On Secular Hermits, Habits and Titles, and Persistence in Dealing with Dioceses

Dear Sister, I wonder if you could help me think about the following passage from a hermit who describes himself as a secular hermit? I have deleted the name from the passage. I guess I wonder if it is really all right to adopt a habit and a religious name simply because one wants to. Though I am not a hermit I would like to do that but I wonder if it is right or very prudent. I also wonder if it is true that diocesan personnel have neither the time nor the expertise in canon law for such foolishness as individuals who desire to become diocesan hermits. This hermit writes: [[ I am free to live as I choose, and to call myself whatever name I like and to wear whatever clothing I want. I choose to live as a religious under vows and a rule, I call myself brother . . . and I wear a habit without a collar to witness to Jesus. There are not too many dioceses that have hermits or recognize them as such, and diocesan personnel, I am told, have neither the time nor the expertise in Canon Law for such foolishness.]]

On the Designation "Secular Hermit"

Thanks for your questions. I understand your unease with this person's statements --- at least as they are cited here. They make me uneasy too. First, one thing you did not ask me about and that is the term "secular hermit". This person is using the term secular as the opposite of religious but that is not really accurate. Religious men and women live lives that are separated from the world (saeculum) in specific ways while others live their lives "in the world" and are called to be "in it but not of it." These latter folks became known as "seculars." Further, "religious (n.)" became set off against "seculars" and unfortunately Religious men and women were seen to be called to a higher holiness than those Baptized Christians living their vocations in ministry in and to the world. Secularity became associated with secularism and then, mistakenly, identified with it. Despite the lessons of the Incarnation, holiness was seen to be the province of those who were "separated from the world."

Today we realize that the situation is much more complex. Vocations are not so neatly differentiated and the Incarnation reminds us that the entire world is Sacramental and meant to be brought to fullness if God's Kingdom is to be truly realized and God is to be all in all. We recognize a universal call to holiness whether that call means one builds oneself into the world of family, business, economics, politics, etc, or whether one makes vows which separate oneself (that is, qualify one's life) in significant ways from or to the world of relationships (consecrated celibacy), power (obedience), and commerce (religious poverty). One person whose vocation is more especially marked by a "stricter separation from the world" than most other persons,whether Lay or Religious, is the hermit. In other words, I don't think we can speak of secular hermits. One may be in the lay state, the consecrated state, or the clerical state, but if one is a hermit who lives the elements of canon 603 (even without public vows), one is not secular.

On Habits and Titles

Habits are no longer ordinary garb. For good and ill they are ecclesial symbols. They have meaning because the Church and the people who have worn them in season and out have invested them with meaning. Because of this when people see them they have the right to certain expectations. They have the right to expect the person in the habit has accepted all the legitimate and moral obligations attached to the (rights of) wearing of such garb. They have a right to expect that person to have formally and legitimately accepted a place in the long tradition of martyrs, ascetics, virgins, and hermits who have worn such habits through the centuries and many times suffered because of it. They have a right to expect the person to be precisely what the habit says they are --- publicly professed men or women whose vocations have been discerned and mediated by the Church. They have a right to expect the person is available to them because of all of this because the person acts (and is commissioned to act) in the name of the Church who, in real ways, also supervises their vocation and generally affirms them as worthy of peoples' trust in pastoral matters.

As I have written before, even hermits did not simply adopt a habit on their own. The desert Fathers and Mothers were given the habit by elders and those elders could take the habit away again if the person failed to live their vocations with integrity. In the Middle Ages it became common for Bishops to give their consent to persons wishing to adopt the habit of the hermit. Again, habits were seen as significant and their wearing was regulated --- even at a time when there was no universal Code of Canon Law, and a somewhat varied theology of consecrated life. The same is true of titles. In the Roman Catholic Church the titles Brother or Sister indicate something specific --- not so much personal status or standing as the way the Holy Spirit is working in the Church's life through specific persons and states of life.

So, while it is strictly true that a person can pretty much wear and style themselves any way they like in public (though even civilly there are significant exceptions to this rule) it is not true that they can do this without disparaging the meaning of these things (Habits, titles etc.) or betraying the expectations which are associated with them in the eyes of believers and the entire world. Habits and titles do not simply indicate what the person believes of themselves; they indicate ecclesial vocations and witness to something which has been made to be true in the People of God. Now, if the person who wrote this was wearing a habit and using a specific title privately (silly as this might seem), that is ONLY in his own hermitage and no where else there would be no problem. He is completely within his rights. However, if he goes out, attends Mass, etc, or even blogs under this name with pictures of himself in his habit, the practice is problematical at best. In my opinion a Catholic does NOT have the right to do this --- first because s/he has not accepted the commensurate obligations that are part of doing so, and secondly out of charity to others who might be misled. One of the most fundamental things Christians are responsible for is truth in advertising --- which we also call transparency and which allows our lives to be Christ's truth for others.

I understand both this person's feelings about thinking of himself as a religious and dressing the part --- especially if he has been refused admission to public profession --- which sounds like it is the case. I also understand your own desire to do so. In the first case it is very difficult to feel called to something in one's own heart and have the institutional church disagree. One wants to find a way to live the truth of who one is while coming to terms with what one experiences as a rejection of one's deepest self. On the other hand, some people argue that they wear the habit because they esteem it or because they want to witness to religious life when many Sisters no longer wear the habit. The problem is that the very act of pretense (for in these cases one is pretending to something one has no right to) does not indicate genuine esteem nor does it witness to religious life or the God of truth. It is not the case that one can adopt ecclesial titles and garb  and expect to be recognized in terms of the ecclesial meaning of those while thumbing one's nose at the canons and customs which govern these things within the church. Certainly one cannot do so and pretend to esteem consecrated life in that very ecclesial community.

Diocesan Personnel and the Diocesan Eremitical Vocation

I have sometimes written that not all dioceses are open to having diocesan hermits. I have also written that diocesan personnel tend to have neither the time nor the expertise to form hermits. Finally I have also written that it often takes an extended period of time to discern and form hermits in preparation for temporary or perpetual vows. (This is not the job of the diocese but the work of the hermit herself with her director and, sometimes, others in cooperation with God.) However, what is not generally true --- at least not in my experience --- is that diocesan personnel are insufficiently expert in Canon Law (they may not specialize in consecrated life, but that is a somewhat different question). And, while there are certainly anecdotes about Vicars who say they do not believe in eremitical life, neither is it generally the case that they treat people wishing to become hermits as though they are pursuing some sort of foolishness.

It is true that dioceses do not routinely admit individuals to profession as diocesan hermits. It is true that they tend to be demanding about the signs of genuine vocation as well as cautious about anything that might signal stereotypical distortions or destructive eccentricity in persons seeking to be professed. It is true that some do not believe much in contemplative life and even less so in hermits --- mainly because they misunderstand solitude as isolation and eremitical life as essentially selfish. But, except in this latter situation, I have not known any dioceses to reject good candidates out of hand; they might well extend periods of discernment, require regular meetings with Vicars or vocation directors as well as all kinds of recommendations (Spiritual director, pastor, physicians, psychologists, etc), but generally they do not treat possible vocations as foolishness.

One must be patient with a diocese if one is the first person/hermit they have seriously considered professing under canon 603. They have a lot to learn not only about eremitical life generally, but about Canon 603 specifically and the way it is implemented along with the kinds of stories dioceses have about their own experiences with hermits thus professed. Even if one is not the first hermit the diocese has professed the diocese will also need to learn a lot about the candidate for profession both before they make recommendations regarding further formation requirements and during the process of discernment which is associated with formation. And they will need to assess how such vocations will be supervised and lived out in their diocese.

On Patience and Persistence

One must also be persistent in one's efforts to be admitted to public profession. It may take some time before a diocese is clear they have a good candidate, or before they have done enough research to even know when this is the case. A single letter to the diocese requesting profession under Canon 603 will not usually be sufficient. One of the things a diocese will want to know is whether or not c 603 is being used as a stopgap way to get to wear a habit and be called Brother or Sister. In other words, they will rightly expect a person to live as a hermit whether or not public profession is in their future and to show all of the characteristics genuine hermits demonstrate: not only a commitment to all the elements of Canon 603 which are absolutely foundational, but to whatever is necessary for continuing growth in this vocation: self-discipline and individual initiative, spiritual direction, reasonable involvement in the parish community, ongoing formation (education, growth in prayer, greater responsibility for the eremitical tradition itself, regular retreats, consultation with other hermits or experts who can assist them in this, and above all, growth in humility (which is a function of truthfulness), authentic humanness (holiness), and one's capacity to love others.

While I am not telling candidates or potential candidates to nag their dioceses, sometimes it does take real persistence to get an adequate hearing. One needs to be honest and ask clear questions about what one is hearing from a diocese. But whatever occurs one needs to carry on honestly living one's response to God --- and if one feels generally called to the life described in Canon 603 then one needs to live that as a lay hermit without habit or title --- either with the diocese's aid or  in spite of its lack. In time the situation may change in various ways. Discernment and growth does not stop -- no matter what the diocese's response is.

I hope this has been of some help to you. You might also check Notes from Stillsong Hermitage: Difficult Questions When Dioceses Decline to Profess

Faithful Citizenship

Unfortunately,the high visibility given by the media to disagreements between LCWR with its partner in social justice efforts, Network, and the Vatican tended to obscure the significant agreement between the Nuns on the Bus and the USCCB on issues pertaining to the poor, the Ryan budget, and the nature of faithful citizenship. The situation was worsened by the failure of any Bishop to join in supporting the Nuns on the Bus project against Ryan's budget (an entirely separate issue from the affordable care act and the questions remaining to be resolved there) --- something I personally found to be very disappointing. But as I look back on the past two weeks, and especially the celebration of the birth of this nation on the 4th, the following reflection taken from the US Bishops' "Faithful Citizenship" is especially poignant and credible. For those Catholics who wish to divide faith from political action it will offer some significant challenges.

[[Our nation has been blessed with freedom, democracy, abundant resources, and generous religious people. However, our prosperity does not reach far enough. Our culture sometimes does not lift us up but brings us down in moral terms. Our world is wounded by terror, torn apart by conflict, and haunted by hunger. We renew our call for a new kind of politics --- focused on moral principles not on the latest polls, on the needs of the poor and vulnerable, not the contributions of the rich and powerful, and on the pursuit of the common good not the demands of special interests. Faithful citizenship calls Catholics to see civic and political responsibilities through the eyes of faith and to bring our moral convictions to public life.]] USCCB, Faithful Citizenship (2004)

Freedom for the Catholic is the power to be the person God calls us to be. It is the power to embrace and lead others to the abundant life proclaimed in the Gospel. It involves the capacity to love in ways which honor the covenant nature of human life and therefore, it involves a love which does justice. While accepting and transcending limitations are part and parcel of genuine freedom, significant economic poverty (NOT religious poverty) can prevent a person from being able to become the persons God calls them to be. Let us join together to work for the end of poverty and a nation marked by solidarity with one another which issues in genuine freedom. Our faith as well as our citizenship demands it.

Where is the real Sin???

This morning at coffee with a group of parishioners we got to telling stories of how the church taught about morality before Vatican II. One person told the story of a classmate in high school @ 1959 whose sister was getting married to a non-Catholic. While this person wanted to attend the wedding she was told by the nuns at her school that doing so would be a "mortal sin." 55 years after the events this person's classmate attended a reunion with her old friend. At some point she discovered that her friend HAD attended her only Sister's wedding but because of what she had been taught by the Sisters she felt she had committed a mortal sin and therefore had NOT been to Communion for 55 years! Why had she not gone to confession and dealt with the matter there? That wasn't known but for a person to remain separated from Communion all these years for something she was TOLD was a mortal sin is appalling. But where is the real sin in all of this? God knows fingers can be pointed in several directions but the failure to actually assist a person in informing and learning to form their consciences in a responsible and dynamic way has to be a central target.

We are called to make moral (or conscience) judgments and to act on those conscience judgments. We are not called simply to do as we are told is right or wrong by an outside authority --- no matter how well-placed, well-informed, or well-intentioned and authoritative that external authority is. Instead we are called to listen to our heart of hearts and respond to that personal revelation of God's will in a given situation. (More about informing and forming our consciences below.) One of the most important insights of Catholic moral theology is the inviolability of conscience and the imperative that we must act in good conscience even if we err in doing so. What Catholic teaching recognizes is the presence of God within us, speaking, summoning, calling us to authentically human and holy action in our world. This is the more original and immediate voice of God than even that mediated to us by the Church. We are called to extend morality into those places and situations which the Church cannot address apart from our own discernment and action. We do this, in part, by learning to discern and then listening to the Voice of God within us as well as without, and responding as we believe is best at any given moment. To act otherwise, to act contrary to a certain (that is, a fixed or "reached") conscience judgment (even if it is in error) is ALWAYS to sin.

But what of formation and informing of our consciences? Aren't we obliged to take care of these demands? And what is the difference between truly forming and informing our consciences and merely doing what we are told as in the original example? Perhaps another example will help here. A few years ago a person in a discussion on conscience and formation of conscience said, "I always do just what the Church teaches." When asked what they did when there was no clear church teaching on the matter the person was a bit stymied and had not considered this might be the case. We were talking about the Commandments, for instance and this person affirmed "the Church teaches thou shall not kill or cooperate in killing. She values life and asks that we choose life. That's clear enough!" He asked for an example of a situation which was ambiguous. The one given was the conundrum we now refer to as "Sophie's choice." You know the story: A Jewish woman (Sophie) has two children. All three are transported to Auschwitz and eventually end up in a selection line where either the mom will be separated from her children and taken to a labor camp while they are taken to the gas chamber or all three will be taken and killed. Sophie, who has caught the eye of a Nazi soldier is given a different choice when he intervenes --- one he thinks is more sympathetic: "You may save ONE of your children, or you will all die!"

What does the Church teach about such situations? While a number of moral principles apply, there is no single one-size fits all answer here. Instead the Church DEPENDS upon people being able to think clearly and morally, to discern and preference the values and disvalues present in the situation, and to respond with one's own conscience judgment. The Church actually depends on individuals to BE Church in such situations and to do the very best they can; she expects us to extend Christian morality into situations which she cannot simply address with a one-size fits all answer. To form one's conscience means to be increasingly able to think morally; it means to be able to discern the multiple values and disvalues in a given situation, to preference them, and then to act courageously on one's "certain" conscience judgment. (Again, "certain" does not exclude the possibility of error; it means that at this point in time this is the conscience judgment one has come to in listening to one's heart of hearts and that this cannot, must not be violated or betrayed.)

As horrifying as the decision asked for in Sophie's Choice is, what was more immediately horrifying was that in the discussion which raised it as an example, the person who asked for the example did not know how to think about such a situation or how to make a moral decision where there were competing values and disvalues. He was not able to say how he would make such a decision or think about any of the values or disvalues present. Since the Church had not said, "this is the answer" (she cannot do so when there are serious competing values) he was at a complete loss. In other words he was used to doing what the Church taught, but had NOT managed to develop a well-formed conscience which allowed him to make mature or --- in this case anyway--- ANY decision. Like the situation brought up at coffee this morning, this person had been taught that certain actions were never okay, but could not think morally (could not really preference the values present), nor had they learned to assist in the formation of their own consciences or listen to God's voice in their own heart of hearts. Simply knowing and believing what the Church teaches abstractly is not the same as having a well-formed conscience which can make moral judgments in specific situations.

So where was the real sin in this morning's story? Well, in my humble opinion it lays in large part with a Church that never taught the fullness of its own theology of conscience. In both of these stories persons were in fact victimized by an overly simplistic approach to authority and the church's own teaching on what it means to act in good conscience. Vatican II specifically rejected such an approach to conscience as inadequate. We really have to do better in fidelity to the WHOLE of what the Church teaches on conscience.

Thomas called Didymus: What's his "Doubt" Really About? (Reprise)

Today's Gospel focuses on the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, and one of the lessons one should draw from these stories is that we are indeed dealing with bodily resurrection, but therefore, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. It is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, in other words, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we as embodied persons will come to perfection beyond the limits of death. It is not just our souls which are meant to be part of the new heaven and earth, but our whole selves, body and soul.

The scenario with Thomas continues this theme, but is contextualized in a way which leads homilists to focus on the whole dynamic of faith with seeing, and faith despite not having seen. It also makes doubt the same as unbelief and plays these off against faith, as though faith cannot also be served by doubt. But doubt and unbelief are decidedly NOT the same things. We rarely see Thomas as the one whose doubt (or whose demands!) SERVES true faith, and yet, that is what today's Gospel is about. Meanwhile, Thomas also tends to get a bad rap as the one who was separated from the community and doubted what he had not seen with his own eyes. The corollary here is that Thomas will not simply listen to his brother and sister disciples and believe that the Lord has appeared to or visited them. But I think there is something far more significant going on in Thomas' proclamation that unless he sees the wounds inflicted on Jesus in the crucifixion, and even puts his fingers in the very nail holes, he will not believe.

What Thomas, I think, wants to make very clear is that we Christians believe in a crucified Christ, and that the resurrection was God's act of validation of Jesus as scandalously and ignominiously Crucified. I think Thomas knows on some level anyway, that insofar as the resurrection really occured, it does not nullify what was achieved on the cross. Instead it renders permanently valid what was revealed (made manifest and made real) there. In other words, Thomas knows if the resurrection is really God's validation of Jesus' life and establishes him as God's Christ, the Lord he will meet is the one permanently established and marked as the crucified One. The crucifixion was not some great misunderstanding which could be wiped away by resurrection. Instead it was an integral part of the revelation of the nature of truly human and truly divine existence. Whether it is the Divine life, authentic human existence, or sinful human life --- all are marked and revealed in one way or another by the signs of Jesus' cross. For instance, ours is a God who has journeyed to the very darkest, godless places or realms human sin produces, and has become Lord of even those places. He does not disdain them even now but is marked by them and will journey with us there --- whether we are open to him doing so or not --- because Jesus has implicated God there and marked him with the wounds of an exhaustive kenosis.

Another piece of this is that Jesus is, as Paul tells us, the end of the Law and it was Law that crucified him. The nail holes and wounds in Jesus' side and head -- indeed every laceration which marked him -- are a sign of legal execution -- both in terms of Jewish and Roman law. We cannot forget this, and Thomas' insistence that he really be dealing with the Crucified One reminds us vividly of this fact as well. The Jewish and Roman leaders did not crucify Jesus because they misunderstood him, but because they understood all-too-clearly both Jesus and the immense power he wielded in his weakness and poverty. They understood that he could turn the values of this world, its notions of power, authority, etc, on their heads. They knew that he could foment profound revolution (religious and otherwise) wherever he had followers. They chose to crucify him not only to put an end to his life, but to demonstrate he was a fraud who could not possibly have come from God; they chose to crucify him to terrify those who might follow him into all the places discipleship might really lead them --- especially those places of human power and influence associated with religion and politics. The marks of the cross are a judgment (krisis) on this whole reality.

There are many gods and even manifestations of the real God available to us today, and so there were to Thomas and his brethren in those first days and weeks following the crucifixion of Jesus. When Thomas made his declaration about what he would and would not believe, none of these were crucified Gods or would be worthy of being believed in if they were associated with such shame and godlessness. Thomas knew how very easy it would be for his brother and sister disciples to latch onto one of these, or even to fall back on entirely traditional notions in reaction to the terribly devastating disappointment of Jesus' crucifixion. He knew, I think, how easy it might be to call the crucifixion and all it symbolized a terrible misunderstanding which God simply reversed or wiped away with the resurrection -- a distasteful chapter on which God has simply turned the page. Thomas knew that false prophets showed up all the time. He knew that a God who is distant and all-powerful is much easier to believe in (and follow) than one who walks with us even in our sinfulness or who empties himself to become subject to the powers of sin and death, especially in the awful scandal and ignominy of the cross --- and who expects us to do essentially the same.

In other words, Thomas' doubt may have had less to do with the FACT of a resurrection, than it had to do with his concern that the disciples, in their desperation, guilt, and the immense social pressure they faced, had truly met and clung to the real Lord, the crucified One. In this way their own discipleship will come to be marked by the signs of the cross as they preach, suffer, and serve in the name (and so, in the paradoxical power) of THIS Lord and no other. Only he could inspire them; only he could sustain them; only he could accompany them wherever true discipleship led them.

Paul said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified" because only this Christ had transformed sinful, godless reality with his presence, only this Christ had redeemed even the realms of sin and death by remaining open to God even within these realities. Only this Christ would journey with us to the unexpected and unacceptable places, and in fact, only he would meet us there with the promise and presence of a God who would bring life out of them. Thomas, I believe, knew precisely what Paul would soon proclaim himself, and it is this, I think, which stands behind his insistence on seeing the wounds and put his fingers in the very nail holes. He wanted to be sure his brethren were putting their faith in the crucified One, the one who turned everything upside down and relativized every other picture of God we might believe in. He became the great doubter because of this, but I suspect instead, he was the most astute theologian among the original Apostles. He, like Paul, wanted to know Christ Crucified and ONLY Christ Crucified.

We should not trivialize Thomas' witness by transforming him into a run of the mill empiricist and doubter (though doubting is an important piece of growth in faith)!! Instead we should imitate his insistence: we are called upon to be followers of the Crucified God, and no other. Every version of God we meet should be closely examined for nail holes, and the lance wound. Every one should be checked for signs that this God is capable of and generous enough to assume such suffering on behalf of a creation he would reconcile and make whole. Only then do we know this IS the God proclaimed in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, the only one worthy of being followed even into the darkest reaches of human sin and death, the only One who meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place, the only one who loves us with an eternal love from which nothing can separate us.

Nuns on the Bus: Approaching the Trip's Conclusion

I am including two videos here. The first is one made at the St Augustine's "Hunger Center" --- one of the stops on the Nuns on the Bus tour. Here a man who is part of the "working poor" eats regularly and speaks about how he gauges the effect of economic legislation by looking at the lives of those around him. Here also we see Sister Corita who "loves every one of these people and they know it." The second is a video of Sister Simone Campbell speaking on the importance of this last congressional-office-stop on the tour, the nature of authentic governance and the place of ongoing engagement on the part of the populace, as well as the host of stories now carried in the hearts of those on the bus and a sense that the Holy Spirit is at work and doing something new here.



In both videos we see the heart and face of ministerial religious who pour out their lives for the poor and marginalized and have done so throughout the history of the United States. This IS what they are commissioned to do. This is what their vows and lives of prayer make possible. The credibility which has been commented throughout the last two weeks of the trip by those who sometimes travel great distances to meet the Bus and the nuns is one of the most significant elements remarked on. My sense is it points to an expression of holiness, of the fire of the Holy Spirit alive in these Sisters, which attests to who they are more fundamentally.



I personally am very grateful to Sister Simone and all those other Sisters who contributed to the success of this tour. Not only has the Nuns on the Bus trip highlighted the plight of the (often hard-working) poor and marginalized who are impacted by budgets that privilege the rich and called us all to a more responsible, compassionate, and engaged citizenship, but it has given a new visibility to the nature and place of ministerial women Religious in the Roman Catholic Church and the life of the US. Especially Sister Simone et al have shone a light onto the profound commitment to a wide spectrum of life issues which define these women's mission.

The tour ends tomorrow at 12:00 EDT in Washington DC with a prayer service and chance to lift up some of the stories heard throughout the trip. "The Lord hears the cry of the poor! Blessed be the Lord!" is a refrain we sometimes proclaim; let us pray that this trip bears abundant fruit in affecting our own hearing!

Not Better, but Better for Me

[[Dear Sister, you wrote in a post last week, [[ They do not build themselves into their worlds by having families, pursuing wealth, creating business empires, and the like. They live compassionate lives of prayer focused on their call to live a holiness where God's love does justice. These two dimensions of their lives allow them to address the world which God loves with an everlasting love with greater vision and generosity than THEY might otherwise be capable of --- NOT necessarily with greater generosity than others who are called to a different vocation are capable of. ]] I thought that it was church teaching that religious vows of poverty and chastity allowed a more generous life than most people could achieve. You seem to be disagreeing with that. Have I got that right?]]

Thanks for the question. I do believe that generally profession of the evangelical counsels is meant to create lives free from enmeshment in "the world" which makes both vision and generosity easier in some ways. However, I also believe that a universal call to holiness, which the church affirms, means a call to a similar vision and generosity no matter who we are. So how do I reconcile what seems to be a terrific and obvious conflict?

What I wrote was that profession of the evangelical counsels allows Religious to address the world with a vision and generosity which is greater than THEY might otherwise be capable of. I mean simply that this vocation is necessary for ME (or other religious) to achieve the levels of vision and generosity God needs from me (et al); I (we) could not do it in another vocational path. This does not necessarily mean that my own vision and generosity are greater than those of a non-Religious --- far from it!! It merely means that this vocation makes something possible for me and for other Sisters and Brothers I know. I honestly cannot measure these things in the life of another. After all, the very things I perceive as constraints which impede might be the very limits which are part of empowering and inspiring vision and generosity in another. I once heard another Sister put it this way: "most folks do not need to be a Sister to do what I do, but I need to be a Sister to do what I do."

A corollary of what I am saying here is that whatever vocation God truly calls one to is the optimal way to the vision and generosity the Kingdom requires of us. We have all known people who were not very well-suited to religious life or marriage or single life or whatever. Such lives are usually marked by a kind of cramped unhappiness which leads to self-absorption and limited sight. It would not matter that a Sister who was unsuited to religious life had vows and community and the external freedoms these issue in; she would still not be able to achieve the degree of vision or generosity to which God was truly calling her. A woman called to marriage and motherhood, and therefore happy in these, certainly has many limitations in her life but (in my experience of such women) she would be able to achieve a generosity and vision the aforementioned Sister could not.

My sense is this truth is related to the observation that authentic freedom is achieved in conjunction with the constraints of life. God must call us in a way which allows us to transcend these constraints even though such a call does not remove them. The key to authentic freedom and all the vision and generosity which flow from this is not the constraints themselves but the call of God which transfigures and allows us to transcend them. So, as counterintuitive as it seems at first or second glance, and though I will continue to ponder this, I think I am correct in what I said, namely, [[(religious) do not build themselves into their worlds by having families, pursuing wealth, creating business empires, and the like. They live compassionate lives of prayer focused on their call to live a holiness where God's love does justice. These two dimensions of their lives allow them to address the world which God loves with an everlasting love with greater vision and generosity than THEY might otherwise be capable of --- NOT necessarily with greater generosity than others who are called to a different vocation are capable of. ]]

Follow up: On Living Alone and Hermit Surveys

[[Dear Sister, thank you for answering my question on living alone and whether that makes one a hermit. How does "desert dwelling" relate to what you have said in the past about the difference between silence AND solitude and living the silence OF solitude? They are linked aren't they? I also have a different question. How would it impact your life to hear the results of a survey about "Who is the real hermit?" with answers to questions about what people think hermits are like, how they dress, eat, recreate, what they read, how they pray, what characteristics most mark them, etc? I read about two persons doing surveys. One was this type. The other seems to ask for responses from hermits themselves. Have you seen them? Why would a hermit participate in such surveys?]] (redacted)

You are most welcome regarding my answer to your question on the distinction between living alone and being a hermit. I think this particular question is really important today as Bishops and other chancery personnel try to discern whether someone in their diocese is called to be a hermit or not. One of the things I try always to stress is that at least before being admitted to temporary vows the persons they are evaluating must have made the transition from being a lone person to one who is a hermit in an essential sense and is therefore living the silence of solitude as the heart, context, and goal of their lives. Otherwise we have more or less pious folks perhaps living some degree of silence and solitude in various ways but who are not really hermits in any fundamental sense.

You are correct that this is very closely related to the distinction between simply living alone and living as a desert dweller. The common element in both distinctions is "the silence of solitude." This is one of the reasons I have tried to make it clear that the silence of solitude is the defining element of the eremitical life and its actual charism (gift quality) to the Church and rest of the world. In a sense I would be comfortable saying that "desert dweller" and "one who lives the silence OF solitude" are synonyms --- no matter where the latter happens. We can see this when we reflect on the fact that one who perhaps takes a brief trip into the desert and meets (some) silence and solitude there has not yet become a desert dweller nor one who lives (or has even truly experienced) the silence of solitude. I think it is even possible to say that a person who moves to the desert for an extended time but whose home is sealed against the desert conditions and who simply remain shut in that home themselves along with every modern convenience and distraction is not yet a "desert dweller" either.

Regarding your second question, how would such a survey affect me? In the first case, not at all. That is, it would not change how I dress, eat, live my life, style myself (Sister, etc) or behave. I am who I am and there is no need to pretend otherwise, nor to try to hide that from people. My life is an essentially hidden one, but it is also a public vocation with obligations and with a foundational requirement of transparency (not to be mistaken for infringement of privacy!!). If the concern of the first survey you mentioned is defeating stereotypes or correcting popular expectations, for instance, then letting people meet me and understand I AM a hermit is a better solution than anything I know. One does not deal effectively with stereotypes and inaccuracies with pretense. Instead one makes the truth known and thereby dispels common misconceptions. I might say that one affect of the survey could be to strengthen me in my resolve to make this vocation better known and understood. It could also give me some additional clues to what people think about hermits, but otherwise I would say it would not affect me or the living of my life at all.

In the second case which draws on the experience of hermits themselves, yes, I have seen the survey, and in fact was interviewed for a couple of hours by the author and researcher last year. He traveled here to CA and met with me here at the hermitage as well as visiting a couple of other eremitical houses in No CA. The experience was quite fine. It was good to be able to talk about this vocation with someone researching all kinds of experiences of solitude and the effect of several variables on the eremitical experience. That interview left me with questions I still ponder, or which come back to me from time to time in a way which is helpful.

It is always helpful to articulate one's experience --- if not for the person asking the questions, then certainly for oneself. Recently I did an interview for an article on eremitical life. It was interesting to read the draft version and see what presuppositions or assumptions I make in trying to explain this vocation -- especially if someone claims to have read my blog. My own unclarity or silence on several really fundamental issues were alarming because without these one is describing a parody of the diocesan eremitical life. Fortunately the author wanted accuracy and was very willing to allow me to contact him with anything I thought would be helpful. I have yet to see the finished draft, but I am hoping I was able to clarify my omissions! At least I know that I learned from doing this interview, just as I learn things whenever I write or answer questions about the eremitical life. And with regard to the second survey mentioned above, I look forward to reading the results because these involve conversations with people truly living solitude in conscious and reflective ways. These kinds of things are always helpful to me and have the potential to challenge me in the living of my vocation in ways popular expectations do not.

Thus, I do think surveys can be interesting and valuable sources of information --- especially if they are well done and accurately demonstrate what people believe to be true about hermits. Stereotypes are dangerous, particularly if they are held by people who are seeking to be hermits or those who participate in discerning eremitical vocations. The basic problem here is that hermits' lives are of tremendous value in a society which is intolerant of silence and touts individualism or narcissism rather than an individuality which is properly situated as a dimension of community. They are equally valuable for people who are trapped in situations which isolate or demean and require a way to redeem these because they suggest creative possibilities. But stereotypes --- which remain far too prevalent, do not serve in this way. Instead they tend to reinforce all of these elements: individualism, narcissism, isolation, etc. Surveys can help us be aware of and even understand such misconceptions; for chanceries or others dealing with eremitical vocations (or potential vocations) these may assist in recognizing when such things are driving an individual's desire to be a hermit or a diocese's admission to profession.

Questions re Canon 603 and Public Profession

Hi Sister O'Neal, I think you have written about this before but I read the following in a blog after I looked up "public and private hermit vocations". [[Or, if public profession is God's will and the hermit's accepted format for profession of promises or vows, Canon 603 does not need to be utilized or incorporated. If not, the hermit is publicly avowed and consecrated, but not bound by that Canon. Regardless of Canon 603 or not, a public profession is that: public. People know.]] Can you either comment on this or point me to other places where you have already done this? (redacted slightly)

Yes, I have written about this issue quite a bit. You can find pertinent posts under labels like "public vs private vows", "lay hermits v diocesan hermits, " "consecrare vs dedicare" etc. There are several misconceptions in this comment, three of which are quite significant.

The most fundamental error comes in the last sentence which asserts essentially that whether a profession is canonical (canon 603 in this case) or not, so long as it is done in front of people and people know of it, then it is a public profession. This is not true. When we speak of public vows we are not speaking of vows which involve some degree of notoriety --- no matter how modest that may or may not actually be. We are speaking about vows in which the person assumes public rights and obligations. Public vows are received "in the name of the church" and in such a profession the person assumes a new ecclesial identity (in this case, that of a diocesan hermit) while private vows are not received in the name of the Church --- even if they are witnessed by the Pope --- and do not indicate a new ecclesial identity. (In this case one is and, at this point in time, remains a baptized lay person with all the legal rights and obligations which come to one by virtue of baptism --- no small matter --- but the legitimate rights and obligations involved in being a solitary Catholic Hermit do not attach.)

The second, but related error comes in the first sentence where the writer affirms that public vows as a hermit can be made but that canon 603 need not be used. Were this writer speaking of religious eremitical life (semi-eremitical life that is) where hermits are publicly professed as part of a religious congregation like the Carthusians, Camaldolese, etc, this statement would be strictly true. Persons publicly professed in this way use other canons but not canon 603. But in the given context, where s/he is speaking about a solitary hermit, it is not true. To state what I have written before here in reference to the history of canon 603, etc, if one is to be publicly professed as a solitary hermit one MUST be professed under canon 603. There is no other option within the Roman Church. This is part of the significance of canon 603. Canon 603 makes something possible in universal law which has never been possible before. So, if one truly believes she has discerned that God is calling her to be publicly professed as a hermit in the Roman Catholic Church, she must seek admission to profession and consecration under Canon 603. This will entail the Church's own discernment in the matter because ecclesial vocations are vocations where God's own call is mediated by the Church. They are never assumed by the individual on her own. Again, public vocations involve the assumption of rights and obligations not found in private vocations so the Church must be involved in the discernment of such vocations. Canon 603 is precisely the Canon through which such rights and obligations are granted or assumed by the solitary hermit.

The final error involves the use of the term consecration. This is a really common mistake and I have heard people at every level of the church make it in adopting the common usage re "consecrating oneself" but it remains a mistake. Namely, consecration is not simply the act of giving oneself to God. In fact, it is not something a human being does at all. Vatican II rightly (and carefully) reserved the word consecration for the action of God alone. Since God is Holiness, only God may make holy --- only God, that is, may hallow or set something aside as holy. The human action involved in profession is "dedication." In definitive or perpetual public vows the act of profession is accompanied by prostration, the calling on the communion of saints to witness and participate in what is happening, and a solemn prayer of consecration. We refer to the entire event as "profession" or "consecration" but even so, consecration per se is something only God does. Meanwhile, the proper term for a person with private vows is "dedicated." The act they make in making private vows is an act of dedication.

Further, except for baptism itself, we reserve the term "consecrated" as a kind of shorthand for entry into the "consecrated state." Here the term "state" refers to a stable state of life or "status." Private vows do not initiate into the consecrated state of life  nor do significant private prayer experiences where God in Christ touches and "consecrates us"; thus, it is not accurate to speak of a person with private vows as "consecrated." (By virtue of our baptisms we are all consecrated by God but this does not initiate us into what is called the "consecrated state (of life)." It is important to remember this in case we are tempted to think that "consecrated state" means "holier than everyone else" or a "higher vocation." There is nothing "higher" or "holier" than Baptism and the recreation that occurs there. After all, we can leave the obligations of the consecrated state but we cannot ever truly leave the obligations of the consecration of Baptism behind.)

Hope this helps.

Religious Life today: One Heart, a Diversity of Expressions

I have received several comments and questions asking me how it is I can support the social justice vision of the Nuns on the Bus tour. It seems clear to those emailing that my life could not be more different than the Sisters on the Bus. How can an eremite living the silence of solitude be embracing the same values as active, ministerial Sisters? How can (as I put it) we share the same heart and embrace such very different lives?

One of the very startling emphases in Sister Simone Campbell's presentation (found in the video posted here a couple of posts ago) is the complementarity between individual responsibility and koinonia or solidarity with our brothers and sisters. In speaking about the intimate relationship between these two found in Caritas in Veritate specifically and in Catholic social teaching more generally, Sister Simone made essentially the following statement which I will need to paraphrase somewhat: [[. . .It is the role of government to counter the excesses of any culture. [It is the role of government in the US] to counter [our excessive] individualism with the keen knowledge of solidarity. . . .it is solidarity which prevents us from slipping into isolation, loneliness, and depression. The only time we are fully human is when we are connected to others.]]

I don't think anyone reading my blog for the past 5 years will be able to miss the similarities in what Sister Simone and I have been saying --- though I have been doing it from the perspective of a hermit calling attention to 1) the dialogical and covenantal nature of the human being, and 2) the distinction between genuine solitude (which is communal and other-centered) and isolation (which is often selfish, self-pitying, bitter, and/or misanthropic). Quite often here I have spoken of the individualism and narcissism of our world and especially our society as countered by the hermit's authentic life of "the silence of solitude." You may also remember the comment a friend of mine made re inauthentic vocations to eremitical solitude: "in solitude we should hear the anguish and cries of the world; if we do not we are not mature enough for such a vocation."

How like the talk Sister Simone gave the other night referring to her own prayer and Yahweh's speech to Moses: "I have heard my people's cry. . ." The only things I have perhaps spoken of more often are the unnatural solitudes of our world which need to be redeemed, and the fact that human beings are called to completion in community with God and others --- a fact which is true of hermits as well, though that completion assumes a paradoxical form in their lives. Both themes are also central to the life Sister Simone lives, the message she proclaims, the work she does, and the passion which drives both of those.

What Sister Simone represents very clearly is a form of life which is countercultural and so, unworldly in the best Christian sense. It is, in other words, rooted in and supportive of the values of the Kingdom of God. It is prophetic because it confronts a central untruth of our culture (individualism and its variations of narcissism, greed, selfishness, and misanthropy) with the Gospel of God that says that in God we are ALL equal, all gifted with God's grace (remember this week we heard the reading announcing that God causes it to rain on the just and unjust), all called to wholeness and holiness, and ALL called to support the dignity and integrity of our neighbors in their quest for wholeness and holiness (love them as you love me). What I represent and speak about is identical except that the form of life in which I find all of these dynamics embodied is that of eremitical solitude. Thus, it is no surprise to me that Sister Simone's prayer centers often on desert dwellers and prophetic images of burning bushes and the dry bones raised to new life in Ezekiel, nor that my own leads to a sense of the strong sense of the other-centered and covanental nature of genuine solitude.

There should be no surprise for any of us in this. We (the Nuns on a Bus type Sisters and diocesan hermits like myself) live two very different Religious lives embodying the very same values and commitments; more, we do so precisely because we both live lives rooted in the Gospel of Christ. Our hearts are the same though the lives they empower and call for are, superficially at least, very different. One of the reasons I have been posting about the Sisters of the LCWR and the Nuns on the Bus tour is precisely because I recognize my own heart in what they are about. I would say it is the heart of a hermit; Sister Simone would say, I think, it is the heart of a Sister of Social Service or other ministerial Sister. It could not be of greater importance that Catholics in particular look at the compassionate heart which empowers the variety of forms of Religious life extant in our Church today. I believe this unity, this sameness at the level of heart in the presence of great diversity is of critical importance to the Church and a sign of the authenticity of what we each represent. Being able to perceive and appreciate it is as important for anyone wishing to understand religious life today.

What is my word of encouragement then to all those who see only the clear but superficial differences --- and sometimes exploit them for various agendas? Look deeper to the Gospel underpinnings and the love of God which constitutes their unity. Look with the eyes of faith and see a love which does justice at the heart of these vocations to Religious life. After you have done that, then look at the elements or structures which order and support such love --- elements and structures like community (in a variety of forms), the vows, a deep prayer life, etc. Only then will the diversity of expressions make sense to you as wonderful expressions of the same reality.

Followup on the Question re: What a "woman Religious looks like"

In an earlier post a reader objected that the Sisters who are part of member congregations of LCWR don't look like representatives of consecrated life because, presumably and generally speaking, they no longer wore habits. I said I would respond to that objection in a separate post so let me give it a shot. Let me be clear though: in this response I don't intend a comprehensive discourse on the issue of wearing habits. Instead I want to focus on one of the things that is happening because of the Nuns on a Bus tour --- namely the act of making clear "what a ministerial woman religious actually looks like".

Let's be clear, as a kind of introduction, that apostolic or ministerial Sisters often only wore the daily dress of their cultures. Some of the habits we identify today as "nun's habits" were really the widow's weeds of the day. In fact, Sisters wore these and were encouraged to wear them by other Sisters in the early days of the US because of the anti-Catholicism prevalent during that time. In time these costumes (the common European term for them) became a formalized habit which, rather than assuring these Sisters fit in well with the culture and society of their day and could minister effectively, stood out from the normal garb of the day. Various parts of such habits also eventually acquired religiously symbolic value but this was because they were intimately related to the consecrated women who wore them (including those in monastic life from the long past)--- not because the garb itself began as symbolic or religiously significant. Thus, we need to be aware that religious habits were born of necessity, custom, and association with the persons who wore them and the lives of generosity, prayer, and holiness those women actually lived.

In 1900 in a text called Conditae a Christo which still defined all religious life in a monastic shape but without strict cloister, and then 1917 with the Code of Canon Law, the Church recognized a kind of hybrid religious life which made normative anachronistic dress which sometimes had been forced on Sisters so they could be called "real religious." Often the Sisters' ministries had to be tailored as a result and so there were significant trade offs in the situation. After Vatican II, and because of its directives and values, women religious modified their religious garb, and often, as they re-examined the history and charisms of their congregations they went back to simple contemporary dress. They also began appraising their commitment to set corporate ministries or "apostolates" in light of their own charisms and the Council's teaching on the universal call to holiness. What was clear to the Sisters was that projects that had needed Sisters originally (the foundation and staffing of hospital and school systems) now could easily be turned over to lay persons. In any case, government took over the responsibility of education and health care in ways which made the Sisters' work to bring these to the marginalized less imperative or necessary --- and in some cases, less possible.

They moved on to other ministries which were as ground-breaking and unaddressed as had been health care and schooling for the poor and otherwise marginalized they had first been involved in. In such ministries archaic, expensive habits (and make no mistake that traditional habits were expensive in several ways!) were not helpful but in fact often created a barrier to those the Sisters sought to serve. Christ's presence never created unnecessary barriers. Unfortunately the result of all of this meant that Sisters largely passed from public view and many Catholics felt Sisters had abandoned them and the institutions they had established. Because Sisters weren't readily identifiable by distinctive dress and also worked on the margins of society rather than in parish schools, etc, many Catholics and non-Catholics wondered if they still existed at all. Neither did they realize that the changes in Sisters' ministries and dress were, in part, directly tied to a need to lift up the vocations of ALL of the laity to serve without distinctive dress or a kind of "special" status beyond the consecration of their Baptism in Christ.

Today in the Nuns on the Bus tour one of the things that is happening is that Sisters who were thought to have died out, abandoned ministry and/or the religious life, and whose consecration beyond Baptism was inextricably tied to distinctive garb, are demonstrating what they have been doing for the last 47 years since Vatican II ended. These Sisters are giving the lie to all the stereotypes and malicious rumors --- that, for instance, they are not women of profound prayer, that they are not living community, that they are unfaithful to their vows, that they have given up important ministry to deal in weird and wacky spiritualities, etc. Further, they are giving a face and voice to what it means to be a ministerial Religious today. In the Sisters associated with this tour we see deeply faithful, profoundly compassionate, and radically committed women whose credibility is rooted precisely in their commitment to their vows to stand in solidarity with those on the margins of society. They are making visible to the mainstream what has so long and unfortunately been invisible to most of the church --- lives of total dedication to God and those he holds as precious, and total consecration by God to lives of real holiness.

It is instructive and ironic that all of the media are still using the iconic images of nuns we associate with Sisters prior to Vatican II. In a sense the media is underscoring stereotypes and not paying attention to what is actually going on right in front of them, namely the public revelation of a form of religious life which is marked by simplicity and solidarity. Further, it is a form of religious life which is carried on by strong women who value their own womanliness and therefore empower women in this society more generally --- especially women who will never have "special status" in the Church and will never wear distinguishing garb which comes with the special perqs and deference attached to religious habits. In the Nuns on the Bus tour increasingly the images of the Sisters involved create normative images in our own minds of just what most consecrated women dress and act like today. This is a piece of the picture that has been missing and it is important. As a result, instead of looking for the presence of women religious because of their distinctive garb, we begin to look for them as the superficially hidden leaven in all kinds of vital "love-does-justice" projects and contexts. We begin, in other words, to seek (and to see that we are responsible for seeking) evidence of genuine holiness and compassion in the unexpected place -- a holiness and compassion which we can ALL find ourselves called to.

This is the original pattern of ALL religious life rooted in the incarnation of the Word of God. It is a pattern which has been recovered by women Religious who seek to empower others, not to garner esteem and status for themselves or their "state of life." It is a pattern which breaks open stereotypes and draws our attention to what is profoundly important, the reality of commitment to God and consecration by God lived out in hearts which are humble and with which we should all be able to completely identify. As important as I personally believe habits are in given situations, I recognize that they are ALWAYS less important than the more profound and personal witness given by the women Religious on the Nuns on the Bus tour (or in any other situation for that matter). After all, few in our church or society will ever wear habits or be able to completely identify with those who do; but everyone can identify with and be inspired by those who reveal their hearts to us during these weeks of the bus tour. They are the face of one form of religious life in today's church and we are privileged to see it so clearly.

Responding to Questions Critical of the Sisters of the LCWR

[[Dear Sister, I have read your blog for some time and have admired a lot of what you have written. You pursue a hermit life of holiness and prayer in separation from the world but how can you speak of the Sisters of the LCWR and Network as though their lives are also about holiness and prayer? They are too immersed in the world. They are too involved in social justice. When the Church talks about "consecration" she means "set apart for God". These sisters are consecrated but who can tell? They don't dress like it, act like it, or live like it.]] (Redacted)

Thanks for your comments and questions. I assume these are in response to my post about Holiness as a Love that does Justice so I would prefer not to repeat what I already wrote there. Let me just say that the active, effective love of God that reconciles, heals, and therefore does justice (sets everything to rights) always spills over into ministry. Reconciliation is not only about our own souls, but about our entire lives, the lives of everyone around us, and in fact, our entire world. It always impels us to reach out to others and work for their own dignity and welfare, their own human wholeness and holiness. It compels us to work for the Kingdom of God --- that realm in which God is truly sovereign and so, that realm marked by a covenantal love that makes completely just. For a very very few of us that means a solitary life of prayer and penance, a life of the silence of solitude. We believe such a life signals to the whole church that there is a foundational relationship which is the source and ground of our lives, identities, and integrity. The very nature of human life is dialogical, and in fact, covenantal; hermits call attention in an especially vivid way to one dimension of this truth in particular.

But the rest of the Church calls attention to this truth in other ways, focusing on different facets of it. In Baptism all of us are consecrated into this truth and commissioned to discern how it is God calls us to make it real in our society and world. But note that consecration here has two interrelated senses. First it means set apart in and for holiness BY God --- for only God who is the Holy One consecrates. Secondly it means set apart for God, for his will, for all that he holds precious. For the majority of people this means vocations which are secular. As leaven in bread most express their consecration in the world. They do so in the world they are immersed in, the world of family, business, politics, economics, academia, etc. As Vatican II emphasized, ALL are called to an exhaustive holiness no matter the context of their lives and mission.

Men and Women Religious are also called to this SAME exhaustive holiness. However, their own call means letting go of various possibilities so that they may live out this call to holiness in a life which is more clearly countercultural and more explicitly set apart by and for God. Through their profession of the evangelical counsels they forego some ways of living which may mitigate or distort this countercultural stance. They do not build themselves into their worlds by having families, pursuing wealth, creating business empires, and the like. They live compassionate lives of prayer focused on their call to live a holiness where God's love does justice. These two dimensions of their lives allow them to address the world which God loves with an everlasting love with greater vision and generosity than THEY might otherwise be capable of --- NOT necessarily with greater generosity than others who are called to a different vocation are capable of. They are not, as you say, immersed in the world yet neither are they uninvolved in it nor ignorant or uncaring of it; neither are they called to live apart from it in the same way a hermit or cloistered religious is. They are called, again, to live countercultural lives which summon the world to become the Kingdom God wills it to be --- the Kingdom where the Divine completely interpenetrates reality and all of us live as brothers and sisters in God. Afterall, this incarnational way of working for the Kingdom is precisely the way Jesus lived it and summoned his disciples to do.

Remember that "separation from the world" can have a number of meanings and expressions. While some treat this term as meaning separation from anything except a convent, monastery, or hermitage environment and life, in canon law it means separation from that which is resistant to Christ and NOT from the whole of God's good creation. Given this latter sense women religious who live more radically countercultural lives rooted in prayer and commitment to a love that does justice can be said to be every bit as faithful to this element of their lives as anyone else. In fact, to the extent they really are grounded in the countercultural values and vision of Christ, they may be more sincerely faithful to it than the so-called hermit who closes the door of her hermitage out of selfishness or individualism and does whatever she wants, or the Sister who lives comfortably in her convent pursuing personal holiness but who cannot or will not muster the compassion or real concern she should have for those living in poverty and/or in separation from love that makes whole.

You complain that the Sisters whose congregations belong to the LCWR are too involved in social justice to the detriment of any personal pursuit of prayer and holiness. But remember that Jesus spoke often about things like feeding the poor, visiting prisoners, etc, and one of the Gospel counsels we have is, "Whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, that you do for/to me." Apart from what I have already mentioned above about commitment to a love that does justice and flows from personal holiness, what seems to be critical for the Sisters we have been speaking of is the reason they are engaged in social justice. Sister Simone Campbell, who was featured in the video I posted, once noted that early on in the days of the civil rights movement she scanned the room in which a lot of fellow demonstrators were clustered and realized that while they all agreed on the action taken, no one else there was there on behalf of the Gospel of Christ. The Sisters who are involved in social justice activities are involved not only because of a holiness which issues in a love that does justice, but precisely because they take the Gospel counsels seriously --- including the counsels about the poor and least. I would suggest to you that this may not be maintained UNLESS the person is deeply grounded in prayer.

The life of women and men religious is a large and vital reality. It is composed of many streams and tributaries. We mustn't make the mistake of identifying one stream or current as the sole representative of a religious life of holiness and prayer, nor one as the only cogent expression of separation from the world. At the same time we cannot draw an absolute dichotomy between social justice and concern with individual holiness and lives of prayer. To do so is to call Jesus and the Gospel of Jesus liars. I hope this answers most of your objections and questions. The question of garb is one I will write about separately if you don't mind.

Personal Holiness is driven by a Love that does Justice: Reflecting on Nuns on the Bus

I have read a lot of comments in response to the Sisters of LCWR and Network being too political, not sufficiently concerned with holiness or grounded in prayer. I have to say that my own understanding of the Gospel supports the clear connection between concern with social justice (which implies political engagement), holiness, and the prayer that is the source of both. Even hermits whose lives are focused in the ways of solitary prayer and the silence of solitude know that genuine holiness stems from prayer and issues in compassion while compassion issues in ministry and ministry is a form of love doing justice. We see this dynamic clearly from the remarks of Sister Simone Campbell as she and a group of Sisters begin their Nuns on the Bus trip.



I am reminded in Sister Simone's emphases (social justice and prayer) and the way they dovetail so well that one of the truly wonderful renderings of the NT's term "righteousness" is "covenant behavior". This is a translation that NT Wright uses. What this means is that we are righteous when we act out of the fact that God is actively and truly our God and we (together) are actively and truly God's People. Both words in this translation are critical: covenant, which points to the dialogical or communal nature of our existence, and "behavior" which focuses us on the living, compelling, and effective nature of the love which stands at the heart of this covenantal reality and also issues from it. Another word for the righteousness that results when God's reconciling love does justice within us and within our world, is "holiness". Unless there is a "love that does justice" at the heart of our being, and therefore, a love which impels us beyond ourselves to extend this justice-making love to our brothers and sisters, our society, and our world, we are not dealing with that "covenant behavior" --- that holiness --- which Jesus' life, death, and resurrection made real in our world. Genuine holiness does justice; the two simply cannot be separated from one another, and they certainly cannot be separated from one another in the lives of ministerial or apostolic religious.

It is not always easy to be transparent about one's prayer. Neither is it easy to make it clear that for Sisters involved in either apostolic or ministerial religious life a passion for social justice stems from prayer, is supported by prayer, and leads back to prayer. (Too often in discussions and debates critics arbitrarily draw lines between faith and political action, for instance, and we are left with a truncated and inadequate perspective on what it means to be a person of faith, a person committed to holiness, to covenant behavior in our contemporary world.) But Sister Simone managed all this in her comments above. My thanks to her for so clearly revealing the heart of this vital form of religious life.

Feast of St Romuald: 1000 Years of Camaldolese Presence

Congratulations to all Camaldolese monks, nuns, and oblates this day, the feast day of the founder of the Camaldolese Congregations! Not only is it a more-usual feast day but it is the 1000 year anniversary of the founding of the Camaldolese. Special greetings to those who are on pilgrimage to the Sacre Eremo in Tuscany.

Saint Romuald has a special place in my heart for two reasons. First, in a way many found singularly unhermit-like, he went around Italy bringing isolated hermits together or at least under the Rule of Benedict --- something I found personally to resonate with my own need to subsume my personal Rule of Life under a larger more profound and living tradition or Rule, and secondly, he gave us a form of eremitical life which is uniquely suited to the diocesan hermit. St Romuald's unique gift (charism) to the church involved what is called a "threefold good"; here Romuald recognized solitude, community, and martyrdom or evangelization, and treated them as dimensions or fundamental dynamisms of every monastic life --- whether essentially eremitical or essentially cenobitical. This meant that for hermits Romuald gives us a model of life which is essentially communal even while it is solitary, and also one which is responsible for proclaiming the Gospel in season and out.

So often people understand the eremitical life as antithetical to communal life, and opposed as well to witness or evangelization. Romuald modelled an eremitism which balances the human need for solitude and a commitment to God alone with community and outreach to the world. The vocation is essentially eremitic, but rooted in what we Camaldolese call "The Privilege of Love" and therefore it spills out in witness and has a communal dimension or component to it as well. This seems to me to be particularly well-suited to the vocation of the diocesan hermit since she is called to live for God alone, but in a way which ALSO specifically calls her to give her life in love and generous service to others, particularly her parish and diocese. While this service and gift of self ordinarily takes the form of solitary prayer, it may also involve other ministry within the parish including limited hospitality --- or the outreach of a hermit from her hermitage through the vehicle of a blog!!! So, all good wishes on this feast of Saint Romuald!!

And for those who are not really familiar with Romuald, here is the brief Rule he formulated for monks and oblates. It is the only thing we actually have from his own hand.

Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it. If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind. And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more. Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor. Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

We are faced today with a feast that seems sometimes to be irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theology of grace and freedom point directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways which are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all  persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term which points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing which could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Other times love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover. In such cases our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened" and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, callousedness. Such hardening is self-protective but it also locks us into a world which makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons), we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence. Like the Sacred Heart our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic dimensions and therefore too by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart which heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts which love as God loves, and therefore which do justice. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!

Hermits: Not Merely People who Live Alone but Desert Dwellers

Dear Sister, recently I read a hermit who claimed the word hermit meant one who lived alone. They said, [[The very word hermit is a label that means "solitary" in Old French, late Latin, and Greek. So perhaps the first hermit was simply someone who lived alone in a time when all other people lived together in family units, and a single person living by themselves would be unusual enough to have a word coined to describe the phenomena. Then others began to live like that first hermit, alone, or in whatever other ways that first hermit appeared, acted, and was for what purpose of being.]] Is this correct? Is it how the Church uses the word hermit? Thank you.

Solitariness is a part of the eremitical life, yes, but the word hermit (eremite) has its origins in the Greek word eremos, which means desert. An eremite (hermit) then is a desert dweller and there is much more involved in truly being a desert dweller than simply being alone. Consider what it means to live in the desert generally, and then in terms of the judeo-Christian heritage. It is in this way we come to understand what a hermit is from the Catholic perspective and how the eremitical life differs from simply being or living alone. After all, many people live alone; does this of itself make them hermits? I would say no.

Deserts and wildernesses are equivalent concepts or realities. They are places where human poverty and weakness are writ very large, where the horizon of human existence is seemingly infinite, and where the ability to be one's own source of life, to secure oneself whether physically, psychologically, or spiritually, simply and clearly doesn't exist. There is no room for delusions in the desert. Delusions kill. We know how fragile, finite, and threatened we are in such a place. In the face of such reality we ask the really huge questions implied by existence but often crowded from our vision by the comforts and distractions with which we live every day: Who am I? Why am I alive at all? How can I continue to live? How can my puny, insignificant existence really be of any meaning in the grand scheme of things? Is my life simply absurd? Should I hold onto life, should I fight for it or let go of it? Why or why not? And if I choose to live, then what is essential to that and how do I find it, supply it, or open myself to it?

These are some of the questions which well up in the wilderness in the absence of distraction and satiety. These are the questions the hermit lives out in one form and another every day of her life. But the hermit, especially the Christian hermit, also lives the answer to these found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For the Christian hermit, the wilderness/desert is also the place where the Jewish refugees from Egypt came to terms with and claimed their identity as God's own, ratified the covenant with their lives, and became Israel, the covenant partner of God. The desert is the context where the prophet John the Baptist was nurtured and called to proclaim a baptism of repentance. It is also the place where he learned clearly who he was and was empowered to proclaim the One he was not. The desert is the place where Jesus was driven by the Spirit of God's love to grapple with his newly divinely-affirmed identity as Son of God and the shape that Sonship would take in this world. Here he struggled with the temptation to misuse the gifts which were his: his power, his authority, his very identity; here he struggled with the temptation to relinquish his complete dependence upon God the Father and act autonomously. It was in the desert that in a special way Jesus claimed his own identity and embraced the values and wisdom of the Kingdom rather than the identity, values and wisdom the world affirmed and offered him.

Similarly, the desert is the place where Paul, following his Damascus experience and his initial acceptance by the primitive Christian Church spent time consolidating the changes in understanding his meeting with Christ occasioned. It was here that Paul reframed his own understanding of Law in light of the Gospel, where he worked out the meaning of Jesus' scandalous death on the cross, where he came to part of an ecclesiology which would move Christianity from being a sect of Judaism to being a universal faith. In short, in Scripture, the desert is the place where we are remade in solitary dialogue with God. It is where we do battle with the demons that dwell in our own hearts and the world around us; it is where we learn to live our own human poverty and weakness because we also live from a grace that enriches and strengthens us; it is where we learn to see our own smallness and insignificance against the infinite horizon of a God who loves us immeasurably and eternally.

More, we do these things not only for ourselves, but for what the Scriptures call the glory of God. What this means is that we do it so that God's presence and nature may be clearly revealed in our world through our lives. That is what it means in the Bible to speak of God being glorified. And of course, we do this so that others might be nourished and inspired by it; we do it so that people may find hope when there seems nothing and no one to hope in, so that people may be nourished and their thirst quenched when the landscape of their lives seems entirely barren. We do it so that the least of the least among us may discover and be affirmed in the infinite value of their lives and so even the most isolated may find that God is with them ready to transfigure isolation into solitude. Eremitical life witnesses to the essential wholeness that we are all called to in God through Christ, no matter our poverty, our weakness, or our brokenness and isolation.

The hermit's life then is not merely about living alone, but rather living alone WITH, FROM, and FOR God, and in a way which is specifically FOR others as well. That is why Canon 603 defines it in part as follows: [[Can 603 §1, Besides institutes of consecrated life, the Church recognizes the life of hermits or anchorites, in which the Church's faithful withdraw further from the world and devote their lives to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through the silence of solitude and through assiduous prayer and penance.]]

There is nothing unusual about people living alone today (nor in the past!). Many do so for unworthy or unavoidable reasons (selfishness, misanthropy, chronic illness, incarceration, bereavement, isolated old age, etc); some of these are --- or may be made --- even relatively pious. But very few have given their lives over to the redemptive dynamics and demands of desert living as epitomized by figures in our history like Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and so forth. For this reason I have to say the person who wrote the passage you cited is inaccurate on the very nature of what a hermit is and is about. This life involves living alone --- especially when one is a diocesan or solitary hermit --- but that is part and parcel of a desert existence which is very much more as well. One must define eremitical life in these (desert) terms or miss the mark completely.

Note: some of this I spoke of relatively recently --- not least in a post for the first week of Lent : Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: Driven into the Desert by the "spirit of Sonship". Folks might want to check that out as well. It is also linked to the term "desert spirituality" below.