Spending the Octave of Christmas in Tahoe!!

 Greetings from South Lake Tahoe!! Sister Sue and I drove up the day before yesterday. As some readers know, Sue's congregation has a retreat or vacation house there right on the lake. It is a small but lovely place and my favorite room is the sunroom, located at the back of the house (or maybe it's the front) which looks out directly on the lake. It is mainly made of windows and on one end (where I am sitting now) is a dining room table for 6-8 people where during the day I will work on Scripture, do some writing, and Sue will prepare her next courses for the University where she teaches maths and chemistry.

I have brought several things with me for this next week: 1) the books I need for a course on 2 Corinthians I will be doing at my parish (this includes a massive tome: NT Wright's new Introduction to the NT and its world which was "Santa's" gift to me from my pastor --- a book I believe will be used by introductory courses for undergraduate and maybe graduate studies in NT everywhere for some time), 2) When Silence Speaks, a book on Carthusian  spirituality by Tim Peeters, 3) Persons and their Growth, a comprehensive look at the nature of the methodology and process my Director and I are using together for personal formation, and 4) pencils and paints so I can color/paint both as part of this work, and for recreation and relaxation. (My Christmas present from Sue was a coloring book of Cats by B Kliban so I am completely set for this!)

There is no set schedule here but the rhythm of the days for me go something like this: middle of night (2:00-4:00) prayer, then back to sleep (my usual schedule has rising at 4:00 and that was true today); 8:00, morning prayer and breakfast. 9;00 or thereabouts --- to work on Scripture. The evenings Sister Sue and I will pray and celebrate communion together, fix dinner (Sue's a great cook, me -- not so much!), and then watch TV (Sue brings DVD's of PBS programs, concerts, etc) and just talk. Night prayer and bed is whenever we feel like it individually.  I brought the book on Carthusian thought because it ties in with what I have written here recently about the silence of solitude. Carthusians understand solitude in the positive way the Camaldolese and I do: it is about coming to wholeness and completion with/in God. They seem to understand silence in a correlative way as well: a kind of stilling of the passions, voices of anguish and yearning of our hearts as we draw closer to union with God who heals, comforts and completes us. At the same time they have a clear sense that one piece of stilling all of these is suffering from and in them as well. (It is impossible to satiate one's deepest hungers, needs and potentials unless, of course, we have allowed ourselves to feel these keenly and come to understand them right to their roots!)

I brought the PRH text,  Person's and their Growth,  because I am coming to a new place in my growth and need to reread the book from this new perspective. One question I have received from a reader recently (see below) has to do with my need to do this inner work/personal formation and whether it indicates that I was professed prematurely or was even unsuited to this vocation. The very cool thing about PRH is that it is about coming to wholeness and holiness in whatever call one has discerned. Yes, if a person has lived with profound woundedness from childhood or later in life, it is an excellent way to work with an accompanist and heal these wounds, but more profoundly (because deeper than this woundedness) the human person has a deep self, the one they are called to be and become over time and through the grace of God. PRH is focused on coming to live this deep true self in all of its fulness, so once one has done with the healing portion of things (or largely so) one continues on with the process.

What is especially astounding to me is the way the process works at all levels of the person's being and at whatever level of growth.  Though it rarely uses the word God, it is well conceived with God and the human potential which is God's eternal gift to us lying at our core at its heart. In-one-on one accompaniment (the kind my Director does with me) the work is explicitly Christian and faith-based --- because she and I are both Religious and bring the reality and language of grace and our personaly commitment to God into the entire process. Prayer and what occurs there is a regular feature of the work and the "process" and it is a joy to be able to speak of these things to someone who understands and lives them well --- indeed, far better than I do -- herself!

The question: [[Dear Sister, on the basis of what you recently wrote about the church's implicit commissioning of you to do the inner work you referred to, it seems to me that your need to do this work really could just mean you were professed prematurely or have no eremitical vocation at all. Shouldn't this kind of work be done before such important steps and decisions? You yourself have argued that it is best to have such personal work well in hand before seeking admission to profession as a hermit.]]

Response: It is possible that one's need for healing points to the fact that they have no call to eremitical life; they may well have embraced eremitical solitude because they can't live with themselves or others, because they have failed at life more generally and are seeking to escape all reminders of that, or done so prematurely because they are called to a more temporary period of therapeutic solitude during which they deal with whatever issues they have (bereavement, serious illness and other losses, etc.). But it is equally true that eremitical silence and solitude provide a proper context for undertaking the work of deep healing and reconciliation in an intense and focused way. Indeed, they are a very great gift of God in this undertaking. Each person with her Director's assistance will need to discern which is true --- and this means, of course, that it is possible to come to a point of healing where one also knows for certain that one is NOT called to eremitical life as a life vocation. But again, it is equally possible that one will find one is called to such ongoing and ever deepening work because one is called to holiness precisely as a hermit.

As I have written here before, in my  own work I have come to see the way God accompanied me my whole life and helped prepare the heart of a hermit. Physical solitude (not always voluntary or chosen) was almost always a part of that preparation as was my own awareness of God's presence. Thus, what has occurred is that I have found that with some fundamental healing accomplished, I am more certain than ever that eremitical solitude is meant to be the vocational context for the whole of my life and so I will also continue the personal formation through whatever comes next, and after that as well, and do so within the context of canon 603 profession and consecration. While, as you rightly note, I continue to believe that one's foundational healing needs to happen before admission to life profession the inner work I am speaking of is not merely about this kind of healing but about a deeper and deeper reconciliation of oneself with one's deepest self, with all of humanity and creation, and with God who is the very ground and source of one's being.

All of this is what I was referring to when I wrote in a recent post about the Church's act of professing me having implicitly commissioned me to undertake whatever healing and formative work was necessary, and to do so in an intense and focused way. My profession explicitly commissioned me to explore the depths and breadth of contemporary eremitical life under Canon 603. (Arch)bishop Vigneron explained this was so in his homily to me and to the assembly as a whole. What I am finding, what is affirmed again and again in many ways, is that it is eremitical solitude which is my vocation and which itself calls for something like PRH (some way of or approach to personal formation) and enables me to experience my call to ever greater depths and levels of personal wholeness --- beyond the healing of woundedness, beyond the relative comfort of life untroubled by such woundedness and fruitful in all of the ways one might live out this particular wholeness in parish ministry, the academy, hospital chaplaincy, or wherever --- and into a deeper call to genuine holiness in communion/union with God in and as an instance of the silence of solitude.

It is precisely my commitment and fidelity to my vocation which allows me to undertake this process of personal formation with the kind of depth and rigor it requires. As I began to do this work (and long before really), I realized freshly I was hungry for this kind of formation. I had had a sense of yearning for it in the Franciscans and later on as well. When I first began working with my spiritual director back in 1982 or so I fought her on this approach to personal growth, was resistant to it, distrusted it and was perhaps even frightened by it and the demands (and promises) it embodied. Sister Marietta didn't push, though she did offer bits and pieces that were helpful --- tools I could use without "buying the whole package," so to speak; she also continued to teach me whenever I needed her to, and kept encouraging me in ways which tacitly pointed to the power of PRH in spiritual/personal formation. I had no sense what a truly great gift she was offering me. And eventually I became capable of receiving it, and more eventually (within just the past few years, in fact), of seeing it as the great grace it is not just for personal healing of past wounds, but --- especially in conjunction with my eremitical life of assiduous prayer, Scripture, etc --- as a means to responding to God's invitation to genuine holiness and union.

Meanwhile, this early morning, here I am in the dark sunroom in the Dominican House (Our Lady of the Lake) at Tahoe. It is just 6 am, though I have been up for some time now, and the sun is beginning to show itself in the light pinkish brown aura and lightening sky above the mountains across the lake. I understand that somewhere in the sky beginning 28. December there will be a new celestial presence --- perhaps a comet which has never before made its appearance in this part of the universe. Christmastime is about newness of course, new birth, and it seems to me that this particular new celestial presence could well be prophetic -- as was true of the "star" that guided others to Jesus in Bethlehem. For me this presence will  mark a step into and along the deeper journey to personal holiness as I continue to explore the depth and breadth of my vocation in the constant presence of God and  with the support of my friends, parish, and the accompaniment of my Director. I hope the same sense of God's presence and accompaniment will be true for all of you in whatever way your journey takes you further and deeper into the great Mystery we call God! Merry Christmas!!

Followup to Whom is the Hermit Sent: On Eremitical Life and Chronic Illness

[[Thanks for your answer. I meant to ask you more specifically about how you view the relation of chronic illness and your eremitical vocation. I guess I let my questions get away from me. Do you see a vocation to chronic illness as prophetic? How does it fit with everything you wrote in your last post to me?]]

Thanks for following up. I should have made the linkage between chronic illness and eremitical life clear in my answer since it was there in your question. In any case, let me give you a brief answer now. 

I see chronic illness as something that sharpens everything else I said about allowing God to be God. Sometimes the love we know as God will heal us, sometimes not. But nonetheless God makes of our lives something meaningful and full if we allow this. Eremitical life is a call that allows us to serve others "simply" by being one who is completed by God, and by proclaiming the call to authentic humanity a covenantal reality. We are meant to be persons of hope, prophets embodying the Good News. To be prophetic is to speak God's Word into the present situation. We (those who are chronically ill) may or may not be able to minister in the ways most folks do and expect, but we are certainly able to allow God to love us and bring us to fulfillment through our weakness and in spite of our illness. That is the will of God we will proclaim with our lives -- and yes, in this we will be prophetic. I came to the notion of chronic illness as possible vocation before I came to an appreciation of eremitism. Only then did I see that the two could fit together with chronic illness sharpening the witness of eremitical life. I hope this is helpful.

To What or Whom is the Hermit Called and Sent?

[[Dear Sister, you wrote recently about anointing as a prophetic sacrament and one which marks one's call or "commission" to be sick within the Church. How do you understand your own call to eremitical life? Do you feel called to be a prayer warrior or to teach Scripture? You were commissioned at your profession but what were you commissioned to do? Was it to pray? To do penance? Because you do some limited ministry in your parish do you see these things as part of your commissioning or mission? To what and to whom is the diocesan hermit sent?]]

Thanks for your questions and observations. Because of a conversation I had with a hermit living back East (soon to be perpetually professed under canon 603!), I think I may have written about this in the past two or three years but I can't find the post so I'll just start over. In that conversation we talked about the hermit being sent, but not being sent out to teach or nurse or do pastoral ministry as a chaplain might, but rather, being sent into the hermitage.  I want to enlarge on this idea; in doing so I will speak of the hermit's mission and the charism of her life which I identify as canon 603's "the silence of solitude".

Three and a half years ago, as some readers will know, I began a process of focused personal formation with my Director. It was a process of spiritual formation, but also of personal healing (the healing of memories, of trauma associated with chronic illness, etc) and  personal growth which supported my maturation as a theologian and hermit. The process was (and is) an intense one which demanded time taken from other things on my part and on the part of my Director as well. I remember saying to her, that the Church had professed me to live this vocation in her name and that if we discerned that this work was a piece of growing in this vocation then the Church had implicitly given me permission to undertake this work. I felt entirely free to undertake something which would demand time, energy, and certain limitations on writing, study, and limited ministry in my parish. What I did not say to Sister M (though I'm sure she knew this anyway) was that I thought this was actually part of the charism of an eremitical vocation, and part of what I was actually commissioned to undertake.

So what is the hermit called to and what is the charism (unique gift quality) of her vocation? More, what is she commissioned or missioned to do/live? Most simply put I think, a hermit is called to witness to the fact that human beings are completed by God, that God alone is sufficient for us ("My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."), and that union with God is the goal and fulfillment of human life. I am not commissioned to go out into the world and teach or preach or do retreats, or even spiritual direction, etc --- at least I am not primarily called to these things! Hermits are not sent out into the larger world but into the silence and physical solitude of the hermitage so that in that desert environment -- with, in, and through Christ -- we may let God be God and be made into and be the human beings God calls us to be. If we succeed in this, then our lives will witness to Paul's affirmation about the sufficiency of grace in 2 Cor 12:9 and we will be a source of hope to those who need it most --- those estranged from God, themselves, and others, those who believe their lives are worthless or empty of meaning, those who have nothing to recommend them in terms of the powers and values of this world and who feel unloved and lost.

God alone is sufficient for us. No one and nothing else is. We are made for a love which is greater than anything we might have known or imagined apart from God. We are called to a life which transcends the limits and horizons of this entire world/cosmos. We are precious beyond saying, treasures in earthen vessels who are completed by the God who made all we know and summons it to fulfillment in Him. The love of/by others prepares us for this infinite, transcendent love but cannot replace it. Again, God alone is sufficient for us. Hermits are sent into the narrow confines of their hermitage in order to witness to the fact that this limited space (and this limited human life!) opens up onto eternity in God. They give themselves over to God in prayer and penance, study, spiritual direction and similar personal formation and, in every way they can, say yes to being God's counterpart, God's covenant partner. During this Advent season we prepare ourselves for a God called Emmanuel, a God who promises to be with us -- a healing, sanctifying, comforting and empowering Love-in-Act who will allow nothing to separate us from Him (Rom 8). Hermits say (and have been commissioned to say with their lives) that indeed God IS with us!!

The wholeness, peace, hope, and the cessation of all striving, fear, and anxiety in Christ, is what "the silence of solitude" refers to when it is seen as the goal of eremitical life. This "stillness" both leads to and is the result of eremitical solitude or communion with God. It is the essence of hesychasm. In a more immediate sense the silence of solitude is the environment of being alone with God, and in the more ultimate sense it is the gift (charism) which the hermit witnesses to/is for the whole church and world. We are each sent into the hermitage, a place of silence and solitude to allow God to make of us instances of "the silence of solitude" --- where solitude is defined in terms of wholeness and the fulfillment of individual truth/selfhood (holiness) in the Spirit of God.  Each person is a language event -- the embodiment or expression of the Word of God spoken within them to others. Hermits are a particular kind of language event, a contemplative instance of what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude",  something formed in and ever so much richer than mere silence and solitude added together. The Church commissions her hermits to proclaim the Gospel to others in a way which allows them to hope in the promise of their own lives and look to God as the ground and source of all their truest potential and yearning.

Beyond this I personally do not feel called to be a prayer warrior --- though of course I pray for others and otherwise. I have written here in the past that the hermitage is a place where the hermit battles with demons, especially those of her own heart, so that God might be God exhaustively in space and time. However, the "warrior" description is something I personally dislike because it sounds too much like prayer is something I do rather than something God does within me. Because my education is in systematic theology with a foundation in Scripture I have discerned a call to do some Scripture/theology in my parish so the answer to this question is yes, I feel called to do this as well as spiritual direction and (perhaps) Communion Services once a week in our parish chapel on our pastor's day off. I also feel called to do this blog and to write more systematically re eremitical life, especially under canon 603. What seems clear to me is that these limited instances of apostolic ministry are the consequences of life in eremitical solitude. They come from it and they lead me back to it so that my prayer, study, lectio divina, and the work I do in personal formation become a direct gift to others. Let me be clear though: they could not function in this way unless they were expressions of who I am in Christ -- and so they lead me back to the hermitage cell where God and I speak, love, laugh, dance, sing, and cry together for the sake of the salvation of the whole cosmos.

To whom or what is the hermit sent, then? The hermit is sent to her hermitage in order to be there for God's own sake, that God might be God. This is true so that others might know themselves as made for God and fulfilled by God alone. She is sent into the hermitage for God's own sake so that the true measure of her humanity may be achieved in Him  and she may serve as a model for others. She lives from God in the solitary Christ so that others may know who God is, who we each are, and what God wants us and our world to be about. For this reason it is particularly important that hermits not be caricatures or stereotypes, and that their lives not be focused merely on their own salvation or perfection. Will they be perfected? Yes, but only as they give themselves over to God for God's own sake and the sake of a world in desparate need of God and all that God makes possible and dreams for us.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Joseph as Icon of a Man Seeking to do Justice

As we approach Christmas during this season of Advent, it is a good time to consider the story of Joseph and his generosity with regard to Mary and Jesus.

[[. . .Especially poignant is the Matthean story of Joseph as the icon of one who struggles to allow God's own justice to be brought to birth as fully as possible. It is, in its own way, a companion story to Luke's account of Mary's annunciation and fiat. Both Mary (we are told explicitly) and Joseph (we are told implicitly) ponder things in their hearts, both are mystified and shaken by the great mystery which has taken hold of them and in which they have become pivotal characters. Both allow God's own power and presence to overshadow them so that God might do something absolutely new in their world. But  it is Joseph's more extended and profound struggle to truly do justice in mercy, and to be a righteous man who reveals God's own justice in love, God's salvation, that was at the heart of yesterday's Advent story.

The Situation:

I am a little ashamed to say I have never spent much time considering Joseph's predicament or the context of that predicament until this week. Instead I have always thought of him as a good man who chose the merciful legal solution rather than opting for the stricter one. I never saw him making any other choice nor did I understand the various ways he was pushed and pulled by his own faith and love. But Joseph's situation was far more demanding and frustrating than I had ever appreciated! Consider the background which weighed heavy on Joseph's heart. First, he is identified as a just or righteous man, a man faithful to God, to the Covenant, a keeper of the Law or Torah, an observant Jew who was well aware of Jeremiah's promise and the sometimes bitter history of his own Davidic line. All of this and more is implied here by the term "righteous man". In any case, this represents his most foundational and essential identity. Secondly, he was betrothed to Mary, wed (not just engaged!) to her though he had not yet taken her to his family home and would not for about a year. That marriage was a symbol of the covenant between God and his People Israel. Together he and Mary symbolized the Covenant; to betray or dishonor this relationship was to betray and profane the Covenant itself. This too was uppermost in Joseph's mind precisely because he was a righteous man.

Thirdly, he loved Mary and was entirely mystified by her pregnancy. Nothing in his tradition prepared him for a virgin birth. Mary could only have gotten pregnant through intercourse with another man so far as Joseph could have known --- and this despite Mary's protestations of innocence. (The OT passage referring to a virgin is more originally translated as "young woman". Only later as "almah" was translated into the Greek "parthenos" and even later was seen by Christians in light of Mary and Jesus' nativity did "young woman" firmly become "a virgin".) The history of Israel was fraught with all-too-human failures which betrayed the covenant and profaned Israel's high calling. While Joseph was open to God doing something new in history it is more than a little likely that he was torn between which of these possibilities was actually occurring here, just as he was torn between believing Mary and continuing the marriage and divorcing her and casting her and the child aside.

What Were Joseph's Options?

Under the Law Joseph had two options. The first involved a very public divorce. Joseph would bring the situation to the attention of the authorities, involve witnesses, repudiate the marriage and patrimony for the child and cast Mary aside. This would establish Joseph as a wronged man and allow him to continue to be seen as righteous or just. But Mary could have been stoned and the baby would also have died as a result. The second option was more private but also meant bringing his case to the authorities. In this solution Joseph would again have repudiated the marriage and patrimony but the whole matter would not have become public and Mary's life or that of the child would not have been put in immediate jeopardy. Still, in either instance Mary's shame and apparent transgressions would have become known and in either case the result would have been ostracization and eventual death. Under the law Joseph would have been called a righteous man but how would he have felt about himself in his heart of hearts? Would he have wondered if he was just under the Law but at the same time had refused to hear the message of an angel of God, refused to allow God to do something new and even greater than the Law?

Of course, Joseph might have simply done nothing at all and continued with the plans for the marriage's future. But in such a case many problems would have arisen. According to the Law he would have been falsely claiming paternity of the child --- a transgression of the Law and thus, the covenant. Had the real father shown up in the future and claimed paternity Joseph would then have been guilty of "conniving with Mary's own sin" (as Harold Buetow describes the matter). Again Law and covenant would have been transgressed and profaned. In his heart of hearts he might have believed this was the just thing to do but in terms of his People and their Covenant and Law he would have acted unjustly and offended the all-just God. Had he brought Mary to his family home he would have rendered them and their abode unclean as well. If Mary was guilty of adultery she would have been unclean --- hence the need for ostracizing her or even killing her!

Entering the Liminal Place Where God May Speak to Us:

All of this and so much more was roiling around in Joseph's heart and mind! In one of the most difficult situations we might imagine, Joseph struggled to discern what was just and what it would mean for him to do justice in our world! Every option was torturous; each was inadequate for a genuinely righteous man. Eventually he came to a conclusion which may have seemed the least problematical even if it was not wholly satisfactory, namely to put Mary away "quietly", to divorce her in a more private way and walk away from her. And at this moment, when Joseph's struggle to discern and do justice has reached it's most neuralgic point, at a place of terrible liminality symbolized in so much Scriptural literature by dreaming, God reveals to Joseph the same truth Mary has herself accepted: God is doing something unimaginably new here. He is giving the greatest gift yet. The Holy Spirit has overshadowed Mary and resulted in the conception of One who will be the very embodiment of God's justice in our world. Not only has a young woman come to be pregnant but a virgin will bear a child! The Law will be fulfilled in Him and true justice will have a human face as God comes to be Emmanuel in this new and definitive way.

Joseph's faith response to God's revelation has several parts or dimensions. He decides to consummate the marriage with Mary by bringing her to his family home but not as an act of doing nothing at all and certainly not as some kind of sentimental or cowardly evasion of real justice. Instead it is a way of embracing the whole truth and truly doing justice. He affirms the marriage and adopts the child as his own. He establishes him in the line of David even as he proclaims the child's true paternity. He does this by announcing this new Son's name to be Jesus, God saves.  Thus Joseph proclaims to the world that God has acted in this Son's birth in a new and way which transcends and relativizes the Law even as it completely respects it. He honors the Covenant with a faithfulness that leads to that covenant's perfection in the Christ Event. In all of this Joseph continues to show himself to be a just or righteous  man, a man whose humanity and honor we ourselves should regard profoundly.

Justice is the way to Genuine Future:

Besides being moved by Joseph's genuine righteousness, I am struck by a couple of things in light of all of this. First, discerning and doing justice is not easy. There are all kinds of solutions which are partial and somewhat satisfactory, but real justice takes work and, in the end, must be inspired by the love and wisdom of God. Secondly, Law per se can never really mediate justice. Instead, the doing of justice takes a human being who honors the Law, feels compassion, knows mercy, struggles in fear and trepidation with discerning what is right, and ultimately is open to allowing God to do something new and creative in the situation. Justice is never a system of laws, though it will include these. It is always a personal act of courage and even of worship, the act of one who struggles to mediate God's own plan and will for all those and that involved. Finally, I am struck by the fact that justice opens reality to a true future. Injustice closes off the future. In all of the partial and unsatisfactory solutions Joseph entertained and wrestled with, each brought some justice and some injustice. Future of some sort was assured for some and foreclosed to others; often both came together in what was merely a sad and tragic approximation of a "real future". Only God's own will and plan assures a genuine future for the whole of his creation. That too is something yesterday's Gospel witnessed to.

Another Look at Joseph:

Joseph is the star in Matt's account, the one who points to God and the justice only God can do. It is important, I think, to see all that he represents as Mary's counterpart in the nativity of Jesus (Son of David) who is Emmanuel (Son of the One who, especially in Jesus, is God With Us). Mary's fiat seems easy, graceful in more than one sense of that term. Joseph's fiat is hard-won but also graced or graceful. For Joseph, as for Mary, there is real labor involved as the categories of divinity and justice, law and covenant are burst asunder to bring the life and future of heaven to birth in our world. May we each be committed to mediating God's own justice and bringing God's future into being especially in this Advent-Christmas season. This is the time when we especially look ahead to Christ's coming and too, to his eventual coming to full stature when God will be all in all. May we never take refuge in partial and inadequate solutions to our world's problems and need for justice, especially out of shortsightedness, sentimentality, cowardice, evasion, or fear for our own reputations. And may we allow Joseph to be the model of discernment, humility, and courage in mediating the powerful presence and future of God we recognize as justice and so yearn for in this 21st Century.]]

Saturday, Third Week of Advent: Incarnation and Our Need for One Another (Reprise)

Jump for Joy  by Eisbacher

I wanted to reprise this piece while I work on another focusing on the Gospel lection for Saturday rather than the Vigil of Sunday. It has been an intense couple of weeks and I am ready for the Feast of the Nativity in ways I could not have imagined just two weeks ago. Awakening one another to the ways God is at work in our lives and supporting one another in learning to respond and persevere in faithfulness to that same God are gifts associated with the work of the spiritual director and the Director (delegate) for canon 603 hermits. The story of Mary and Elizabeth's relationship reprises all of those dynamics with wonderful vividness and I am grateful to God for such a gift in my own life!

Today's Gospel is wonderfully joyfilled and encouraging: Mary travels in haste to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and both women benefit from the meeting which culminates in John's leaping in his mother's womb and prophetic speech by both women. The first of these is Elizabeth's proclamation that Mary is the Mother of Elizabeth's Lord and the second is Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Ordinarily homilists focus on Mary in this Gospel lection but I think the focus is at least as strongly on Elizabeth and also on the place the meeting of the two women has in allowing them both to negotiate the great mystery which has taken hold of their lives. Both are called on to offer God hospitality in unique ways; both are asked to participate in God's mysterious plan for his creation despite not wholly understanding this call and it is in their coming together that the trusting fiats they each made assume a greater clarity for them both.

Luke's two volumes (Luke-Acts) are actually full of instances where people come together and in their meeting or conversation with one another come to a fuller awareness of what God is doing in their lives. We see this on the road to Emmaus where disciples talk about the Scriptures in an attempt to come to terms with Jesus' scandalous death on a cross and the end of all their hopes. They are joined by another person who questions them about their conversation and grief. When they pause for a meal they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and their entire world is turned on its head. That which was senseless is on its way to making a profound sense which will ground the existence of the church. Peter is struggling with the issue of eating with the uncircumcised; he comes together with Cornelius, a Centurion with real faith in Christ. In this meeting Peter is confirmed in his sense that in light of Christ no foods are unclean and eating with Gentiles is Eucharistic. There are a number of other such meetings where partial perception and clarity are enhanced or expanded. Even the Council of Jerusalem is a more developed instance of the same phenomenon.

On Spiritual Friendship, both formal and informal:

I personally love Eisenbacher's picture above because it reminds me of one privileged expression of such spiritual friendship, namely that of spiritual direction. I can remember many meetings with my own director where there was immense surprise and joy at the sharing involved, but one time in particular stands out --- especially in light of today's Gospel. I had experienced a shift in my experience of celibacy. Where once it mainly spoke to me of dimensions of my life that would never be fulfilled (motherhood, marriage, etc), through a particular prayer experience it had come to be associated instead with espousal to Christ and my own sense of being completed and fulfilled as a woman. As I recall, when I met with my director to share about this experience, I spoke softly about it, carefully, a little bashfully --- especially at first; but I also gained strength and greater confidence in the sharing of it. (I was not uncertain as to the nature of what I had experienced, but sharing it allowed it to claim me more completely and let me claim a new sense of myself in light of it.) My director listened carefully, and only then noted that she had always prayed for such a grace for all her novices (she had been novice director for her congregation); she then excused herself and left briefly. When she returned she had a CD and CD player with her. Together we sat quietly, but joyfully and even a bit tearfully celebrating what God had done for us while we listened to John Michael Talbot's Canticle of the Bride.

This year (for that last story occurred about 36 years ago now) my director brought me a laminated, somewhat over-sized bookmark with the following poem entitled Visitation to mark another period of growth  in our work together in spiritual direction/inner work. I am sorry I don't know the author.

As Mary faced

        her unexpected future

And hastened to Elizabeth,

        who was similarly expecting,

and shared with her

        her hopes,

        her dreams,

        her concerns,

        her fears;

spoke frankly as sisters

        about their love of God,

        about their future,

        about  their commitment

        to God's mission,

so we two come together today,

        speaking the truth

        in love and faith,

and God is with us.



Elizabeth and Mary come together as women both touched in significant ways by the mystery of God. They have trusted God but are not yet completely clear regarding the greater mystery or how this experience fits into the larger story of Israel's redemption. They are both in need of one another and especially of the perception and wisdom the other can bring to the situation so that they can truly offer God and God's plan all the space and time these require. Hospitality, especially giving God hospitality, takes many forms, but one of the most important involves coming together to share how God is active in our lives in the hope of coming to a greater and more life giving perspective, faith, and commitment. It is in coming together in this way that we clarify, encourage, challenge and console one another. It is in coming together in this way that we become the prophetic presence in our world God calls us to be.  The gift of being able to "speak frankly" as sisters (and brothers) is an inestimable gift of God. Let us all be open to serving as friends to one another in this sense. It is an essential dimension of being Church and of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

On the Diocesan Hermit's Relationship with the Chancery

[[Dear Sister Laurel, are you well-known in your diocese? For example, besides generally knowing the diocese has a c 603 hermit do people in the chancery know you? I don't want to explain why these questions come up for me and I hope you will answer them nonetheless. Who is it that deals with diocesan hermits? Is it the Chancellor, Vicar General, Vicar for Religious or Consecrated Life, Director of Vocations?]]

No problem, the questions stand on their own so, my own curiosity aside, I don't really need to know what raises them for you. Generally speaking, it depends on the chancery, the bishop, and other circumstances as well. While I was becoming a diocesan hermit I dealt mainly with the Vicar(s) for Religious (three of them over the years, one, Sister Susan Blomstad, OSF, followed by a pair of Co-Vicars!), the Director of Vocations (Sister Susan once served in this role and then as VR), and occasionally the Chancellor. Once professed I have dealt mainly with the Bishop and his secretary. Once, when we had an interim bishop if I needed an appointment, I again dealt with the Vicar for Religious I already knew because he had done much of the work leading to my profession and was also an ecclesiastical notary. While waiting for a new bishop I also was entrusted to the care of the Vicar for Religious (a different one) should I have some need. What is still true is that if I need to speak to someone at the chancery (or they me) regarding my vocation (or if my delegate does!) it will happen through the Bishop's office via the bishop's secretary; that is, an appointment will be made with the bishop via his secretary. No one else is ordinarily involved.

I don't know if I am well-known in my diocese, though I occasionally run into people who know me from something as remote as the article done in our diocesan paper after my perpetual profession in 2007. The fact of my perpetual profession has certainly helped bring people to the chancery seeking to become c 603 hermits themselves, but this is a somewhat different question I suppose. I also know a number of people in chancery departments having nothing to do with me at all (usually Schools/Education) and will spot them sometimes while waiting for an appointment or having lunch or even checking out the cathedral book store. But chanceries change personnel regularly and there is no reason for new folks to know me at all --- nor I them. (This is exacerbated by the fact that our website and diocesan directory do not even list cc 603 or 604 vocations at all; it is also intensified by the way the bishop's office and secretary are set apart from other chancery offices and waiting areas.) If folks also come to my parish occasionally they are apt to know me, yes, and I think too if they know my pastor they might know of me -- at least a little.

Some hermits live and worship in their cathedral parish and may even do some part time work for the chancery or the parish; they will be relatively well known there just as I am in my parish, but I think this is fairly rare. Most of us live in parishes relatively distant from the chancery and/or cathedral parish and most of us (those I know of anyway) tend to meet once a year with our bishops at most -- more often in case of specific need (usually the hermit's own need when she is encouraged to call for an appointment!). Of course, I would also bet that many chancery personnel will only know folks engaged in apostolic ministry anyway; contemplatives will be unlikely to be known; if they are hermits, they will have disappeared from sight! Consider it a natural expression of the relative hiddenness of the eremitical vocation.

Those interested in becoming diocesan hermits will usually deal with Vicars for Religious or Vocation Personnel first of all. It is not usually the case that one deals with the bishop until after the VR or Vicar for Consecrated Life is prepared to recommend one for profession. (This may differ in smaller dioceses, for instance.) At that point the bishop will ask the hermit "candidate" to make an appointment with him and begin a series of meetings so that he can do his own discernment (both for the individual and for the diocese itself). Only after the bishop determines to profess the hermit will the diocese move ahead with the rite. During the time between the decision and the profession itself the hermit will be in contact with the VR, canonists, and the bishop's MC (to nail down the details of the liturgy including ministers, lectors, servers, cantors, etc., create or collect the necessary documents associated with profession, and answer questions as they arise). Post-profession the hermit will ordinarily deal with the bishop and/or his delegate for routine meetings.

I hope this is helpful.

Authentic Eremitism vs Stereotypes and the Source of Stereotypes

Dear Sister, I think I understand why you insist that in discerning an eremitical vocation there must be a redemptive experience at the heart of everything. If a hermit's life experience is mainly a desert or wilderness experience then life in physical solitude can just be about escaping or not fitting in unless there is a redemptive experience which transforms all of that, right? Most religious vocations require someone to be physically well but you write about chronic illness as vocation and about that maybe even leading to an eremitical vocation. At the same time something has to transform chronic illness into something more which speaks of wellness and that's where redemption comes in. Do you think the stereotypes associated with hermits came to be when the redemptive experience or element, as you put it, was missing?

Really great question. I never saw it coming as I read the comments that led up to it. Almost everything I write about eremitical life depends upon the redemptive element you spoke of and yes, that certainly includes my impatience with and rejection of stereotypes. The stereotypes I can think of have to do with rejection of others, escapism, an individualism which is antithetical to life in community and often to the generosity it requires; they can involve an emphasis on the difficulty of life in solitude without any focus on the answer it represents for the hermit and all of those living with/in desert situations, and also a piety which is superficial and tends to devotionalism, but not to the prayer and deep love of God, self AND others which profound spirituality makes possible. Stereotypes, it seems to me, take one part or side of eremitical life and runs with it while excluding the completing and paradoxical elements or side which a strong commitment to Christ brings.

Eremitical life is rare but it is not bizarre or essentially inhuman; it can be difficult but its deep meaningfulness makes it a life of genuine joy as well. Hermits go away or withdraw from "the world" (i.e., that which rejects Christ), but not simply to be apart from others; they do it so they can come to communion with God, themselves and with others. They do it so they can grow in their capacity for love and proclaim the Gospel with their lives because this is the way solitude works for them; it is a goal toward which these lives are moving. For any of this to be true means there must be a redemptive experience at the heart of hermits' lives, something which transforms all the superficialities into something deeper and more "real". In my own eremitical life I work hard with my Director, and at all the aspects of eremitical life (prayer, lectio, study, etc.,) not because I am (or am looking to be) some sort of spiritual prodigy (I am not!) but because Christ is the answer to the question I am and comes to me in a silent solitude which will eventually be transformed into "the silence of solitude" and a genuine gift to the Church and world.

In my experience, the physical solitude of eremitical life helps sharpen and bring to expression the question each person is while (when turned to assiduous prayer) giving God all the room God needs to become/be the answer in love and abundant life. That is  the very essence of monastic and eremitical life, the very essence of desert spirituality, the heart of Christian theology's "Theology of the Cross". But without the redemptive experience Christ brings to the desert a (putative) hermit is left like a JBap proclaiming repentance without any sense of the Messiah who will succeed and transcend the significant word of repentance he brings himself. We can find examples of such hermits throughout history and even online. They are often little more than stereotypes and caricatures, voices crying in the wilderness witnessing only to their own pain and inadequacy, their own "spiritual" experiences, but living an isolation that gives the lie to their catholicity. A hermit will know suffering and pain -- of course! But yes, as you say, without a profound and abiding sense of redemption of all of that, they will not be hermits in the sense the Church defines this vocation. The answer they seek must also have come to them in the silence of solitude if they are to witness to more than a sterile silence and loveless aloneness.

Without the redemptive element -- and by this I mean without a participation in the Christ Event in a way which brings wholeness out of brokenness, personal wealth (a fruitful and abundant life) out of poverty, meaning out of absurdity, and a loving humanity out of sinful inhumanity --- the hermit can witness to only one side of the human equation, the side of the lone, sinful individual in search of love and the ultimate healing of emptiness and estrangement. It is out of this milieu that we get stereotypes that disedify and make the eremitical vocation irrelevant at best. All of the essential elements of canon 603 I have written about on this blog over the years, but especially "the silence of solitude" as a unique communal reality, depend on our seeing eremitical life in this way. It must be informed by and witness to the redemption of the human person and transformation of the human heart which comes to us in Christ or it is worse than worthless --- especially in a world of rampant individualism, cocooning, and even misanthropy.

Again, great question; thanks very much for that. The Church understood well what eremitical life was and was not about when it composed this canon Thus, those claiming to be hermits (whether lay or consecrated, canonical or non-canonical) cannot speak only (or even mainly) of pain or struggle; there must be a sense that in Christ isolation is transformed into solitude and the pain and struggle present has been (or is on the way to being) transfigured into the joyful silence we call shalom and stillness the tradition knows as hesychasm. This, unlike in apostolic or ministerial religious life, is the very purpose of eremitical life. Canon 603, after all, describes a redeemed and essentially generous life, not a selfish one dominated by struggle and suffering and certainly not one populated by stereotypes! It is about who we are when God alone is truly allowed to be sufficient for us. It is the hermit's life and who she is made by God to be that is the gift, not the ministry (even that of prayer!!) she does. It is not merely or even primarily about what she does (not even a life of piety and devotionals or suffering and deprivation); these, by themselves, are the makings of disedifying stereotypes. Instead it is the prayer that sings of God's victory over sin and death that she is made by God to be that is the essence of an eremitical vocation.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

As it turns out, this question or others like it have been posed or repeated several times, most recently with regard to some things I said about the hermit heart and the need for friendships. I have reprised it before. Thus, I am going to repost something I first wrote about three years ago or so because I still don't think I can improve on it at this point.

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations (Merton once said "Hermits are made by difficult mothers"), a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes not only from within but from beyond themselves as well. When this happens, when the desert becomes a place of meeting with God as well as of stripping and emptying, such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is transformed and transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this very presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.