific question.

There are three pieces to my answer. I depend upon, 1) personal experience in prayer and the silence of solitude, which especially leads me to a sense that silence, solitude, and the silence of solitude are richer and more complex realities than your friend (and many non-contemplatives) seems to allow for, 2) the insights and experiences of other hermits (both canonical and non-canonical) who have also explored these terms and found them to be similarly rich and multivalent, especially from contemplatives and monks and hermits like Cornelius Wencel whose book, The Eremitic Life is so well-done, or like Thomas Merton who speaks of solitude herself, "opening the door" to the hermit; and 3)  the Church's thought on eremitic life itself, particularly in what it writes of the c 603 vocation in its recent (2022), Ponam in Deserto Viam, (The Hermit's Way of Life in the Local Church), CICLSAL or DICLSAL (Congregation (now Dicastery) of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life).

Let me focus here on a couple of passages from Ponam to give you a taste of the rich sense in which the Church understands eremitical silence and solitude, and more specifically, maybe, the silence of solitude.  The first passage is from paragraph 14. Ponam explicitly identifies silence in a way very far removed from those who would like it to refer to a single, narrow meaning. It denies outright that it can be identified with external silence associated with physical or psychological isolation:

The term silence of solitude cherished by the Carthusian tradition, emphasizes that the hermit's silence does not consist in the absence of voices or noises due to physical isolation. Nor can silence be an outwardly imposed condition. Rather,  it is a fundamental attitude that expresses a radical availability to listen to God. Silence is a total focus on the search for union with Christ and open to the attraction of the Paschel dynamic of his death and resurrection. Silence is the experience of the mysterious fruitfulness of a life totally surrendered. Paradoxically it is also an eloquent witness when inhabited by Love. (Emphasis added)

(By the way, I would argue a bit with this last sentence and assert that the silence of solitude referred to in the canon only exists when inhabited by Love -- at least in the life of someone the Church would recognize as living an eremitic life; when Love is absent, Silence or the silence of solitude cease to be all the things this passage affirms.) It seems to me that this passage supports the contention that the silence of solitude is not only the environment in which the hermit lives her life, but even more importantly, that it is both the goal and charism of the solitary eremitical life. This underscores the idea that silence, especially the silence of solitude in c 603, does not merely refer to an external state of silence, but an inner state of relatedness and journeying with, to, and in God, which one undertakes not only for one's own sake, but for God's sake and the salvation of others. The emphasis on witness is very welcome here.

 The second passage is from paragraph 15, where Ponam is speaking of Peter Damian's observations on radical solitude, a reality that defines the ecclesial role of the hermits' way of life. In exploring this idea, Ponam says, Hermits are like a microcosm of the world and the Church in miniature (an ecclesiola). Therefore, they cannot forget the Church and world they represent in their totality. The more one is alone before God, the more one discovers within oneself the deeper dimension of the world.  While this quoted passage doesn't speak to the idea of eremitical silence, solitude, and the silence of solitude directly, it does imply a journey into a multivalent reality with various depths the hermit is called to explore and represent. When we think of the Church and world in their totality, we also must think of the way God's realm interpenetrates our historical reality, and that means looking at the hermit as a symbol of this interpenetration.

What paragraph 15 thus says here is that the hermit as a historical reality living in communion and towards union with God, stands at the heart of the Church and world, and reveals that same deepest reality to both the Church and the world itself. In this way, the passage begins to introduce us to the idea that the journey into the silence of solitude reveals the hungers of the human heart for communion with God (and all that is of God) and resting in the fullness of being and meaning that communion entails. This is so even when this is experienced mainly in terms of hunger or yearning. (Cf. articles on existential solitude in the past several months.)  In another place, Ponam calls the hermit an ambassador (or sentinel) of hope for both the Church and the world. She reminds the Church and world that one's true identity (and all authentic hope) are found only in God; for those hermits who choose to reject the larger world or who really just use the term hermit as a synonym for misanthropy and isolation, Ponam affirms, [[True identity is rooted in a vital tradition that neither excludes nor rejects, but includes, integrates, and reconstructs.]] (par 16).

All of this implies that silence, solitude, and the silence of solitude, canon 603 sees as fundamental to the eremitical life, are most significantly not external states of the absence of noise or companionship, but rather, are rich, multivalent inner realities. Because, in part, they help form the context for one's journey to God, they include the external silence and physical aloneness you refer to, but they are also the goal of one's journey with, to, and in God. This is what Ponam is talking about when it reflects on Peter Damian's letter, Dominus Vobiscum, and speaks of achieving what is one's truest identity in God, or refers to the hermit being a microcosm of both Church and world, and revealing the nature of this journey into God to both. Finally, as I have written here over the years (and observed in my own Rule in 2006), the silence of solitude is the gift or charism that this vocation offers both the Church and the world so they might see themselves clearly, worship God appropriately, and glorify (reveal) him and the hope that is rooted in him in all they are and do.  

Bishop Rojas Dispenses Catholics From Mass Attendance in Light of Potential ICE Raids

Notification from Bishop Rojas, Bishop of San Bernardino via Rev. James Martin, sj: [[in an extraordinary move, the bishop of San Bernardino has "dispensed" (freed a person) from the obligation to attend Masses on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation if the person fears ICE. Bishop Rojas (wisely) says that he is guided by the desire to extend pastoral care to all people in his diocese, particularly those who "face fear and hardship." It is a vivid reminder that not even Catholic churches are considered safe places any longer. Where are the voices for "religious freedom" now?]]

It has been a while since I posted on the current administration and its tendency to violate the supremacy of Christ's Lordship and freedom of religion in this country, but the above notice is an important piece of loss of that freedom that must be commented on. A second piece has to do with attempts to overturn the Johnson Amendment by this administration, notably the IRS. I have not said a lot about the aberration known as "Christian Nationalism" in this blog, but perhaps it is time to raise that issue as well, since all of this is tied together and finds its central symbol in the administration's new "Office of Religion" as well as in the religious sensibilities of the MAGA crowd. A couple of weeks ago, someone in my hearing said, "I would just like to go off and be a hermit with all this terrible news!" Fortunately, a friend standing there laughed, nodded in my direction, and said, "Oh, I don't think being a hermit means being out of touch with what is happening in the world!" And I agreed. After all, it is hard to be a person of prayer or to engage with the Kingdom of God if you are out of touch with that "anti-kingdom" which opposes God and Christian Freedom and Charity at every turn.

I have always been grateful for the Johnson Amendment and what it makes possible in this country. I go to church to hear the Gospel of God in Christ, and to pray with my  Catholic family;  I leave the service commissioned to witness to that Gospel and the faith community it creates in our broken and often misguided world. One of the things that has been precious to me is the right to come around the altar with brothers and sisters who differ politically from one another, and share from the same loaf and cup. We say the creed together and pray the Lord's Prayer as members of a unique and global family, and are very clear that how ever we feel about various social and political issues, it is this creed and the identity celebrated in this prayer that supercedes all of that and allows us to disagree in love and mutual respect. It has also allowed us to go forth to minister the Gospel freely in good conscience, and to respect the rights of other Catholics to choose whom they will vote for, even when we heartily disagree with the wisdom of that choice! 

Yes, it has obligated us to discuss and debate with others as well, but it has made clear that we remain members of a larger and global family with our hearts and minds set on a larger picture and goal we know as the Kingdom or Reign of God. Whatever political choices we make will be made for the sake of that vision, that KINdom. It is a great gift to have a Church that is at once sophisticated in terms of social justice and political action, while at the same time, refusing to allow its worship and proclamation to be sullied by partisan politics and the taint of worldly power.  At least it has been a great gift to have such a Church in the US, in part because of the Johnson Amendment.

But now the IRS has indicated that pastors may speak about and even support political candidates from the pulpit. I experience this as a violation of the "hands off" nature of freedom of religion in our churches, and know that it will be divisive, especially as less wise or discreet pastors seek to influence their congregations, not with the Gospel, but with specific political stances. We all know that what is said from the pulpit or ambo by a pastor will carry weight and influence in this regard, especially with those who are less knowledgeable or confident in their own consciences. One reason we proclaim the Gospel clearly without speaking of political candidates is because this puts the onus of making intelligent and conscientiously informed choices on the hearer --- and after all, this is a central part of the Church's very task in forming the faithful as adult Christians. But allowing pastors, et al., to support specific candidates from the pulpit will short-circuit all of that. And yes, the bias it introduces can cut in two directions depending on whether one respects one's pastor in this matter or not. Whatever direction it pulls or pushes one, it can unnecessarily and tragically short-circuit the process of forming and informing a good conscience in light of the Gospel. Ironically, the Johnson Amendment helped protect freedom** of religion; it did not constrain it.

So-called "Christian" Nationalism does not respect a separation of Church and state. For that reason, Christian Nationalism respects neither the Church nor the state, and where it gains power, both Church and State will be damaged or destroyed. Christian Nationalism desires a theocracy and is actively working towards that form of government as I write. A democratic republic will no longer do. Neither will freedom of religion --- including the freedom to be Christian if that means something other than being a "Christian Nationalist". The incursions of the state into our worship services is simply one natural outworking of a nationalistic form of "Christianity". As horrific as it is to have Bishop Rojas needing to dispense the Sunday obligation for those threatened by ICE, it is more horrific to realize Religious Freedom itself is in jeopardy because of the present administration. Indeed, it has already been violated by the government. If ICE can enter any church looking for "illegal aliens" (apparently meaning those who are not white and appear to have been born elsewhere), then the sanctity of the global family we represent has been violated, and all of us have been harmed and our faith demeaned.

** Remember that for the Christian, freedom does not mean the power to do anything we like, but the power to be the persons God calls us to be. What looks like constraints on other forms of freedom (like vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, for instance) for the Christian help open the way to truly be the person God calls one to be. In this case, the Johnson Amendment helps Christians to form, inform, and follow their consciences as they personally feel called by God to do. It allows for disagreement and independence, and a greater maturity in one's political choices. After all, the Church's job is not to determine what is right or wrong in terms of such choices, but to proclaim the Gospel in season and out in a way that empowers members to make the choice they feel best supports the Kingdom of God at any given point in their Christian (human) development.