A Theology of the Cross (Reprise)

Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved: Proclaiming a God Whose Power is Made Perfect in Weakness. Initially published in Review For Religious, January 2001



Death, and God’s relation to death is an overarching theme in human life, and certainly in the life of the Church. During Lent, for instance, we spend an entire forty days preparing to celebrate Christ’s victory over “sin and death.” During this season and others, images of these hostile forces, references to chaos, meaninglessness, and our bondage to all of them surround us. And in light of this, if there is anything we understand, (or should understand!), it is that these things are “the enemy.” During this time, for instance, we read in the Old Testament again and again that our basic choice, the really fundamental option that faces us in all of life’s moments and moods, is “choose life, not death;” and we know that these alternatives are not equivalent. After all, one is “of God” and the other is not. One is a choice for being, integration, re-creation, and meaning, while the other is a choice for diminishment, disintegration, destruction, and senselessness. One is the choice to respond to and fulfill the profound vocation to authentic existence spoken by God deep within us, while the other represents the repudiation of this summons and the rejection of our truest selves. One is, ultimately, a choice for an eternity in communion with the God who authenticates and completes us, the God who is the ground and source of life and meaning, while the other is the act by which we embrace the powers and utter emptinesses of hell.

At this time of the year in particular, we examine our lives for signs that they are marked and marred by our own alliances with sin and death, and we participate in a more focused way than usual in activities which reject such alliances, and are geared towards breaking the bonds established between us and them. We make the concerted effort to acknowledge, “we are dust, and shall return to dust,” that death is something that threatens us not only from without, but that it is also something that we carry around within us. And of course, we affirm and celebrate that for our sakes, and in opposition to our misguided, misbegotten alliances, God’s own Son has dwelt amongst us, implicating the One he called “Abba” into the whole panorama of our fragile, flawed, finite, and mortal existences, ---- up to and including his altogether humanly contrived, and godforsaken death on a Roman cross.

We observe Holy Saturday as the day when sin and death have triumphed. On this day there is no Savior, no Church, no Sacrament, and no Gospel. There is nothing to celebrate or proclaim. There is neither hope, nor freedom, nor real future. Sin and death are the apparent victors, and the present is as empty and forlorn as the desolate plaint of the enfeebled and failed messiah, whom we heard cry out from the cross just the day before. On this day we recall the original disciples --- broken by disappointment, grief, guilt, and shame, and stunned to terrified silence when the powers of the world overcame the One they called “Christ.” Their shattered hope for the definitive coming of God’s reign, and the ignominious, apparently unvindicated, death of the man Jesus stands at the center of our vision as well on this day. And in the shadow of this recollection, the bleakness of a world dominated by a power that regularly opposes and subverts the work of the Author of Life is clear. On this day, our entire horizon is death and the victory it has achieved over God’s Son, over us, and over our world.

In light of all this then, how is it we still hear from those engaged in pastoral ministry to the dying and bereaved for instance, that God is either the “author of death,” or it’s agent, or that anyone’s death [. . .]** is “God’s will”? How is it, with all the scriptural and empirical evidence otherwise, our ministers and faithful continue to present death as something other than the implacable enemy of life and the God who authors life? How is it that death is conceived of as other than an entirely alien and antithetical element in our existence, which God works continually and indeed, suffered greatly to defeat --- an element that remains only on sufferance until “(God) is all in all”? How is it possible to hear from faithful who have been told that “God is the Lord of life and death,” that this must mean that when death intervenes, it is “God who KILLS us”? Yet, blunt and apparently absurd as this last formulation may sound to us, it is merely the clear spelling out of the implications of a flawed theology which considers death the event WITH which God punishes sin and calls us to judgment, rather than the hostile power he conquers, and the event IN which he intervenes in Christ, to raise us to eternal life.

Whether we are ministers trying to assist others with their own deaths, pastors comforting the bereaved, or simply persons who are trying to make sense of the reality of our own mortality, all too often we are burdened with vague, ill-defined, and even erroneous notions of death and the relationship between God and death. The situation is complicated by misreadings and distortions of Paul’s theology of the cross, and by fundamentalist interpretations of the creation narratives of Genesis. It is likewise made more difficult by anachronistic conceptions of the human being which see him/ her in terms of a body-soul dualism, as well as by simplistic notions of the sovereignty of God. The result is quite simply an inadequate theology that makes genuinely Christian ministry to the dying and bereaved difficult or even impossible, and caricatures God as the author of tragedy and absurdity in the process.

It seems to me therefore, that we must make a serious effort to correct our misconceptions of death, its relation to sin, and especially the relation of God to death. After all, how in the world are we to adequately celebrate God’s own triumph OVER sin and death, if we misunderstand these realities and posit God as their author? How can we make sense of the fact that God willed the suffering and death of his only begotten Son if we understand these realities as something God had complete control over in the first place? Are we really stuck with Anselm’s satisfaction theory, for instance, and the parody of God and God’s justice it is based on? And are we left only with the option of telling the dying and bereaved to whom we minister that “this is the will of God” or do we really have better answers at our disposal? Obviously, I am convinced there are far better answers available to Christians, and it is my intention to explore some of them, and their theological foundation, in this essay.

Common Misunderstandings of the Nature of Death

There are two basic misunderstandings regarding death and God’s relation to death, which seem to me to burden most Christians. The first is the notion that God is in COMPLETE control of human existence, and that because death is a part of that reality, this must mean that he is in complete control of it as well. There are various versions of this notion: “(Death) is God’s will;” “ Death is the way God punishes us for our sin” (especially original sin); “Everything that happens has a purpose;” “God gives and God takes away;” etc. Most often we hear versions of this theology from homilists and ministers trying to encourage us that God is omnipotent, and that everything that occurs, no matter how apparently senseless, is meaningful. We also hear these interpretations from ministers who believe that by affirming death is in God’s hands, by affirming it as the event WITH which he calls us home, for instance, some of the fear and sting of either dying, or bereavement is removed. Clearly, we sense that death is easier to bear if it is not simply perceived as an alien and hostile element in human existence, particularly if we can hear that it really isn’t the entirely senseless event it so often seems to be. In the meantime, however, we repress the serious theological questions such affirmations raise: Is all death and dying sent by God? Is God really their author? Are we expected to attribute instances of chance and absurdity to him as well, or are we expected to simply deny the existence of these things? Are so-called ‘acts of God’ really the work of God? Does “sovereignty” imply total control, or is the situation more complex than this? And of course, if God IS the author and agent of death as well as of life, what kind of God would such a deity truly be?

The second misunderstanding is related to the first. It is the notion that death, and here we are speaking of human death, is something that threatens us entirely from without, and so, is something which God can overcome by mere fiat. It is sometimes combined with the secular view that death is a wholly natural and neutral reality. This notion of human death fails to understand it as a partly, and indeed profoundly personal reality which is not simply part and parcel of our temporality, but is a special aspect of sinful existence. Because of this, it often goes unrecognized, much less acknowledged that God cannot force his way into this realm, nor overcome it from without. As in all else that is personal in our lives, God must be allowed or implicated into this realm if he is to bring it under subjection to himself and transform it. The logical consequences of this misunderstanding are also generally repressed, for such a misunderstanding of the relation of God to death generally raises the question: why did the Word have to become incarnate and God’s own Son suffer a torturous death by crucifixion, if God could have simply overcome sin and death by fiat?

Another Look at the Relation of Death to Sin and God

God created the world of time and space. He created it out of nothing (nihil), and it retains the ability to cease existing, to sink once again into nothingness. The created world continues to be conditioned by non-being. It is ambiguous and threatened. Non-being is an aspect of temporal-spatial existence. While created reality depends upon God for its existence, it is not simply from and of God. It is not, for instance, an emanation of God, and it does not possess its own being. It is finite and must be continually summoned and held in existence against the power of non-being also at work within and around it. Beyond this, and in part because of the presence of non-being as a conditioning element, this world also possesses potential. It has the capacity to grow and change. Non-being conditions this world as threat and as promise. It is both a condition of possibility and the condition of non-possibility.

When we consider human existence the situation becomes even more complex, because human beings are created with the capacity to reject God, and to ally themselves with that which is other than the One from whom life and meaning come, even looking to this as a source of life and meaning. Not only is human existence ambiguous in all the ways historical existence is ambiguous, but human beings can refuse to simply receive meaningful life as a gift from God. They can, as the OT puts the matter, “choose to know good and evil,” (in the very intimate way the OT uses the term knowledge), or “choose to be as Gods,” or again, they can “choose death.” Human beings can ally themselves with life and the author of life in total dependence, or (and there is no other option), they can ally themselves with the powers of non-being, the meaningless, anti-life, anti-truth, literally godless powers that are also part of spatial-temporal existence. And of course, they do. In fact they do so inevitably in one way and another. Without exception human beings embrace the powers and principalities of this world in a mistaken bid for autonomy and completion. They “live (and die) from” these powers, and in doing so give them greater standing, status, power, menace, and malignancy in the world than they would have without human complicity.



But where does non-being and the power of non-being come from in the first place? Is God its author? Is non-being a “something,” a form of matter as Manichaeism once suggested, and where else could it come from than the God who is the source of all that “is”? One of the better explanations comes from JÜrgen Moltmann in his, God in Creation. Building on a Jewish kabalistic notion , Moltmann explains:

<< God makes room for his creation by withdrawing his presence. What comes into being is a nihil which does not contain the negation of creaturely being (since creation is not yet existent), but which represents the partial negation of the divine being, inasmuch as God is not yet creator. The space which comes into being and is set free by God’s self-limitation is literally God-forsaken space. The nihil in which God creates his creation is god-forsakenness, hell, absolute death; and it is against the threat of this that he maintains his creation in life. Admittedly, the nihil only acquires this menacing character through the self-isolation of created beings to which we give the name of sin and godlessness. . . . This points to a necessary correction in the interpretation of creation: God does not create merely by calling something into being, or by setting something afoot. In a more profound sense he “creates” by letting-be, by making room and by withdrawing himself. >> (Emphasis added)

And what then of sin or estrangement from God? If non-being is a “natural” part of finite existence, then isn’t sin, which is primarily estrangement from God, also simply something natural, a part of historical existence? The answer is no. Sin, which begins as a natural separation or distinction from the God who dwells in eternity, occurs when human beings (who dwell instead in time and space) choose not to be entirely dependent upon God to save them from the threat of non-being. It occurs when human beings mistake actual independence from God for freedom, and when independence from God is pushed the further disastrous misstep, and mistaken for equality with God. It occurs whenever human beings decide that a humble response to God’s summons alone is not to be the only determinant of their lives, and align themselves with that which is not from or of God. It occurs when we make common cause with death and non-being rather than with the One who is the source of life and meaning. It occurs whenever human beings turn away from their creator toward that which is antithetical to him in acts of rebellion and apostasy, and transform a more natural separation-yet-communion into actual estrangement, alienation, and sometimes-outright antipathy. It happens whenever the “we” of our “original” state is rejected and/or betrayed, and thus transformed into the self-conscious, self-concerned, relatively isolated “I” attested to in the Genesis narratives.

Similarly then, death has also been transformed from something natural into something entirely unnatural. The death that we recognize as an integral part of human existence is something wholly unnatural. Just as human distinction and separateness was transformed into actual estrangement and alienation from God, from self, and from others, so too has normal finitude, ordinary mortality, taken on monstrous proportions in light of human sin. Human death is not simply a natural or neutral event. It is not simply the moment when non-being overcomes being, although it is certainly that as well. Human death is menacing; it is associated with human complicity and collusion with the anti-divine powers of nothingness, meaninglessness, and chaos. And of course, for this reason human death is “the wages of sin,” and implies the triumph of godlessness ---- a triumph which human beings have assisted, colluded, and become complicit in, in every possible way. Human death, apart from Christ, is a death of godforsakenness.

It is also, therefore, a death marked by the wrath of God, but wrath in the genuinely Pauline sense of the word. After all, God has created us with the capacity to choose something other than himself, or to be something other than we are created to be. And choose we do. And when we do, God leaves us to our choices. This is precisely what living under the wrath of God means. It does not mean that God is angry. It certainly does not mean that he punishes us in any way. It means simply that we are left to the choices we have made and the alliances we have forged throughout our lives. It means that, in fact, God respects (that is, he will not and cannot interfere with) these choices or alliances. It also means that those who are born into the world after us are touched by the same powers and principalities which we ourselves have elevated and magnified with our choices. Paul describes this in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. The wrath of God implies being “given up” to the alien powers with which we have aligned and allied ourselves, and therefore, to the gradually worsening decadence and disintegration that afflict us, our society, and our world because we have made common cause with chaos and nothingness. It implies an inhuman death marked by the embrace of godforsakenness, one in which absolute godlessness triumphs. Whatever death is or would be apart from Sin, it is not this. Instead it is the enemy of sinful humankind and of God, and it is this situation which the Cross of Christ is meant to address.



The Cross of Christ and the Death of Death

There are times and situations in human life and history which demand we look again at everything we believe, every definition and presupposition we hold, every scrap of knowledge we think we possess, and every perspective which seems intelligent, or natural, or logical. The picture of reality gained from the perspective of Holy Saturday surely suggests that the cross of Christ is, at the very least, one of these events. From this perspective alone we have a picture of a failed and possibly delusional “Messiah.” After all, God’s Son had not climbed down from his cross. He had not saved himself as he had saved others, and in the process he died a completely degrading and entirely ignoble death. The one he called Abba with an unprecedented intimacy had not established his reign with a mighty and outstretched arm. The angel of death had not passed over, nor had the powers of Rome been routed in any way reminiscent of the Egyptians at the Exodus. Instead, sin and death were the apparent victors on this day, and a God whose power is, even today, mainly understood by believers and unbelievers alike in abstract, impersonal terms of omnipotence, had proved unable to deal with the consequences of human freedom and its abuses, much less with the destructive powers of the world. And yet, the Christian Gospel affirms that this evident failure was the ground of a far more awesome victory, the victory of a hitherto unknown God whose “foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.”

So then, how is it the Cross of Christ “works”? This question is often posed “Why did Jesus have to die this kind of death?” And implicit in this query are a number of others: “why couldn’t Jesus simply have died of old age?” or, “why would his Father allow such a thing, much less will it?” or, “what kind of God would demand that his Son suffer betrayal, torture, abandonment, and even godforsakenness or hell?” and, “if God asks that of his Son, how can I believe he will have mercy on me?” These are important questions, and they are variations on the questions raised whenever God is made the author or agent of death. They are also the questions which are at least implicitly raised by notions of the cross which make it the place where an infinitely offended God is appeased or placated. And the answer to them is as simple as it is almost incomprehensible in its wondrousness. For God’s sake and the sake of a divine justice which is defined solely in terms of mercy and which seeks the reconciliation and completion of all of reality WITH God, God must overcome everything which separates him from us. For this reason, in order to implicate God into the realm from which he is by definition absent and from which he has actually been further excluded by human sin, someone sinless and therefore still entirely open and responsive to God, must die such a death.

On the one hand, this death must represent the worst death a human being may die. It must be a death marked by failure, weakness, abandonment and isolation. It must be a genuinely “inhuman” (that is, sinful) fate, the death of one whose dignity has been stripped from him, and who is left completely powerless and alone, with nothing left to recommend him to God. It, above all, must be a death where this one is given over entirely to nothingness, to the emptinesses of hell. It must be the death we each deserve --- the death that, without Christ, we each will die because of the alliances we have forged, and the choices we have inevitably made and ratified. It must be the death we each merit for ourselves, and often visit on others. And it must be that death in which the wrath of God is experienced without mitigation or diminution, precisely so that God can instead become inexhaustibly present here under the aspect of grace. At the same time, it must have been the most genuinely human death ever died. There could be nothing present in Christ which mitigated or compromised his openness to and dependence upon God, nothing which prevented the entire will of God being done in him, nothing which spoke of misguided autonomy, collusion with the powers of death and sin, disobedience, or pride. At the precise instant Jesus’ death is the most inhuman (godless) imaginable, it must also be the most human (open to God) precisely so that genuinely human existence which is defined in terms of obedience to and communion with God once again becomes a real possibility in our world. And the result is not only the possibility of genuinely human existence, but also necessarily, the simultaneous “death of (godforsaken) death.”

As we noted above, human death, the “wages of sin,” the result of our alliances with the “powers and principalities” of this world, cannot be destroyed from without, by fiat, without God also destroying his entire creation and abrogating the freedom of those who would and do ally themselves with these powers. So God chooses to become present even here in the realm of nothingness. God empties himself completely of his divine prerogatives in order to definitively reveal and assert a novel kind of divine sovereignty, an incredibly paradoxical power defined in terms of weakness. Sinful death is the ultimate enemy, and so, God chooses to be subject to it so that he might transform it entirely. Thus, Good Friday and Holy Saturday [and all revealed there] are followed and rendered permanently valid by Easter, the definitive and wholly new “Passover.” After Christ, death is no longer the godless place, and it no longer has the final word. Because of Christ, and because he chose to become subject to sin and the wages of sin out of love for his Father and us, God has become present “in the unexpected [and even the unacceptable] place,” and the power of death, which was the power to separate us from God forever, is definitively broken. The God Jesus reveals--- the One whose Name he makes known and real among us, is the formerly unseen, infinitely paradoxical God who, from creating to redeeming his creation, “calls into being the things that are not, and raises the dead to life.” Most significantly, he does so with a sovereignty which is worked out in self-emptying and self-limitation, a justice which is defined in terms of mercy, and a “power (which is) made perfect in weakness.”

Paul summarizes this whole theology in one statement: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” Note well that Paul does not say, “God was in Christ being reconciled to a world that offended him infinitely.” Note as well that neither is Paul concerned with a kind of justice which is either familiar or comfortable to us. This justice is neither distributive nor retributive. In no sense is this a God “who gives us what we deserve.” Instead Paul’s entire focus is on the fact that in the Christ Event, and most especially on the cross, God asserts his rights over creation, and defines justice with an exhaustively kenotic and sacrificial mercy which secures our freedom on the one hand, and which transforms the very things we choose when we abuse and misuse that freedom on the other. In this theology, God’s justice is actually expressed as his refusal to allow anything to separate us from him. Here grace and justice, are largely synonymous. If wrath means allowing us our choices out of love for us even in full recognition of our sin, grace means allowing us our choices, but, out of an unconditional love, transforming the very nature of that which we choose so that we are no longer separated from God, or broken and estranged as human beings. If wrath means allowing us to choose the godless and godforsaken, grace means the transformation of these things, and especially the transformation of sinful death into an actual sacrament of God’s presence. If sin means our separation from God and the self-assertion and ingratitude that prompts it, divine justice is God’s assertion that we belong to him no matter what, and what is ordinarily called “justification” is the reconciliation that results when God acts out this judgement in the Christ Event.

All of this, of course, is the climax of the Divine self-emptying that began at creation. It contrasts precisely with the pretensions to divinity assumed by human beings in sin --- the same pretensions that crucified Christ in a riot of religious righteousness and political expediency. This is indeed the victory of a God whose “foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.” It reminds us that ours is a God who is folly to “Greeks” and a scandal to “Jews,” and as it does so, it calls into question everything we once held as conventional wisdom about God, his sovereignty, wrath, justice, power, and dignity, and it offers us alternative and paradoxical definitions of all of these, as well as our own notions of what constitutes genuinely human existence. What was true at the time Paul wrote about the scandal and foolishness of the cross is no less true now. For this reason we can be very sure that if the Cross has not challenged our notions of all we experience and know, we have not really understood it. Even more seriously, so long as we refuse to accept the redefinitions achieved on the cross, we make it, and what was achieved there, void. There is, I think, no place our success or failure in this has more serious consequences than in our theology of death, and our ministry to the dying and bereaved.





Implications for Our Ministry to the Dying and Bereaved

This brings to our ministry then, an alternative way of looking at death, tragedy, senselessness, and their relation to God. I believe this alternative perspective results in an altogether more extensively and intensively comforting pastoral approach, but there is no doubt that it is tremendously challenging as well. After all, it requires that both we and those we minister to, give up the facile answers and simplistic platitudes that have so long mistakenly passed for Christian faith and truth. This perspective demands then that we adopt a grammar of salvation built on the paradoxes embodied in a theology God worked out in creation and on the cross in terms of kenosis and asthenia. In this theology, the God who renounces his own prerogatives out of love for us is not in total control, but ultimately, he is the God who asserts his rights over all of creation and mercifully brings all things to fulfillment in himself. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once rightly reminded us, “Not everything that happens is the will of God, but inevitably nothing that happens occurs outside his will.” In this theology God has willed the sinful death of only one person, his own Son, but he has done so only in order that he might defeat godless death entirely. In this theology, God gives, sin distorts, desecrates and destroys, and death takes away, but God intervenes in death and robs it of any ultimate victory. And in this grammar of salvation, not everything that happens in our world makes sense or has meaning, but at the same time it can all be the basis for celebrating a God who will bring order out of chaos, life out of death, and meaning out of absurdity if we only give him the chance, and perhaps even when we do not.

In concrete terms this means that when dying or grieving persons ask us if this human death is the will of God, we must answer no, but what God will make of it in Christ is another matter. Death is the enemy, and it is both God’s and ours, but in Christ it is also the vanquished enemy whose power, for all its awfulness, is a merely a hollow shell of what it once was. If we are asked why God does not intervene to save a dying child, for instance, we must be clear that God has intervened, but he has intervened in death to transform its very nature, and make sure it does not have the final word. And when those we minister to rightly affirm that they have sinned, and are frightened of God’s justice, or that they feel guilty as death approaches, we have to be able to remind them that God’s justice has determined they will not be separated from him. No. God has asserted his rights over all of creation, and has promised to love us with an everlasting love. Perhaps it is the case that God’s mercy assumes an awful aspect for those unprepared to be nothing but forgiven, but for those who are prepared to accept this gift, God’s justice is a source of unending joy, and its promise is still ultimately comforting. So, while we cannot minimize or trivialize the sin and guilt anyone experiences, neither can we allow it to be perceived as greater or more powerful than God’s own solution for it. The wages of sin is godforsaken death. But an innocent Christ has died our own deserved godless death, and the wages of this death is eternal life in communion with a God who refuses to allow sin and death to remain godless.

Many Christians are scandalized or frightened by the suggestion that God is not in complete control of his creation. They believe it offends against a God who is traditionally described in terms of omnipotence. But they have not been introduced to the paradoxical sovereignty of the God of Jesus Christ who defeats sin and death by participating in them. Here God’s sovereignty is exercised precisely where he dies for us. A God who is said to limit himself in creating and redeeming a free creation, is a real stumbling block to many Christians, and more than this, many are made nervous by the notion that there are things at work in the world which God neither foresees in detail, nor immediately controls. This too seems to offend against the theology of an omniscient, omnipotent God. Many will be downright angry at a notion of divine justice where people “don’t get what they deserve.” After all, a God whose judgement IS his mercy certainly is a stumbling block. But, again, God asserts his rights over us as he will and for all these people, the paradox of a crucified God whose foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men, needs to be more convincingly proclaimed and taught. While some of us find the notion of God as the author and agent of death repugnant, many others are threatened by a notion of death where God is neither the agent nor the author. At the same time however, these folks may not have been taught that through Christ’s death and resurrection sinful death is miraculously transformed into a sacrament of God’s presence. And yet, it is certainly part of an adequate ministry to the dying and bereaved to make these central aspects of the Gospel of Jesus Christ effectively known. We will have failed badly if we are unable to recognize and adequately affirm either side of the God-death equation that is at the heart of Christian kerygma.

Every human life has its Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays. There is failure, absurdity, betrayal, collusion, isolation, injustice, cruelty, torment, and death. There are times when we are simply left helpless and mute in the face of our own and others’ inhumanity, and when we are bewildered by the tragic and inexplicable circumstances of our personal and collective histories, as well as by the silence and apparent inadequacy of God at these times. In the short term Sin often does triumph and the powers of this world are sometimes immediately victorious. After all, God is not yet “all in all,” and not all that happens is either from or of him. Ministers to the dying and bereaved have to be courageous enough to admit these things without mitigation or equivocation. And yet, there is another side to all of this that must be communicated clearly and persuasively. Death and the apparent triumph of non-being are followed by resurrection, and as a result, we really can’t look at any of reality in quite the same way again. The negativities of life are real, but so is the God who chooses to enter into them and transform them with his own life and presence. After all, ours is the God of Jesus and Paul, the God who raises the dead to life, the God whose justice is defined in terms of mercy rather than wrath, and who refuses to allow anything to separate us from his love. Ours is the God who assumes a position of impotence in order that his sovereignty might be perfected and we might be saved when we are most helpless. And he is the God who does this so that even while we face squarely the greatest tragedies and senselessnesses life has to offer, we can exultantly cry with Paul, and help those to whom we minister to do the same, “Sin where is thy victory, death where is thy sting?”

** Article redacted here by author. My position on Jesus' death and God's will has changed since I wrote this article so I have deleted a parenthetical phrase that was troubling in this regard. In the original article I noted Jesus' death was the single exception to the position being posited. Now I interpret this theology and the scene in Gethsemane quite differently; I understand that it is living with integrity which was God's will revealed there. Living with integrity can mean facing death as a consequence. This does not mean that death itself (and especially not death by torture, etc.) is the will of God. I believe this change is consonant with the rest of the article's theology. Sister Laurel.

More on Writing a Rule of Life: Is it for Religious and Hermits Only?

[[Hi Sister Laurel! You wrote recently that you were editing your Rule. Do you have to do that often? What makes it necessary. . .does your Bishop require it? I am not and don't want to be a hermit because I am married. . . but I wonder if it would help me to write a Rule of Life? Any ideas?]]

Hi there, yourself, and peace! Yes, I am editing my Rule and no, it is not something I need to do very often -- although I do treat my Rule as a document I reflect on, and which I have completely covered with marginalia, etc over the last few years. I have written several versions over the 31 years I have lived as a hermit, but only two were submitted to the diocese. The one I am editing was submitted in 2005 so that is six years ago --- enough time to have grown in the vocation, changed some of my daily and weekly schedule, and come to reflect on and understand better central elements of the Canon governing this life. As a result I am mainly adding or expanding sections I either didn't discuss sufficiently or did not include at all. One of those has to do with stability; a second has to do with the charism or gift quality of the diocesan hermit; a third has to do with stricter separation from the world; and the last one is an expansion of the section on "the silence of solitude". My horarium has also changed enough to require rewriting --- though this is less significant than the other redactions.

What makes these changes necessary? As noted, I may not have written about these sections sufficiently or at all even. I may not have understood them sufficiently, and have only come to this as I have lived the Rule and reflected on either Canon 603 and its central elements or those of monastic life more generally. They may have assumed a place in my life they did not have 6 years ago, or I may only now truly appreciate their importance for my own vocation and the vocation to diocesan eremitism generally. For instance, stability is a significant Benedictine value and vow, but Canon 603 uses the three more typically Franciscan vows (poverty, chastity, obedience) instead. Because of this, I had not consciously lived stability or explored it from the inside out until after I had made final oblature with the Camaldolese, attended a couple of Benedictine experience retreats, and considered how stability fit in with the three perpetual vows I had made in 2007. I think stability is something one needs to live for a while before one presumes to write about it. While it is not explicitly mentioned in Canon 603, it is really central to monastic life and to the life of the diocesan hermit who is vowed within a specific diocese.

The same is true of stricter separation from the world. One needs to learn what "the world" really is in this canon as well as in one's own life, and then too, what fosters one's ability to live out real separation from this. Paradoxically, one must also determine what is necessary to live one's vocation with integrity and in a way which nurtures one's own growth in wholeness and holiness. The things which truly do this are not "the world" in the sense the canon means and must be accommodated without compromising other elements of the life (the silence of solitude, assiduous prayer and penance) for instance. Again, this is something one learns only in the living of the vocation. Otherwise, one is tempted to simply say "the world" is anything not explicitly "spiritual" (for instance) and then reject this global reality without really knowing how elements within it truly affect one's life --- do they lead to growth or the dissipation of one's vocation, for instance? Do they enhance one's spirituality or detract from it? When and to what degree, if any, do they fit the eremitical life, and why and how does the individual hermit decide that?

An example of what I mean here is the movie I went to see recently, Of Gods and Men. I went with friends from the parish and yes, we went during Lent when my own solitude is even stricter than usual. A while back I went to see The King's Speech -- though that time I went alone. In both instances the movies were incredibly well done and incredibly moving. Of Gods and Men reprised the story of the quiet, faithful, and deeply communal nature of the Cistercian life which, especially in its vow of stability leads these monks to martyrdom. That I attended with other Christians also celebrating Lent added to the meaning of the experience, but since I was working on stability in my own Rule, this film served to encapsulate many of the dimensions I had come to know myself and is still informing and inspiring my own work and prayer.

In The King's Speech a man finds his true voice through the hard work of therapy and comes to inspire his entire country thus helping them to win their war with Germany. In this movie I saw clearly the recovery of the true self and the coming to parrhesia (bold speech) which is so important in the New Testament and discipleship. People are called to be speech events and in The King's Speech we see a man redeemed to answer that very call. Both of these themes: stability and speech events are central to my own theology and spirituality. Both films touched dimensions in me, nourished and fed me in ways which were completely consistent with my vocation.

Were these "worldly" activities? I don't think so, for worldly events don't feed, nourish, challenge or inspire in this way. Instead I approach these as exercises in Lectio --- where I will listen carefully and over a period of time, reflect on and journal about what I experience, etc. Is God present here? Of course, mediated clearly and eloquently in the films. Is this true with any film? Of course not. Should a hermit be going to movies regularly? No, probably not --- though I could see a hermit legitimately going to a carefully-chosen movie every other month or so if this was the one solitary activity outside the hermitage she allowed herself regularly (and if she could actually find a really good film to see this frequently!). More likely the hermit will see occasional movies once they are out on DVD and remain in the hermitage while she does that. In any case, such things must be discerned carefully, and part of that discernment is a careful assessment of what the effects on the hermit's life are. Six years ago, as I considered the meaning of "Stricter separation from the world" I might not have considered going to any movies on an occasional basis as a piece of genuine lectio, but today experience tells me I can do that --- at least at the present time --- though it is far from stereotypical notions of the hermit life.

Stereotypes of eremitical life work by generalizing without adequate experience or true reflection. If one proceeds in this way one may end up saying simplistic things like: hermits don't need friends, or hermit conversations should avoid anything but the strictly spiritual (what is the strictly spiritual anyway?), or one must never eat or do anything which gives one pleasure since, "One is to take pleasure in God alone" (never mind all the myriad ways God's own wonder and beauty is mediated to us on a daily basis, apparently). It is bad enough to have non-hermits believe stereotypes, but it is tragic and completely disedifying to have would-be hermits representing living instances of them as a pretense of something more authentic. One can read everything there is to read on the values which are central to eremitical life, but until one embraces all the rights and responsibilities associated with the life and makes (or struggles to make) these values one's own in response to God's own Word and will, one is unlikely to understand or be able to write about them sufficiently well for a Rule of Life.

To get back to how all this ties in with your questions, what is generally true is that the changes in a Rule are driven by the hermit herself and her experience of the life. While I suppose it is possible for my Bishop to require me to rewrite it (or to refuse to allow a certain practice), the Rule is the most highly individual element of the Canon. It is here that constant or uniform elements are combined in a unique and, one prays, inspired expression of this life.

Writing Your Own Rule of Life

Regarding writing a Rule of Life for yourself, I would enthusiastically suggest you give it a try, but expect it to be a demanding job, and let it take some time! As I have written in the past I have rarely experienced such a formative process as the writing of my Rule. I suspect it is the same for everyone who tries it. A Rule is a document embodying the values which are central to your life, and the praxis which allows you to live these out with genuine integrity. A Rule tells the story of how it is God works in your life to bring it to wholeness and holiness. It inspires, encourages, challenges, and focuses. In writing such a "Rule" you don't have to use the very same values a hermit or monastic uses. You could (and really should) begin with your own understanding of the Gospel and determine how it is God calls you to live out a commitment to this within the context of lay life. Instead of building parts of the Rule around religious vows, you could reflect on and build things around your marriage vows, for instance. Of course, you might also use monastic values as well, but tailored for lay life. What would stability (for instance) look like in the life of a mom or dad, husband or wife? What values would it serve? What needs in the family or community? Would it be countercultural or prophetic? How about conversion of life? Prayer and Penance? What about issues of economy, ecology, health, etc? All of these could fit well in a Rule of Life and be a source of inspiration for others.

Your Rule would not necessarily ask you to do anything new (though of course it could), but it would focus your life in various ways, and it would require (and give you a vehicle which allowed) you to grapple with the various priorities and tensions you experience everyday in a conscious and reflective way. Hopefully it would serve to articulate how it is that love governs your life --- love of God in Christ, of course, but love of your husband, children, friends, community, Church, world, etc. I would personally love to read the result because all too often Rules are associated with religious life and not with lay vocations. If you could create a Rule over time which allows you to live your marriage/family and community commitments more care-fully it would be wonderful, and something others might learn from or be inspired by.

By the way, a book you might be interested in reading given this last question is Margaret Guenther's, At Home in the World, A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us. Where I use the image of Rule as a rail on a stairway as my primary metaphor for the way a Rule functions, Guenther refers to it as a trellis supporting the growth of a vine. She adds a number of questions for reflection which will help a person determine the place of certain elements in their life --- many you might not otherwise consider. I do recommend it.

"Of Gods and Men" and the Commitment to Stability

Last year (maybe even the year before that) I read the story of the Cistercian Monks who were living in Algeria and eventually were martyred for their faith. This last week I had a chance to see the movie made of this story with a couple of friends from my parish.

There are a number of wonderful aspects to this movie. It paints a beautiful portrait of monastic life and the centrality of liturgy in the life of the Trappist monk, but especially it makes clear the place of the psalms/Scripture in that life. The chanting was excellent and moving (not professional!) and the lyrics of the psalms mirrored the lives of these monks -- particularly as the crisis which enveloped the countryside also increasingly threatened the monks' own lives. The film clearly demonstrated the simplicity of the life, the silence and solitude, but also the community and the presence to others as the monastery becomes an integral part of the fabric of the local region --- trusted and beloved by the local residents. Especially wonderful (and deserving of a post all its own!) was the monk's ecumenical presence and sensitivity which is part of genuine Christianity. Scenes showed the Prior studying the Koran, a number of the monks celebrating Muslim festivities with local families, and of course, the monastery "doctor" was the doctor everyone -- including Muslim women -- turned to in need.

The aspect that was most moving to me was reflected in this last ecumenical dimension and bond; it was the struggle by the individual monks to determine how monastic stability would shape their lives as they, and everyone around them, undeniably came under threat and remained under threat. The threat to the monks grows. One knows that the alternatives are "stay and die" or "leave and live." Over the length of the film several monastic chapters are held --- periods where the monks meet (in this case) around a table and are given a brief lesson by the prior. (Chapters are a regular (daily or weekly, etc) part of monastic life and the prior or prioress is ordinarily the one who gives a lesson; in his or her absence monks and nuns might, for instance, listen to a series of tapes on the Rule or some other dimension of their lives.) Afterward there is a discussion and in Of Gods and Men the monks state honestly what their own feelings and discernment are regarding staying or returning to France in the face of the danger that accompanies their lives and grows evermore critical.

Initially several monks want to leave and return to France and monastic life there, but as days and weeks go by each man comes to terms with his fear and his commitment to remain here in this monastery and among these people --- all of whom are as threatened and terrified as the monks themselves. The psalms prayed during Office take on a sharper poignancy and striking relevance. Individual prayer in chapel or in their cells at night show them wrestling with their fear -- and with their commitment both to their brother monks and to the people they serve and rightly call "neighbor". At the final chapter shown in the movie, each man expresses his discernment that he is called to stay here. The choices are made in complete freedom, but they are anguished as well. The film flinches from neither the profound faith nor the abject fear which co-exist in this process of discernment and commitment.



Soon after, there is a scene where a military helicopter flies right up to the windows of the chapel, machine guns seemingly ready to annihilate the little community who prays within. The monks stand together in their cowls, hands around waists or on shoulders in affection, support, and solidarity, as they sing a hymn which grows in power and expression of conviction. It is almost a perfect portrait of the peace of Christ -- the peace the world cannot give, and of course the peace which is not without pain, fear, or struggle. As one of the monks summed up at the last chapter: "I am not afraid of death; I am a free man." These men know who they are most fundamentally, and why they are as well. They remain in Christ, and so too, they remain committed to one another and to all around them. They come to possess themselves completely in giving themselves over to that which is outside their control. Soon after, the monastery is broken into in the middle of the night and all but two of the monks (one of whom crawls under a bed and is missed) are taken further into the mountains where they are executed.

In the past weeks I have been reflecting on and writing about stability -- not merely for this blog, but for my own Rule which I am revising some. Some of the impetus for this reflection involved the recent questions on the relationship between struggle and the peace of Christ in authentic vocations, and this movie would certainly illustrate some of what I said in reply in my last post. For that matter, Lent also has been a stimulus to this reflection as the stories of Jesus lead into the increasing tension between Jesus and the religious authorities of his day -- and to a sense that there is an inevitable and apparently senseless execution in the offing unless Jesus chooses another course. But of course, Jesus does not move on or away; he chooses to cast his lot in with sinful humanity -- and with God's own purposes. And so too with these Trappists. They cast their lots in with one another in THIS monastery and with the Muslim people of this area of Algeria, and they lose (and find!!) their lives in the process.


Here again is part of Charles Cummings', OCSO, description of stability which I posted several entries ago: [[ Stability is the promise to stay here with Christ and with these others, and to stay awake to support each other during the struggle. The interior aspect refers to the heart awakened to the needs and feelings of others, to the will and the word of God in our midst. The contrary attitude is to stay on in monastic [or eremitical] life with increasing hardness of heart and dullness of hearing, until the sparkle goes out of our eyes and we only hang around waiting for the evening paper.]] (Cummings, Monastic Practices, p 173.)

In today's highly mobile society where convenience often wins out over commitment and we live among others we generally allow to remain strangers -- who, that is, we never make neighbors (much less truly love as we love ourselves!), where we parish shop to find the perfect faith community which best serves us, and where sometimes even our own spiritual sojourning is less a journey in Christ than it is a search for the next spiritual high or a way to fulfill our own wholly selfish desires, we need the story of these monks. Martyrdom is not merely an ancient reality but a contemporary one, while stability is not merely a monastic discipline and value, but a human one --- necessary for finding and claiming ourselves, necessary for truly loving others. It is, as I noted recently, the quintessentially Christian value --- the commitment to remain with (and in) Christ in this place and with these people so that we may all grow to fullness of humanity together.

Addendum: Last Will and Testament of Father Christian (Prior)

If it should happen one day - and it could be today - that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church and my family to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil which seems to prevail so terribly in the world, even in the evil which might blindly strike me down.

I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down. I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what will perhaps be called, the "grace of martyrdom" to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he might be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately. I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters. It is too easy to soothe one's conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it. I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel which I learned at my mother's knee, my very first Church, precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.

Obviously, my death will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!" But these persons should know that finally my most avid curiosity will be set free. This is what I shall be able to do, God willing: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate with him His children of Islam just as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.

For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely for the sake of that JOY in everything and in spite of everything. In this THANK YOU, which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families,

You are the hundredfold granted as was promised! And also you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing: Yes, I want this THANK YOU and this GOODBYE to be a "GOD-BLESS" for you, too, because in God's face I see yours.

May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

AMEN ! INCHALLAH !

Postscript: Despite winning a number of international awards, "Of Gods and Men" is not playing at many theaters and it will probably not be out much longer, but I sincerely recommend you see it if you can. It is perfect for Lent, of course, but is simply wonderful generally.

On Struggle, the Peace of Christ, and Authenticity in Eremitical Vocations

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, you wrote, [[(Note, this does not preclude experiments with horarium, etc, nor times when one is ill and needs certain praxis relaxed, etc. Neither does it refer to a hermitage where the hermit sometimes truly struggles with the elements central to her life. Emphatically not!) Hypocrisy [and pretense], however, [are] symptomatic of "the world", not of a hermitage.]] Do you struggle with elements of your life? Does this happen only once in a while or is it an all-the-time kind of thing? I have always thought a hermitage was a tranquil place of peace and communion with God. I also always thought that peace is part of a true vocation and that struggle meant that one does not have such a vocation. Can you comment on this for me?]]

Peace and Struggle are Related

Hi there! These are great questions and I think the heart of the answer has to do with the difference between the peace of Christ and more secular notions of peace which preclude all struggle (or all challenge!). My own experience of the peace of Christ, or the peace of God, is that it is, at the same time, a very demanding reality which empowers an individual to grow and mature with confidence and security because they are aware of who they are in God. More about that below.

So, do I struggle with elements of the eremitical life? Yes, assuredly. Partly that is because one element of the eremitical life IS struggle --- the struggle between truth and falsehood in our own being, but partly (and this, though related, is more to the point) it is because I am growing in this vocation. Eremitical life is an exercise in living and learning to live fully in Christ. It is an exercise in learning to receive the gifts of meaning, and love, and so many other things which are occasioned by abundant life in Christ. All of the routines, disciplines, and concrete praxis in the hermitage, are at the service of this learning. In some ways the hermitage supplies an essentially tranquil context for the deeper struggles of becoming a truly human being.

But sometimes it is the elements of the context itself that give me trouble --- and for the same reason --- because they occasion inner or deeper struggles between truth and untruth and with becoming more truly human; I think that is what you are asking about. So yes, poverty is sometimes difficult for me, and so is one dimension of stability, namely the pilgrimage side of that (we need to be able to move freely and be detached even while we commit ourselves to community, diocese, etc; stability is not a matter of being stuck in a rut or one of "entrenchment". Stability requires detachment and openness to change as well, paradoxical as that sounds. Sometimes that is difficult for me.) Obedience is sometimes a real trial for me. I do not generally struggle with solitude or silence, nor with prayer in a general way or penance, for instance, but I do struggle pretty regularly with some of these other things.

The Paradoxical Nature of the Hermitage

I suppose most people have the idea that a hermitage is a fairly laid-back place of rest, and in a way, they would be right. But as I have also written, hermitages are laboratories or studios where the composition God wishes one to become is worked out --- often with lots of scratched out passages, unscored dissonances, misplayed notes, and very real anguish! The desert Abbas and Ammas were very clear about the fact that the desert was the place where one struggled regularly with demons, and, again, those demons are mainly our own, carried deep within our own hearts. Thomas Merton wrote that the hermitage was the place where we get rid of any impersonation that might be present, and I would affirm that here one works on the destruction of any discrepancy between role and identity and learns to be truly transparent, both before God, to oneself, and --- to the degree it is prudent and pastoral, with others.

The hermitage is the place one lives in a conscious way and as constantly as one is able before the face or gaze of God. That is at once both a wonderfully affirming and recreating, as well as a terribly demanding task and experience. All of those things which prevent us from loving well, all of those things which have wounded and distorted us as human beings eventually must be worked through here. Union with God is the primary goal of the hermitage to which all else is ordered; it is the reason hermitages exist, and while this does not mean a stress-filled vocation, it does indicate an intense one. For me it is akin to playing a Beethoven symphony with an orchestra: we work and work intensely --- individually, together in sectionals, with and without the conductor, with the whole orchestra in ways which are physically, intellectually, and emotionally exhausting, and yet, the invigoration and sheer re-creative power of the work is awesome. When the music is allowed to come to life through this orchestra, and through (for instance) my own heart, mind, and muscles as a functioning part of this orchestra, the experience is indescribably exhilarating and joyful even as it exhausts. Life in the hermitage is like that.

As noted in the beginning of this post, the peace of Christ (as Jesus himself tells us) is not as the world gives. It is a wonderful and deeply invigorating security which allows us to be essentially confident of ourselves and our value --- even when all the usual "worldly" props (success, productivity, achievement, health, etc) are kicked out from under us. We exist in Christ, and because we do, we know who we truly are and how very deeply loved and precious --- even when we are sinning, (". . .he died for us while we were yet. . . ungodly. . .Rom 5:6-8). THAT is the peace of Christ. But that also means it is a challenging reality which constantly summons us to more --- to greater integrity, greater wholeness, greater compassion and sensitivity, greater capacities for love and friendship and humanity. And of course, again, it does this in the face of those demons which are so deeply entrenched in our own hearts!

Peace and the True Vocation

Regarding your question about the nature and signs of a genuine vocation, then, it should be clear that SOME struggles are inherent in a true vocation. If a vocation or vocational path (marriage, religious life, eremitical life, etc) provides the context in which one discovers this peace of Christ and can grow to wholeness and sanctity in light of it, then I think that is a sign one has discovered one's true vocation. If, on the other hand, a person is generally miserable, and finds she is becoming less and less human in the process, less able physically or emotionally, for instance, to be honest with herself, or to live generously and joyfully the truth of who she is, then I don't think this person has found her true vocation --- no matter how intensely she desires it. The same is true when every element of a life is a torment, when they isolate and fragment the person, when they function like saltwater would for a thirsty person.

None of the elements of eremitical life are comfortable all the time (and as I have argued, neither should they be), but on the whole, these elements are life-giving pieces of a context in which one feels deeply at home, profoundly alive and at rest --- a sense one internalizes and carries with one even when one is outside the hermitage, for instance. As an example, it is a vastly different thing to struggle with poverty or stability, or eremitical silence or solitude because these are sources of life and verification (making true) for us, and to feel --- or evidence to ourselves or others!--- that these things stifle or even harm one's authentic humanity. Similarly, it is a vastly different thing to find that the disciplines of a particular vocation strip one of one's false humanity, than to find they actually contribute to the falsification or even destruction of one's true self because one is called to another vocational path. I suspect a lot of the latter dynamic can be found veiled in the language of unhealthy spirituality (often the language of some sort of pseudo-mystical misery), but how ever it is clothed, the bottom line is one often becomes less and less human in such mistaken vocations.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. As I always say, if it raises other questions or has been unclear, please do get back to me.

N.B., the illustration above is a picture of a painting of St Romuald receiving the gift of tears --- the seminal event in Romuald's spiritual life, and in the life of the Camaldolese. It was done by Brother Emmaus, OSB Cam while at New Camaldoli. (Brother is now at Glenstal Abbey discerning his vocation there.) I chose it because of the joy which permeates Romuald, despite and even because of his tears. In any case, I think it symbolizes well what I have been writing about in this post.

Addendum: I was just informed that Brother Emmaus O'Herlihy has completed his novitiate at Glenstal Abbey and has made simple vows for the next three years. Brother was professed on September 25, 2011.

Hermitage as Outpost of the World? Questions.

[[Dear Sister, you wrote recently that it was possible for a hermitage to become an instance of "the world." I think you have said that before and I don't really understand what you meant. Can you explain this to me?]]

Sure, I would be happy to give that a shot. Remember that "the world" means that which is resistant to Christ or promises fulfillment apart from him. It is not so much a distinct "thing" out there, some sort of "pure object" (as Merton explains) as it is something which is untrue or illusory with regard to reality. "The world" represents a falsification of what is real. What I wrote earlier was, [[. . . This sense of the term "world" refers to anything which is untrue, distorted, resistant to life, to love, and to all the rest of the values which constitute life in God. But it is not God's good creation, therefore, from which we mainly separate ourselves. It is "the world" of falsehood, chaos, and meaninglessness, and this means that it is not something distinct existing merely outside of ourselves, but instead is a reality which is intimately related to the darkness, woundedness, distortions, and sclerosis (hardness) of our own hearts.]]

So, bearing that in mind, how could a hermitage become an actual outpost of "the world"? What I originally had in mind was the falsehood that one could simply shut the door on "the world" and forget about "the world" represented by the wounded, distorted, and false parts of one's own heart. I was thinking of situations where a hermitage was treated as a holy place completely separate from the rest of temporal-spatial reality. It would be a fundamental untruth to deny that one carries the world deeply in one's own heart or to affirm that one can simply shut some physical door on "the world" and treat it as something merely "out there". Such a foundational falsehood would therefore become an instance of "the world" or "worldly (anti-Christ) thinking" and the hermitage (and the eremitical life!) built on and pervaded by such an untruth --- as well as by the resulting pretense that one does not need to depend wholly upon God's mercy and love --- would then become an outpost and symbol of these -- an outpost and symbol of the very reality they are meant to stand in opposition to. More, in embracing such untruth and pretense, the hermit abdicates her responsibility (and her capacity) to speak the truth into the situation outside the hermitage in a way which will redeem it.

It is true that hermitages can (and are meant to be) holy places, but they are also, for that very reason, places where the struggle between truth and untruth is often waged in earnest. This (struggle) is not always the dominant reality within the hermitage but to abandon this struggle by treating "the world" as something merely exterior to oneself and one's place, is to turn away not only from a central aspect of the eremitical vocation, but from the ministry of reconciliation --- which is every Christian's --- while embracing untruth and distortion instead. Other ways of abandoning the struggle include abandoning prayer or any other central discipline of the hermitage. (Note, this does not preclude experiments with horarium, etc, nor times when one is ill and needs certain praxis relaxed, etc. Neither does it refer to a hermitage where the hermit sometimes truly struggles with the elements central to her life. Emphatically not!) Hypocrisy and pretense, however, are symptomatic of "the world", not of a hermitage.

That's the brief answer. I hope it helps!

On Diocese-Shopping by Hermit Candidates, Stability, etc.

[[Hi, Sister Laurel. I guess my question has to do with "stability". I read in the blog of another hermit that she or he planned to go on a "road trip" to different abbeys and dioceses to find someone to make him/her a canonical hermit. Is this okay to do?]]

Interesting question. My own sense is that first of all such a quest would be fruitless, and that it ought to be fruitless except in limited instances. I don't think any Bishop would seriously entertain such a request from someone merely shopping for someone to profess and/or consecrate them. For that matter, a person in such circumstances is unlikely to even get an appointment with the Bishop.

In my own diocese, for instance, people work through Vocation directors and/or the Vicars for Religious before ever seeing the Bishop in such a matter. They do this in part because these persons can discern vocations and work with individuals in ways the Bishop cannot do. Once they have determined there is a likely vocation here and are willing to recommend admission to profession, the Bishop is notified and the candidate for profession begins meetings with him. He too needs to discern this vocation as well as make decisions for the diocese, for as I have written recently, the diocese is committing to a change in its own life here and taking a chance on this candidate in admitting her to profession. The Bishop is also responsible for making sure the eremitical vocation itself is protected and nurtured under his supervision, so his own discernment is required for this reason as well.

There are certain situations in which a person might legitimately consider moving to another diocese in order to eventually request profession/consecration as a diocesan hermit, but I would not call this particular situation "diocese-shopping." (What you describe is different, and not particularly edifying.) In my own diocese there was a time when the Bishop determined he was not going to profess anyone as a diocesan hermit. He had good reasons for this, but it also meant that for more than 23 years there were not going to be any professions/consecrations under Canon 603, and as a result individuals suffered inordinate waits which had nothing to do with a mutual process of discernment. In such a case, where the decision is a blanket one and not guided by individual concerns, a person may therefore have very good reason for moving to another diocese that already has diocesan hermits, or which is open to having them given suitable candidates. However, in doing this the person needs to understand that each vocation is mutually discerned (something which is always true in ecclesial vocations) and there is no assurance that they will be admitted to vows and consecration. It should also be understood that a time is required to establish one's relationship with a parish, find and work with a spiritual director in this place, work out suitable employment and living arrangements, and similar things before one can even consider petitioning for profession here.

The question of going to an Abbot is even more complicated and questionable. My sense is that Abbots generally do NOT have the power to consecrate hermits under Canon 603. They can certainly govern their own monks and admit to vows, etc, but their authority is limited here. In a few countries I think there are still Abbots with jurisdiction over a larger geographical territory than their Abbey per se, and in these areas they might well have the same authority as diocesan Bishops, but these are exceptional cases. I cannot see such an Abbot admitting someone from another country or at least outside their jurisdiction to vows as a hermit, even if he had that authority. Instead I suspect he would simply counsel the person to work through their own diocesan Bishop. This is especially true given the monastic value of stability and the Benedictine sensitivity to what were called "gyrovagues" --- monks who moved from monastery to monastery whenever things got difficult or too challenging, for instance. (The Rule of Benedict is quite harsh with regard to this class of "monk".) To do otherwise would involve the Abbot in an act which, potentially at least, disparages legitimate authority and the ecclesial nature of the vocation. It would also be meaningless unless the one professed decided to remain in this abbot's territory because for one's vows to be valid in another diocese, one requires the input of the current bishop who assures the new bishop the hermit is a professed hermit in good standing, and the permission of new bishop (who agrees to accept the hermit's vows).

All of this does raise the questions you ask either explicitly or implicitly: is shopping around for someone who will profess one the right thing? Does it violate at least the value of stability? I would add to this, "does it demonstrate too individualistic an approach to vocation?", which is really part of the question of stability. I am completely sympathetic to a person who determines they feel called to diocesan eremitical life but whose diocese has decided, for whatever reason, simply not to profess ANYONE. In such a case, I don't think there is a real problem with going elsewhere to engage in a more honest process of discernment with another diocese ---so long as the person does not intend to automatically move to another diocese if the determination does not fall her way. But diocese-shopping is a different problem, and it tends to say the person is insensitive to the notion of ecclesial vocations or how they are discerned or lived out.

As noted, stability implies a commitment to live with others, to cast one's lot in with them so that all may come together to fullness of Life in Christ. It is a generous rather than selfish stance which is marked by the sense of what is best for the community, and not simply for oneself. For the diocesan hermit who does not live in community, stability may mean a commitment to a particular parish --- to its life, and the well-being of those who comprise it. It certainly includes such a commitment to the diocese itself --- even when things are not going as one likes. Legally, of course, the hermit is bound to a particular diocese unless and until she is dispensed and/or transfers to another diocese. She is bound by vow in obedience to the Bishop as legitimate superior --- and this includes being committed to mutual discernment in matters regarding this particular vocation. The vocation is highly individual but not individualistic. But even before one makes such a vow, she must demonstrate the capacity for such a commitment and the sensibilities and personal requirements it necessitates. Stability is a communal virtue oriented to the good of the community as a whole, and all ecclesial vocations which are mutually discerned emphasize the same communal sensitivity.

Stability is also a virtue of trust and patience. Eremitical life requires both in large amounts. Becoming a diocesan hermit rightly requires these virtues, for ordinarily it takes some time for dioceses to decide to profess people, and generally they will only profess those who have lived as hermits for some time (at least five years of supervised living is not an unusual number to hear from Bishops) before a person will be admitted even to temporary profession. Eremitical life itself is a function of time and grace. It is such an individual and disciplined vocation that growing sufficiently to be able to claim the label "hermit" takes time and patience. Becoming a person who lives "the silence of solitude" rather than simply with some silence and some solitude takes both time and grace. When it happens it is a gift to the person but more, it is a gift to the entire faith community, and for that reason a person who engages in diocesan Bishop/Abbot shopping just to get canonically consecrated is not demonstrating the right mindset or attitudes of heart either.

After all, one part of the witness the hermit gives to others is that some things (including, and perhaps especially, the fruition of the grace of God!) take time. Waiting (and especially waiting where we are, but without immediately visible results) is a skill we simply don't practice well in our society, but it is one we need; a hermit witnesses to this in a special way. This is true with regard to the everyday discipline and even tedium of the cell, and it is true with regard to the process of becoming a person of prayer, particularly as a diocesan hermit. So long as one is being dealt with expeditiously and in good faith, and the diocese is honest with her about the possibility of future profession, none of this process is a waste. All of the time spent waiting is spent becoming, growing, maturing as a hermit who will be able to take on the additional rights and responsibilities of a diocesan hermit --- or, really, any vocation which requires substantial personal and spiritual formation. Stability, even without a specific vow, is intrinsic to the life of the diocesan hermit so again, it is only right she demonstrates a capacity for stability before a diocese even considers professing her. I wonder if this capacity is demonstrated by someone who is driven by a "my way or the highway" approach --- which, unfortunately, is what a diocese/abbot shopper, a contemporary form of gyrovague, seems to symbolize.

Questions on Solitude, Occasions of Sin, etc.

[[Dear Sr. Laurel: I wonder if you could discuss at little bit on your blog the issue of what solitude means? Sometimes I think I have a hermit inclination, but I also fear it is just a desire to be away from people. Not a very loving thing. And too, it seems that since people seem to be my occassions (sic) of sin (gossip, envy, anger, hate) would being a hermit in order to avoid sin be an acceptable reason. I heard of a social worker at a nursing home who is a dedicated hermit, so I wonder how solitude works in a case like that. Thanks for your answer.]]

Hi there! Thanks for your questions. I have written a number of times about the nature of eremitical solitude as well as false and genuine solitude, so I would suggest you take a look at the labels in the column on the right. Look under solitude, false solitude, genuine solitude, etc. and you should find a number of posts which approach parts of your question. I will not repeat everything I have said there but I would like to address your questions about avoiding people, lack of charity, and avoiding the occasions of sin. I will also look briefly at your question re the hermit you mention and the requirement of solitude.

I think you should pay attention to what your heart tells you about avoiding people. From what you have written, it sounds like your deepest sense is that a desire to merely be away from people is not a legitimate desire and insufficient to justify eremitical solitude. I would generally agree. In eremitical solitude we must discover a profound love for others, and, in fact, live our lives for those others, or we are not talking about the same reality the Church is. It is also important to remember that every person requires solitude, sometimes even a great deal of it. The reasons may be therapeutic, or the solitude may be transitional, and so forth, but only very rarely will persons find this is a call to eremitical solitude. Finally, it is important to remember that traditionally people were allowed to pursue the eremitical life only after long experience in community. While this is not a strict requirement for Canon 603 profession today, the wisdom and life skills implied here are still essential. One needs to have learned to love others deeply and effectively before pursuing an eremitical calling. This implies an essential healing of one's own woundedness and a clear maturity in one's relationships with others.

While it is true that we are to avoid the near occasions of sin, it is the stuff we carry around within our own hearts which are the things which need attention. The passions you mention (that is, the distorting lenses which keep us from seeing people as God sees them --- envy, anger, hatred, perfectionism, hyper-criticism and the need for attention or belonging, etc, all of which can lead to gossip) would exist within you whether you were around people or not. Generally it is not people per se which are the causes of sin, but these passions or attitudes of the heart, and the woundedness or other personal issues which cause them. Were you (or anyone) to become a hermit in the mistaken notion that you were closing the door on "the world" or the "occasions of sin" these represent by avoiding people generally, you would find merely that you have closed the hermitage door and shut these real causes inside with you. This is one of the reasons I have written that "the world" is as much an inner reality as it is something outside us. My suggestion is that you find ways to work on the actual causes of the things which you have identified as problematical. You might want to consider working regularly with a spiritual director on these, for instance.

It is not clear to me whether you mean the person you referred to is a canonical hermit or not, but I will assume that is so and speak in generalities here. Diocesan hermits must be self-supporting and usually do need to work to do so. Some work part time outside the hermitage, but generally, we work from within the hermitage in ways which foster the eremitical life. Most Bishops will not profess hermits who need to work full time (I agree completely with this), and some will not profess people who must work outside the hermitage at all. If a hermit is already professed and they MUST work outside the hermitage for some reason, then ordinarily they will do so in a relatively solitary job which allows them to pray and generally maintain both an inner and an outer silence. For instance, one woman who desires to be a diocesan hermit cleans offices after hours. This does not conflict with her commitment to live a solitary life at all. Even so, her Bishop will not profess her. The situation you describe may or may not conflict with the demands of solitude. It may be part time, for instance, and be balanced by a fairly strict reclusion and contemplative praxis. If it is full time work, then I don't personally see how she can be said to be living an eremitical life, and I would question the wisdom and prudence of professing her. However, it may also be a VERY temporary situation and the person may be working towards a better arrangement which does not conflict with her vowed eremitical commitments.

Unfortunately, the desire for eremitical solitude, and even having discerned a completely genuine call to eremitical life is not the same as living an eremitical life and fulfilling the commitments required by Canon 603. Part of a living and vital call or vocation is the response and, as I have noted before, Canon 603 requires a life of 1) stricter separation from the world, 2) the silence of solitude, 3) assiduous prayer and penance, 4) the evangelical counsels, 5) faithfulness to a Rule of Life one composes oneself and 6) all of these elements lived under the supervision of one's Bishop for the salvation of the world. The Church is generally quite cautious about professing people under this relatively new canon, but occasionally in the past 25+ years it has been used to profess individuals who are not hermits at all as a kind of stopgap measure because there is no other canon available for the profession of individuals. In time, and with more genuine vocations and experience (not to mention people asking good questions like yours), this kind of abuse will hopefully decrease or cease altogether.

I hope this answer helps. If it confuses or raises other questions, please feel free to get back to me.

Stability Revisited

[[Dear Sister, does monastic stability mean [i.e., refer to] emotional stability? I thought it meant committing to staying in one place for life . . .. As a diocesan hermit do you vow stability? What I am trying to ask is if monks and nuns vow to remain within their monasteries, do hermits vow to remain in their dioceses? What happens if your Bishop changes and its not a good change for you, or your external circumstances become very difficult?]] (Redacted slightly)

I think these are excellent questions and they are reminiscent of a question I was asked on the podcast I did last month re whether or not I was able to choose my Bishop! You will notice I have edited out the quotation you included as unnecessary to my answer. The primary meaning of monastic stability does not refer to emotional stability, but there must be some appreciable degree of emotional stability in order to make a vow (or commitment) of stability. Further, stability should contribute to emotional maturity and balance. The primary meaning of stability in the Benedictine schema however, is, as you suggest, a commitment to remaining in a particular monastery or community for the rest of one's life. The basic idea is that one is committed to grow here as a person, to grow, that is, in Christ and to commit oneself to the growth in Christ of those with whom one lives as well. Relationships in Christ grow over time and stability allows this growth. It is also an instance of trust in God that God's love is sufficient for one in this place, and that human maturity can be achieved here. In some ways the parable of the soils reminds me of the importance and nature of stability. It does so because I trust in faith that even when the ground is or appears fallow, rocky, thorny, and relatively bereft of nutrients (note I said relatively), God's grace is sufficient to bring necessary transformation and growth.

Stability therefore has an external and an internal dimension, but it refers first of all to the commitment to grow with others, to cast one's lot in with theirs in faith and in Christ. It is the quintessentially incarnational value in some ways because it witnesses to Christ's own choice to be God-with-us. Charles Cummings, OCSO describes these dimensions as follows: [[ Stability is the promise to stay here with Christ and with these others, and to stay awake to support each other during the struggle. The interior aspect refers to the heart awakened to the needs and feelings of others, to the will and the word of God in our midst. The contrary attitude is to stay on in monastic [or eremitical] life with increasing hardness of heart and dullness of hearing, until the sparkle goes out of our eyes and we only hang around waiting for the evening paper.]] (Cummings, Monastic Practices, p 173.) So again, while emotional stability will assist in one's ability to make a commitment of stability, that is not its meaning in monastic terms.

Diocesan hermits do not usually vow stability, but it is possible, and, I personally think, it is quite important to write this monastic value into one's Rule. This is true because eremitical life is lived for others and (even in one's physical solitude) with others in the heart of the Church. Canon 603 summarizes this pro nobis character in the phrase "for the salvation of the world." For instance, I am committed to a particular parish within my diocese. Because some were concerned I would be assigned elsewhere after perpetual vows, I remind them that C 603 does not work like that, and I kid them that they are "stuck with me". But really, we are a community and we bring each other to fulfillment in Christ --- even though the majority of my life is spent in physical solitude. In other words, we love one another into wholeness as part of the "ministry of reconciliation" Paul says we are each entrusted with. I have not vowed stability but my Benedictine commitments, and the ecclesial nature of C 603 eremitical life, make me sensitive to the importance of this particular bond with my own parish.

Legally, of course, I AM bound to this diocese and could not live as a diocesan hermit elsewhere unless both Bishops (my own and the receiving Bishop) ratify this change. There are good reasons for making a change, but it must be considered that a particular diocese has discerned this vocation along with the hermit herself, admitted her to profession, and often done so when many other dioceses were not yet ready to accept Canon 603 hermits at all. In other words, in admitting me to perpetual profession my own diocese has risked something with regard to its own life, as well as my own, and it is my responsibility (and theirs) to honor this. I will do so so long as my vocation itself is not threatened in some way by remaining within this diocese and contributing to its life. From my own perspective then, remaining here is a piece of being responsible for the unfolding of this particular ecclesial vocation in the Church --- though, in certain instances, one could cogently argue that moving to another diocese could also be a way of breaking new ground for the vocation in general.



As for what happens if circumstances within the diocese (or parish) are difficult or I get a superior (Bishop) that is not a good fit for me, then, all of that would need to be decided on a case by case basis with more specifics to be weighed and values to be discerned. The situation would need to be pretty serious for me not to honor stability or to transfer that stability (and my vows) to another diocese. As noted above, the vocation itself would need to be threatened in some significant way for this to happen. Stability fosters and enhances genuine freedom; it does not hinder it because, as I have written often before, genuine freedom is the power to be who we are called to be within and even in spite of constraints and limitations. In another vein, I can envision something happening in my family where I might need to make a temporary transfer or something akin to exclaustration, for instance, in order to assist them, but I don't foresee this would be permanent. Difficult circumstances of themselves, however, would generally test and/or prove the vocation and foster further maturation in it --- not be an invitation to move elsewhere (that it could be a temptation is another matter).

That would be especially true if the difficulties were interpersonal or if they suggested or raised the question of my own need to get assistance or work through personal problems and immaturities that are a source of division or tension. After all, stability is a value which demands precisely this of the hermit (monk, nun, or oblate). At the very least stability would demand I try every reasonable step to resolve the difficulties, especially as they arise from my own personal "hangups" --- however personally demanding those steps might be. (Humility requires I be honest about my own role in the difficulties!) At the same time it is the relationships which grow from the soil of stability which support me in these efforts, just as it is my commitment to the life of others besides myself, and the eremitical tradition more generally, which does the same as a piece of this very same stability.

Anniversary of St Benedict's Death

Today would ordinarily be the Feast of Saint Benedict, for it is the anniversary of Benedict's death. The actual Feast was moved to July 11th because Lent always "obstructed" the celebration which is traditionally observed on the day the Saint "enters heaven"). Benedict was, without a doubt, one of the most influential men in the history of the Church. Benedictines, Camaldolese, Cistercians, and any number of other religious and, of course, lay oblates follow the 1500 year old Rule of Life he wrote for monks. Known (among other things) for its balance, its concern and for respect for individual gifts within community, for its strong accent on humility, and for the priority it gives to the Word of God in the Divine Office and Lectio Divina, this Rule serves literally hundreds of thousands of Benedictines today whether monks, nuns, hermits, married persons, dedicated singles, or other seekers of God. Indeed, Benedictines of whatever state of life are, by definition, seekers of God.

Benedict says in his Rule that all monastic life should have a Lenten character. He reminds us that this is a holy season in which we should look carefully at the integrity of our lives and get rid of any thoughtless compromises which may have crept into them. In this way each one of us "may have something beyond the normal obligations of monastic life to freely offer to the Lord with the joy of the Holy Spirit". (Chapter 49, RB) One Benedictine poet reflects on this chapter as follows. It seems a good way to celebrate both the day and the season:

SEARCH ME (Rachel M Srubas, Oblate, OSB)

Search me, penetrating Spirit,
Drag my depths for the sunken
accumulations of my life.
Retrieve it all:
the old, unhealed wounds,
the memories I've tried to keep
from you, who alone
can remedy and soothe.
Receive my sacrifice
of grudges, the sludge of unforgiveness,
the slights I horde like green pennies,
the pettiness I practice to protect myself
from pain. I offer you the worthless cache
of my spirit's cuts and bruises, the elaborate
self deceptions that have long outlived their use.
Take what you find in the sodden sea chest
of my mind, and show it all to me.
Let me see what I've submerged:
what I ought to salvage,
what it's time to purge.

Taken from Oblation, Meditations on St Benedict's Rule (Rachel is a Benedictine Oblate and Presbyterian clergywoman. She is affiliated with the monastery of the Benedictine Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration in Tucson, Arizona.)