Central Theological Insights around Which My Life Spirals Ever Deeper

[[Dear Sister Laurel, since you have studied Theology I wondered what are the most important lessons you have learned over the years. It may be these are theological or spiritual but are there certain lessons you keep coming back to, you know, points around which you circle and go ever deeper? Are any of these specific to your life as a hermit?]]

 What a terrific set of questions! I especially like the image of circling and going deeper because both my director and other friends and I sometimes speak of the spiral pattern to growth. We return to the same pieces of growth, the same insights, the same bits of clarity but each time from a different and deeper perspective. Each time the center is closer or I exist closer to the center. That happened once recently as I wrote about the gift of emptiness and the linkage between the hiddenness of the eremitical vocation and the work of God within us. At the time I noted that all the pieces had been there and I had written and spoken of each of them before --- often many times --- but I had never placed these two together in exactly this way before. They glowed for me with a kind of new incandescence  -- as though a blue piece of the theological puzzle and a red piece, once joined together, glowed with a purple light. A handful of the more significant lessons I have learned --- usually both theologically and spiritually --- are as follows:

The  human heart is a theological reality:

One of the most personally and professionally important pieces I can point to is the notion that the term "heart" is a theological term, and the human heart is, by definition, the place where God bears witness to Godself. The corollary is also important, namely, it is not so much that we have a heart and God comes to dwell there but that where God dwells we have a (human) heart! It was from this bit of theology taken from a footnote in an article on kardia (Kαρδία) in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament that a number of other emphases in my life and writing come. The notion that human beings ARE a covenant reality, a dialogue with God, a language event called to be Divine Word incarnate, comes from this insight (though they are related to other things as well). When coupled with the notion that God is ever new because God is eternal and eternal because God is ever new, this all led me to a notion of my own life which never allowed the sense that I was wounded beyond the capacity for new life, or the sense that there was nothing more to hope for.

The notion of heart as the place where God bears witness to Godself allowed me to see myself as having a deep place or reality within me where not even human woundedness and sinfulness can touch. There are darknesses in me, of course, but deeper than those is the light of God. There are distortions and untruths, but deeper than these is the God who is truth and who continually summons to truth, the One who creates new life with this Word and redeems the whole of reality. That God, whether I speak of him as Ground and Source of Being (cf. below) or as the center and depth dimension of my own heart, is the One who brings life out of death and makes hope rather than despair the pedal tone of my life.

God is Verb More than God is Noun:

As part of this theology is the notion that God is verb as much or more than God is noun. The dynamism of this idea, that God is not just Love but even more is Love-in-Act has been central for me. In thinking of the human being as a covenant or dialogical reality with Love-in-Act dwelling in the core of her being I also saw clearly that there was a dynamic and inalienable part of me that was constantly moving (or summoning) the whole of me towards abundant life and holiness. Speaking of God as a living God, thinking of the human soul as the constantly renewed breath of God, realizing that God was never summoned into action but was already moving, acting, healing, touching, etc, was important in the same way the idea that the word heart is a fundamentally theological term was important. Among other things, I realized I could never think of myself as wounded beyond the capacity to respond or beyond hope. There was always an unquenchable source of life living in my heart transcending the capacity of sin or death (in all its forms and variations) to stop or paralyze it. Moreover, this way of conceiving of God is both profoundly Scriptural while at the same time comporting with the "event nature" of the "true self" and the whole of reality we are dealing with more and more because of contemporary physics. It invites further theological reflection while taking quantum mechanics, etc, seriously. The same is true of the next bit of theology.

God is Ground and Source of Being; God is not A Being:

It is hardly possible to say all the ways this bit of theology has been crucial for me. Recently in explaining about the fact that miracles are not the result of a God who intervenes in and contravenes the laws of nature but is rather the revelation of the deepest "law" of reality I had occasion to refer to this famous bit of Paul Tillich's systematic theology. My understanding of and insistence that the whole of reality is at least potentially sacramental is rooted in this piece of theology. My work and reading regarding the relationship of science and faith --- the fact that these two are different ways of knowing the same reality, both with their own strengths and deficiencies, is built on this notion of God as Transcendent ground and source of being and meaning. The notion that God is the ground and source of all that is truly personal is another side of this foundational theological datum. Above all, perhaps, my sense that God is omnipresent but also summoning us each to enflesh "him" and bring him to a unique articulation in the ways only human beings seem able to do that is related to the notion of God as Ground and Source.

With regard to eremitical life it is the fact that union with God implies and in fact establishes our communion with others that is the primary key to my understanding eremitical solitude in terms not of aloneness so much as in terms of communion with God and all that is precious to God. Worldly solitude (and external or physical solitude) have more to do with being isolated from others than with communion and relatedness, but in Christian eremitical life solitude moves from and through this external solitude to a deep relatedness with God and others. Anyone can leave people behind and embrace a self-centered 'spirituality' marked by a selfish piety --- at least for a time --- but the paradox of authentic eremitical solitude is that when one embraces external or physical solitude in order to pray and be made God's own prayer, one also becomes more compassionate.

This is why canon 603 specifies a life "lived for others" --- not first of all because one's life is that of an intercessor (though one will surely pray for others) but because external solitude is the means to a literal compassion, a literal feeling with and for others involving the desire to alleviate suffering and mediate God and the hope God brings the isolated and marginalized to others. All of this is rooted in the fact that God is the ground of being and meaning; to move more deeply into union with God means to become more truly related to all else that is similarly related to and grounded in God.

Divine Sovereignty is the Counterpart of Human Freedom:

So often we pose our own freedom as something in conflict with the sovereignty of another but with God the opposite is true. The last three pieces of theology combine to reveal that human beings are truly themselves when God is allowed to truly be God. Because God is not A Being he never comes into competition with human beings --- as would inevitably and invariably happen if God were a being among other beings --- maybe especially as A supreme being. Instead though, God is the power underlying and within reality, the power driving and summoning to abundant life, to authenticity and to the reality of future and completion. This means (especially if the other insights are true) that if freedom is really the power to be the ones we are called to be, it must be seen as the counterpart to the sovereignty of God and God's call to be. So often it has been critically important that I understand that the will of God is the deepest law of my own true Self. Discerning the will of God means discerning where I am truly free, giving myself over to that will means giving myself over to my own deepest truth, giving myself over to the One who grounds my being and dwells as the core of my Self.  I am free when God is Lord. God is Lord to the extent I am truly free to be myself. So too for each and all of us.

Gospel Truth is ALWAYS Paradoxical:

When I began studying Theology my professor gave a lecture on two ways of thinking, the Greek way and the Biblical way, the way of compromise (thesis + antithesis ---> synthesis) and the way of radical relatedness where two apparently opposing realities are held together in tension and identity (thesis + antithesis does not equal conflict but = paradox). The most radical formulation of paradox living at the heart of Christianity is the Incarnation where Jesus is the exhaustive revelation of God to the extent he is exhaustively human, and where he is exhaustively human to the extent he reveals God. Jesus is strongest where he is weak, fullest where he is empty, richest where he has nothing at all to recommend him in worldly terms. The Trinity is also paradoxical rather than being some weird kind of new (or very ancient) math: where God is One, God is a Trinitarian Community of Love and where God is a Trinitarian community of Love God is truly One. Christianity is rooted in paradox and is always expressed in paradox: we have ourselves only to the extent we give ourselves away, insofar as we are mourners we will also know a deeper and more extensive joy, where we are rich in worldly terms we are poor in divine terms, etc, etc.

I always look for the paradox involved when I am doing theology --- so much so that I know if there is no paradox I have very likely transgressed into some form of heresy or other. Docetism, for instance, which takes its name from the Greek verb δοκεῖν (dokein) "to seem," takes the divinity of Jesus seriously at the expense of his humanity (he only seems human). Arianism, for instance, takes his humanity seriously at the expense of his divinity. The Christological task which confronts the systematic theologian, but also the ordinary believer in faith, is to hold the two things together in both tension and identity --- so that where Jesus is exhaustively human, there he is also the exhaustive revelation of God (despite the fact that humanity and divinity are not the same things).

Henri de Lubac once noted that one does not resolve or answer a paradox (to do so would compromise one or, more likely, both of the truths involved); rather, the only appropriate approach to paradox is contemplation. Pope Francis recently reminded us of the same thing. It is paradox which eventually allowed me to think of chronic illness as divine vocation (though I don't accept God wills illness), or to understand that in eremitical life the inability to minister to or love others in all the usual ways was, when lived with integrity, itself the ultimate ministry and love of others --- not in some bloodless and abstract way (not that that would be love anyway) but in the sense of living the deepest truth of human existence for the sake of others --- especially those who are without hope and those who, on the other end of the spectrum, believe they are their own best hope!

I am the Same as Everyone Else:

There were (and I guess still are) many things in my life which made (and make) me different from the people around me: family, interests, gifts, illness, desires and dreams and eventually even vocation. Though I always got on well with others, was well-liked, and did well in school, in athletics, music, work, etc, so I also stood out or apart. When I developed a seizure disorder it turned out not to be a kind of run-of-the-mill epilepsy (sorry, but some epilepsies really are kind of "run-of-the-mill" to my mind) but a medically and surgically intractable epilepsy whose seizures were rare and often initially unrecognized. Everything in my life seemed to point to my "difference". But at one point, perhaps 35 or so years ago I came to see myself clearly as the same as everyone else --- even in my differences most fundamentally I was the same.

As a result, I came to experience a profound empathy with others and a sense that the things which seemed to set me apart were, in one way and another, little different from the things which seemed to set others apart. I suppose I discovered paradox here too. I suspect when people write of Thomas Merton's experience on that street corner in Louisville, they are describing something similar to what happened to me. I can't point to a single event  as the focus of this shift, nor can I say I realized I loved everyone at that moment as happened to Merton, but the compassion and empathy Merton experienced sounds similar to what I experienced. Moreover, I believe Merton, especially as monk and (potential) hermit schooled in a "fuga mundi" way of approaching the world outside the monastery and wounded by his Mother's death and other circumstances from childhood and young adulthood, was coming from a place where he felt profoundly alien or different in many of the ways I had myself done. (N.B. Some Cistercians eschew the fuga mundi approach to monastic life on the basis of Trappist and Trappistine authors; Merton too seemed to eschew this approach when he wrote about "the problem" of the World, but my sense is he was still schooled in it in his early years at Gethsemani.)

In any case, the source of my worst suffering --- not least because it is self-reinforcing and self-isolating --- turned out to be seeing myself as different from everyone else, and the source of greatest joy came to be seeing myself in terms of my commonality with others. This is not an abstract truth (that would never have touched me) but is at least partly due to being profoundly understood by others who did not share the same differences (though no doubt they had their own). In any case, as a result (and to the extent I truly know this), I am not threatened by others' gifts, frightened by their differences, nor driven to despair by my own differences and deficiencies. Neither do I have a need to use my own gifts as weapons to humiliate others or prove my own superiority (or even my own competence). All of these are are part of our more profound "sameness" or commonality. This was a central piece of coming to truly love myself and others as myself.  It is the sine qua non without which no one can truly minister to others. Again, I am not entirely certain how I came by it, but I recognize it as a great gift and something that makes living Christianity and religious (and especially eremitical) life really possible.

Our God Reveals Godself in the Unexpected and Unacceptable Place:

I won't write a lot about this here except to say please check out posts on the theology of the Cross. There is no part of my life that is untouched by Paul's Theology of the Cross. Every part of my own theology is informed by the Cross. Recently I wrote about kenosis and the possibilities which still exist when one has been entirely emptied of every discrete gift and potential for ministry --- if only one can remain open to God. It is from such a position of emptiness, incapacity, and even certain kinds of failure, that Jesus' obedience (openness and responsiveness) to God opens our broken and sinful World most fully to God's redemption.

It is Mark's similar theology that gives me a sense that when all the props are kicked out God's faithfulness is the single thing we can count on, the thing that brings life out of death, communion with God out of godlessness, meaning out of absurdity and so forth. The notion that God becomes incarnate, that God does not hesitate to do what no other merely putative god would do, that the God of Jesus Christ accepts dishonor and shows a power which is truly perfected in weakness --- and that this God can be found in the unexpected and entirely "unacceptable" place --- is the source of all my hope and strength. It is an immeasurable mystery I am happy to reflect on, walk into and explore for the whole of my life. Such a God is paradoxical and so is such a gospel. In truth it is this theology of the cross and the paradoxical God it reveals that is the real source and ground of all of the other things I have already spoken about here.

There are probably a few other pieces of theology that are pivotal in my own life. One I haven't mentioned here is the notion that humility is a name we give the the dignity we possess as those accepting the God of Jesus Christ and ourselves in light of that God; humility is something God raises us to and the appropriate verb is to humble, not to humiliate. The second truth I have always clung to is that anyone seeking to do serious theology must come to terms with the Holocaust. It is here that the Theologies of the Cross of Paul and Mark and so many of the other pieces or insights I have mentioned find their ultimate test of theological validity --- far more, of course, than they do in the much smaller struggles of my own life. In any case, I will leave this here for now and  come back to finish later --- I need to think about which of these are specific to eremitical life. In the meantime I hope what I have written so far is helpful.

"Stay Quiet All Day, Say a Couple Prayers . . ."

[[[[ Otherwise, I think it could become a very self-indulgent life style (i.e. Stay quiet all day, say a couple prayers, meditate, do a little gardening or something...sounds nice...nothing wrong with it...but certainly not that big of a deal)]]]]

Introduction:

I cut this from an earlier post for special attention because it so irritated me. That was because it was the description of an eremitical life by a person who is seeking to become a hermit and one day, even a consecrated hermit. It was a bit surprising to hear the description of the externals of a life in cell as "nice,. . .nothing wrong with it. . .but certainly not that big of a deal" unless one were to add certain "heroic elements" or mortifications! Though I wrote recently about folks not understanding and sometimes misunderstanding the eremitical life I did not mention this prevalent source of misunderstanding, namely that the hermit life is merely one of leisure, saying a few prayers, doing a little work around the place, some gardening, etc. unless one adds in extra mortifications and prayers to make the vocation more "heroic" and to distinguish it from the life of the devout lay person.

I suppose it is easy for outsiders to see monastic or eremitical life in these terms. It is also easy to find would-be hermits who are about this kind of thing but are not fully committed to allowing God to be God in all of their life's moments and moods. (I suspect this distortion of the life may have been part of the reason the poster described the life in these terms.) Once we forget the deeper God-centered commitment involved in eremitical life our days DO become self-indulgent. And of course it is not only hermits who might do such forgetting; it is those who look on the life from the outside sometimes including Bishops and their curia. The solution, I believe, has often been the piling on of prayers or forms of mortification so the hermit has something to point to, something which can be seen or imitated, something which transforms the vocation from one of being prayer to one of an incessant saying of prayers. Unfortunately, the heart of the vocation is also missed by  insiders as well as outsiders.

The Silence of Solitude:

Because this is so, the way the sentence was phrased and contextualized really rankled. For instance, to reduce "the silence of solitude" to staying quiet all day" was especially difficult for me personally. A couple of Friday's ago I did a Communion service for about 24 people. Before we began I asked if we could sit in silence for a few minutes. The chapel got very quiet, then silent, then (more or less) reached a point of truly shared silence followed by a moment where silence itself was inviting us to allow it to take over the hearts and minds of the group even more fully. There was a weight to the silence as we moved through quiet to silence to shared silence. It pressed against us, and there was a pretty universal sense that everyone had joined in this and had let go of their anxiety.  I stopped to begin the service at that point. It is a rare experience, I think, to find people experiencing shared silence in a parish setting not dedicated to centering prayer or something similar, for instance. In any case, this deeper silence where Silence itself surrounds and penetrates one's heart and mind, where it takes hold of us from some deep place, where God and oneself meet in this hesychasm or quies is the characteristic depth dimension of the silence of solitude spoken of by canon 603. It is as far removed from simply "staying quiet all day" as grape Koolade is to fine wine.

Now, not every moment in a hermitage evidences this intensity of silence (or more intense ones!), but neither are these merely occasional experiences for the hermit. They are common in and characteristic of the first few hours of the day (hours of vigil), common in night watches and quiet prayer, common (though less profound) even in meals taken slowly as one watches the birds or squirrels or deer, and they carry over into and empower the other daily activities. The point is, however, that this Silence requires a submission of self, a giving over of oneself to the God who is the silent ground of reality and desires to grasp us completely and take us into "himself". There was a point during Friday's brief silence that could easily have been broken by someone's anxiety, coughing, shifting in their place, sighing, or other signs that this intensity of silence is unsettling, unfamiliar, or even frightening and is being resisted.That is because people are unfamiliar with this degree of silence, yes, but I think it is also because they sense it is something huge and alive, and far beyond their control, something (or someone!) living that they must give themselves over to or move away from. On this morning in our chapel everyone surrendered to this Silence for a brief time and the result was a shared silence whose first step only was "keeping quiet".

What folks began to experience as they gave themselves over to the silence was what Father Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, refers to as the meeting of two freedoms, that of the human person and that of God. The deeper the silence the greater the degree of or capacity for freedom. It is what I have often referred to as the charism of canon 603 life: the silence of solitude. This is not only the general environment of the hermitage, it is the goal of the eremitical life and the gift hermits bring to a world of noise, isolation, chaos and estrangement from self, from God, and from others. This communion of two freedoms is the very essence of authentic humanity but opening ourselves to it takes a lot of work as well as self-emptying and the trust we know as faith. The silence it requires from us is not simply the silence of external or physical quiet but the stilling of the voices within us which cry out in insecurity, fear, or self-assertion and even in a hungry grasping for power, prestige, success, and so forth. It is the silence of submission to the sovereignty, mercy, and love of God when we simply rest in "him"; similarly it is the silence of humility we come to know when the gaze of God reveals and communicates a dignity we scarcely imagined we possessed or were called to.

Say a Couple Prayers, Meditate, do a little gardening or something:

The difference between a life of prayer and a series of days where we, "say a couple of prayers" is as great as the difference between "staying quiet all day" and the silence of solitude. No true hermit understands her life as being merely about the saying of prayers. No authentic canon 603 hermit thinks of the requirement of "assiduous prayer and penance" as meaning "merely saying some (or a lot of!) prayers and doing forms of penance". Instead the combination of these two terms signifies a profoundly ordered life focused at every point on allowing God to work in her and take her into himself. As already noted this means doing penance and saying prayers, but even more it means ordering our activities, our choices, our relationships in the ways necessary so that we might become God's own prayer in our world. The difference between a life of prayer, a life where we are made prayer, and a life where each day we "say a couple of prayers" is immense. It might be compared to the difference between a five year old molding clay and a Michelangelo freeing David from the marble.

The primary forms of penance for the hermit are silence, solitude,  and custody of the cell. Custody of the cell includes sitting and waiting on/for God as well as all of the disciplines associated with living well in this place. That means physical and intellectual work, rest, recreation, meals, and so forth all given over to God and lived in a way which allows God to pervade them with his life and love. It is an intense life but, yes, as I said a couple of times in my earlier post, that absolutely also means leisure, namely that which monks and nuns refer to as "holy leisure."  What a life that is lived for the service of God in prayer, silence, solitude --- and the penance associated with these --- actually looks like may well appear to outsiders as one of a few prayer periods, a little meditation, and a bit of gardening or other manual labor. This is especially true given the frantic busyness and unbalanced workaholism which characterizes so much of life in the world outside the hermitage or monastery. But to mistake the nature of the life and to characterize it this way is a serious misreading. It forgets that the heart of the eremitical life is truly "hidden from the eyes of men", that it occurs in the hiddenness of the individual's heart, in the hiddenness of the cell, in the hiddenness of a life wrapped in the Silent heart of God.

It is a bit like describing the work of healing an injured heart as something the surgeon does with his active intervention while the patient's own body does nothing at all. The interventions of the surgeon may repair valves and injuries, but they also wound and tear down as they produce the necessary conditions needed for healing to take over. Real healing happens in  times of leisure. It happens when one rests, eats well (and simply), and generally takes good care of oneself.  Similarly, seeds grow in the night and darkness while the farmer sleeps. Orderly, regular work and attention is necessary for the planting of the seeds, but leisure is also necessary; otherwise the seeds will never germinate or the plants grow to maturity. Again, eremitical life is more fundamentally about being and becoming than it is about doing. And this, in turn, is about allowing God the space and time to love us into wholeness when we can do relatively little to achieve such wholeness on our own. To some extent we provide the conditions necessary for receiving this love, for entertaining it and being nourished and transfigured by it. If the relative leisure and balance of such a life looks little like the muscular and sadly aggressive asceticism of some past times or the similarly driven lives of those who can simply never be still, silent, or marked by a patient receptiveness and waiting, then so be it!

Nothing Wrong With That:

But of course, if an eremitical life does look like this poster described in the sentence provided, then either it is what God calls one to or it is not. If it is what God calls one to then why would we want to add "heroic" mortifications and entirely change the character of the life? If it is not what God calls one to, then how can we say, "Nothing wrong with that"? The point of the original sentence was a comparison: "That's okay for a devout lay person but not for a hermit!"  I am convinced such comparisons are specious. More importantly, they are measuring reality in the wrong terms, namely, in terms of what can be seen and quantified. But in terms of a life lived in communion with God often the only thing we might see as meaningful here is the person's growth in wholeness and holiness: are they more truly human, more compassionate, more generous and loving, more joyful and at peace or are they not?  While these things are recognizable they are not really measurable or quantifiable.

Again, there are fraudulent hermits out there. If we look at the externals of their lives they may look very like those of authentic hermits. (In fact, despite outward appearances, they may simply be laying about all day or they may even be all about harsh penances, overburdening physical labor, a focus on nonstop suffering, and endless prayers where God is never given a moment's time or space to break into or expand his presence in the person's heart and life; thus these latter persons might end up looking like they are some kind of Über-hermit or something!) Such lives, both those of  layabouts and those of  Über-hermits  are indeed self-indulgent and the original poster is rightly concerned! This is one of the reasons discernment is sometimes difficult and takes time.

Assuming we are not speaking about someone who is simply not praying, not working at all, not maintaining silence or living in solitude, the fruit of the life is measured, not merely or even mainly in terms of externals (of course fidelity to one's Rule is essential), but in terms of personal growth, growth in compassion, in the capacity to love others, as well as growth in patience and openness to the presence of God who comes to us in the most ordinary things. Again, assuming one's Rule is built around c 603's central elements and one is faithful to that Rule, only in the presence of these latter "fruit" can the person living as a hermit claim to be doing as God wills --- and that, of course, is the bottom line in gauging the quality of any eremitical life.

P.S., I wanted to thank the author of the post cited here. He asks great questions and I count on him adding something to this blog on a pretty regular basis. He wrote to apologize for irritating me and hoped he had not really offended me. I reassured him in response and do so here as well that the irritation is/was my problem not his. Also if I did not respect and trust him and his questions I would have needed to pull more punches than I did with this answer. Meanwhile this questioner uncovered a really significant misunderstanding of monastic and eremitical life I had not mentioned earlier. Again, he has my thanks!

Miracles and Revelation

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I am struggling a little with the idea of miracles and you said something recently which caught my attention. It was a reference to miracles and love-in-act and "the deepest law of nature." I don't know whether to believe in them or not. I especially wonder how to reconcile the possibility of miracles with a scientific world view that closes off such possibilities with increasing knowledge of medicine and so on. I don't want to believe in a "God of the gaps" but so much of what we have learned in the past few centuries makes it seem like that is all God really is. Do you believe in miracles? Does God intervene in our world in ways that just say "to heck with" the natural laws and dynamics we know exist? Is this idea of love being "the deepest law of nature" an answer to my questions?]]

Great questions. I may have also written about this earlier this year sometime because I know I gave a reflection at my parish on some pieces of this related to one of the Scripture readings one day. If I can find the post associated with that I will add a link to it here. As I noted in the post you referred to the NT does not use the term miracles so much as it uses the word δύναμις (dunamis)  which means "act(s) of power." Also, though, let me remind you that this is one of the places thinking of God as A Being rather than as the ground of being or being itself is particularly destructive. Our God is the ground and source of all that is, the ground and source of all meaning and value, and of course the ground and source of all life. God is Love but more, we sometimes say that God does not just love us, God IS love-in-act. So yes, all of these pieces come together to provide answer to your questions about miracles.

When we think of God as the dynamic, loving source and power of everything that is rather than as A being (even the biggest and most supreme being) it begins to be much easier to understand the possibility of miracles or what the NT calls δύναμις or acts of power. It also becomes much easier to dispense forever with a God of the gaps which is constantly diminished by increases in human knowledge. (Just the opposite would turn out to be true with the One who is ground and source! Such a God is transcendent and can never be understood via science, but precisely because this infinite God is transcendent and also the deepest ground of all that is (which means "he" is the depth dimension of being, meaning, beauty, truth, personhood, and all relatedness), his existence ensures that doing science and the possibility of making amazing scientific discoveries will never end.) Similarly then, we no longer need to think of God as someone breaking into our natural realm from outside, an interventionist God who overturns the usual laws of nature. And all of this is so precisely because if God is as theologians today describe God, if God really is the ground and source of existence, then the acts we ordinarily call miracles really represent the in-breaking of the deepest law of nature itself, namely love. What I am saying is that the miraculous is not the overturning of the laws of nature but the shocking and shaking revelation of the deepest law, principle, reality, or dynamic of the whole of creation.

Here in California we have earthquakes and when there is a quake what sometimes happens is things break apart to reveal a deeper and constitutive reality which is always present, always moving and changing, but whose presence we hardly suspect much less think about. Another even more vivid example might be volcanoes. For centuries they lie dormant --- or seem to be so --- and then, with hardly any warning at all a huge explosion can reveal the deeper reality at the heart of the volcano. As a result we never see that quiet mountain in quite the same way again and although over time we see the mountain re-clothe itself with grass and trees and fauna of all sorts, we know that there is a creative and destructive power deep within whose symbol is fire and bids we never forget it. What is really astounding is that power --- that ground and source of all life and creativity we call God --- dwells within each of us in a privileged way. When we love another it is that power at work, that God acting through us --- and at the same time we are most truly ourselves at these moments. (This is the greatest paradox of being human, namely, we are most ourselves when it is God acting in and through us and least ourselves when we act of our own accord.)

In any case so much of understanding the potential for the miraculous has to do with developing (or accepting) the new theology associated with our renewed sense of cosmology. We live in an unfinished universe moving towards a fullness we cannot imagine. Theologians today are turning out work in a new cosmological key and though the dogmas of our faith do not change they are alive with a new life and freshness which can resolve the seeming insoluble questions which resulted from seeing science and theology or science and faith (reason and faith) as adversarial. For instance, the work of John Haught has gone a long way in giving us a God and universe in which science and theology represent different ways of knowing the same reality or at least dimensions of the same reality. Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister and systematic theologian, has written books like The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, or The Emergent Christ, and Christ in Evolution, which put love seeking and achieving incarnation at the center of an evolving and unfinished universe. Elizabeth Johnson has done Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love.

There is so much now available which would assist you with your questions and invite new ways of under-standing which are both profoundly faithful to Catholic dogma and respectful of science's challenging and exciting knowledge. I would encourage you to take a look at what is out there. I do not suggest you start with Ilia Delio's work mentioned above, though I hope you get to it eventually. It is both intellectually and aesthetically beautiful and challenging --- and it is not to be missed, but I would suggest you start with something like John Haught's What is God? or something like Is Nature Enough? and then maybe move to Science and Religion or one of his other really fine books on God and Evolution, Science and Theology. These works are no less challenging than Ilia Delio's, but I found them a bit easier going and perhaps a bit more directly pertinent to your questions.

The bottom line here in terms of your own questions is the idea that what we call miracles are not the result of an interventionist God so much as they are the very deepest "law" (source and ground) of reality breaking through our more ordinary and sometimes sinful reality in ways we find utterly shaking and transcendent. Again, miracles (acts of power) are not an abrogation or overturning of the laws of nature so much as they are the profoundly powerful revelation of the deepest "law" or dynamic of the whole of creation.

The Chronicles of Francis: All are Welcome!

Cartoon from The Chronicles of Francis

by Pat Marrin and the National Catholic Reporter

 This week my mind is still on my profession anniversary and especially the gift my own parish has been over the past nine years or so. The parish motto is "All are Welcome!" and that was the entrance hymn for my perpetual profession liturgy 8 years ago. I remember being so proud of this as my friends and family (most of whom are not Catholics, some of whom are gay, and more of whom do not know or understand the Catholic Church except through these kinds of rare experiences.) We sang the same hymn today (Sunday) as well.

One of the birthday presents I got was from my Dominican friend. It is a collection of cartoon strips from The Chronicles of Francis by Pat Marrin. Sue has been telling me about these for awhile now but I have only seen a handful.Today after I got this BD present I was looking at an online site where past cartoons, many of which are not in the printed collection, can be viewed at gocomics.com/francis. One of the first strips I saw was this one. It struck a chord, pun intended!

Pope Francis has shown us the possibility of miracles (the NT uses the term "acts of power" or δύναμις, dunamis, rather than miracles) as he, like his Lord Jesus Christ, reveals love-in-act, the deepest "law of nature" to many who have never seen this or had forgotten what it looked like. In Francis this deep reality breaks through (explodes!) human fear, rigidity, self-preoccupation, and selfishness and we begin to see with new eyes, hear with fresh minds, and speak the Gospel with a new simplicity and clarity. It should not surprise us that we get the words dynamite and dynamism from this Greek word. (The name Francis may be a new cognate!)

I wanted to do a couple of things with this post: 1) introduce new readers to Pat Marrin's wonderful comic strip, 2) remind us all that we really are meant to be Christ's own Church, a church where truly, ALL ARE WELCOME!, and 3) remind us to pray and work for the general synod on the family as well as for Francis' visit to the United States of America at the end of this month. We saw a little of what Francis' visit might mean a couple of nights ago on 20/20 as Francis did a virtual visit with people from three US cities the Pope will not be visiting in person.

As I read through the Chronicles of Francis it was hard not to be clearly reminded (often with biting humor or touching images) that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in this Church and is seeking to live as love-in-act through each of us. Let us commit to that commission just as Francis has, and let us proceed as Valerie Herrera did recently. You will remember that Valerie is the Chicago teen who was surprised by a direct request from Francis that she sing him a song --- and, when she hesitated out of anxiety and fear, was personally urged by Francis to move forward with courage! She did. Beautifully. And as a result Valerie will never again be defined as a person merely or even mainly in terms of her skin condition. Instead she will be known (and know herself!) in terms of gospel courage and generosity.

Love-in-act was mediated by Francis that day in Chicago. He listened deeply to Valerie and her story and then asked her to do something for him. She had been truly heard and invited to speak herself clearly as a gift. And so she sang the deeper truth of herself in front of the entire world --- a world which will now see her with new eyes.  Something similar happened to the deaf man in today's (Sunday's)  Gospel lection. Jesus truly heard him and he was healed and made articulate. Miracles, δύναμις, are possible and waiting to be worked through each of us so that we might truly be a Church in whom all are welcome.

Healing of the Deaf Man (reprised)

Today's Gospel brought us face to face with who we are called to be, and with the results of the idolatry that occurs whenever we refuse that vocation. Both issues, vocation and true worship are rooted in the Scriptural notion of obedience, that is in the obligation which is our very nature, to hearken --- to listen and respond to God appropriately with our whole selves. When we are empowered to and respond with such obedience our very lives proclaim the Kingdom of God, not as some distant reality we are still merely waiting for, but as something at work in us here and now. In fact, when our lives are marked by this profound dynamic of obedience, today's readings remind us the reign of God cannot be hidden from others --- though its presence will be seen only with the eyes of faith.

In the Gospel, (Mark 7:31-37) A man who is deaf and also has a resultant speech impediment is brought by friends to Jesus; Jesus is begged to heal him. In what is an unusual process for Mark in its crude physicality (or for any of the Gospel writers), Jesus puts his fingers in the man's ears, and then, spitting on his fingers, touches the man's tongue. He looks up to heaven, groans, and says in Aramaic, "ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!"). Immediately the man is healed and "speaks plainly." Those who brought him to Jesus are astonished, joyful, and could not contain their need to proclaim Jesus and what he had done: "He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

I am convinced that the deaf and "mute" man (for he is not really mute, but impeded from clear speech by his inability to hear) is a type of each of us, a symbol for the persons we are and for the vocation we are each called to. Theologians speak of human beings as "language events." We are called to be by God, conceived from and an expression of the love of two people for one another, named so that we have the capacity for personal presence in the world and may be personally addressed by others, and we are shaped for good or ill, for wholeness or woundedness, by every word which is addressed to us. Language is the means and symbol of our capacity for relationship and transcendence.

Consider how it is that vocabulary of all sorts opens various worlds to us and makes the whole of the cosmos our own to understand, wonder at, and render more or less articulate; consider how a lack of vocabulary whether affective, theological, scientific, mathematical, musical, psychological, etc, can cripple us and distance us from effectively relating to various dimensions of human life including our own heart. Note, for instance that physicians have found that in any form of mental illness there is a corresponding dimension of difficulty with or dysfunction of language. Consider the very young child's wonderful (and often really annoying!) incessant questioning. There, with every single question and answer, language mediates transcendence (a veritable explosion of transcendence in fact!) and initiates the child further and further into the world of human community, knowledge, understanding, reflection, celebration, and commitment. Language marks us as essentially communal, fundamentally dependent upon others to call us beyond ourselves, essentially temporal AND transcendent, and, by virtue of our being imago dei, responsive and responsible (obedient) at the core of our existence.

One theologian (Gerhard Ebeling), in fact, notes that the most truly human thing about us is our addressiblity and our ability to address others. Addressibility includes and empowers responsiveness; that is, it has both receptive and expressive dimensions. It is the characteristically human form of language which creates community. It marks us as those whose coming to be is dependent upon the dynamic of obedience --- but also on the generosity of those who would address us and give us a place to stand as persons we cannot assume on our own. We spend our lives responsively -- coming (and often struggling) to attend to and embody or express more fully the deepest potentials within us in myriad ways and means.

But a lot can hinder this most foundational vocational accomplishment. Sometimes our own woundedness prevents the achievement of this goal to greater degrees. Sometimes we are not given the tools or education we need to develop this capacity. Sometimes, we are badly or ineffectually loved and rendered relatively deaf and "mute" in the process. Oftentimes we muddle the clarity of that expression through cowardice, ignorance, or even willful disregard. Our hearts, as I have noted here before, are dialogical realities. That is, they are the place where God bears witness to himself, the event marked in a defining way by God's continuing and creative address and our own embodied response. In every way our lives are either an expression of the Word or logos of God which glorifies (him), or they are, to whatever extent, a dishonoring lie and an evasion.


And so, faced with a man who is crippled in so many fundamental ways --- one, that is, for whom the world of community, knowledge, and celebration is largely closed by disability, Jesus prays to God, touches, and addresses the man directly, "Ephphatha!" ---Be thou opened!" It is the essence of what Christians refer to as salvation, the event in which a word of command and power heals the brokennesses which cripple and isolate, and which, by empowering obedience reconciles the man to himself, his God, his people and world. As a result of Jesus' Word, and in response, the man speaks plainly --- for the first time (potentially) transparent to himself and to those who know him; he is more truly a revelatory or language event, authentically human and capable through the grace of God of bringing others to the same humanity through direct response and address.

Our own coming to wholeness, to a full and clear articulation of our truest selves is a communal achievement. Even (or even especially) in the lives of hermits this has always been true insofar as solitude is NOT isolation, but is instead a form of communion marked by profound dependence on the Word of God and lived specifically for the salvation of others. In today's gospel friends bring the man to Jesus, Jesus prays to God before acting to heal him. The presence of friends is another sign not only of the man's nature as made-for-communion and the fact that none of us come to language (or, that is, to the essentially human capacity for responsiveness or obedience) alone, but similarly, of the deaf man's total inability to approach Jesus on his own. At the same time, Jesus takes the man aside and what happens to him in this encounter is thus signaled to be profoundly personal, intimate, and beyond the merely evident. Friends are necessary, but at bottom, the ultimate healing and humanizing encounter can only happen between the deaf man and Christ.

In each of our lives there is deafness and "muteness" or inarticulateness. So many things are unheard by us, fail to touch or resonate in our hearts. So many things call forth embittered and cynical reactions which wound and isolate when what is needed is a response of genuine compassion and welcoming. Similarly, so many things render us speechless: bereavement, illness, ignorance, personal woundedness, etc. As a result we live our commitments half-heartedly, our loves guardedly, our joys tentatively, our pains self-consciously and noisily --- but helplessly and without meaning in ways which do not edify --- and in all these ways therefore, we are less human, less articulate, less the obedient or responsive language event we are called to be.  To each of us, then, and in whatever way or degree we need, Jesus says, "EPHPHATHA!" "Be thou opened!" He sighs in compassion and desire, unites himself with his Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, and touches us with his own hands and spittle.

May we each allow ourselves to be brought to Jesus for healing. May we be broken open and rendered responsive and transparent by his powerful Word of command and authority. Especially, may we each become the clear gospel-founded words of joy and hope in a world marked extensively and profoundly by deafness and the helplessness and the despair of noisy inarticulateness.

Pope to Catholic Sisters in the US

Easing into Eremitical Life: Is this the Way to Go?

[[Hi Sister Laurel, if I am interested in living an eremitical life is the best way to discern whether I am called to it to do it gradually, you know little by little and gradually become acclimated to silence and solitude? I am free to live the life but wonder what the best way to go about it is. I read the Carthusians ease their new postulants into the life.]]

That's a great question and one to which there isn't just one answer. Some people are not free to embrace a life of silence and solitude, assiduous prayer, penance and necessary withdrawal. They hope down the line to become hermits but are trying to live an approximation until then. In general I would say that these persons are preparing to discern such a vocation but are not yet doing so. For such a person my suggestions would be very different than they are for you or for anyone really seeking to discern such a vocation and are free to do so now. The most one can do without actually becoming a person trying to live an eremitical life (not an approximation of one) is to discern inclinations and desires, attractions and those things which repulse. But these things are not the vocation itself. It seems to me one has to embrace the whole of the life if one is really to discern whether God is calling one to this or not.

Let me explain, assuming one has a clear yearning for the life which one recognizes as a potential call of God and is free and financially able to respond but also "is not ready" to commit to really trying the life and discerning from within it whether one is called to it, then one is either not really called or one is resistant to what MAY be a call. Beyond the insistent desire for solitude and for prayer (that is, allowing God to love us and transfigure us on God's terms), or a sense of being intrigued by the writing of hermits like Wencel or Merton, et al --- things which may point to several different potential vocations --- I don't think we can discern a vocation from the outside. I especially don't think God will give us messages that say, "Yes, I am calling you to be a hermit (or not); get thee to a hermitage (or not)!" To wait or look for these unequivocal messages is probably futile. The true discernment of whether one is called or not can ONLY take place in the living of the life.

It is in fully embracing the elements of canon 603 (even for the lay hermit these elements are foundational) and then seeing how one does in this desert environment that allows a real process of discernment to occur. I hear all the time from people who are frustrated that they can't tell whether or not they are called to be a hermit. But more often than not when I ask about how they are doing with various aspects of the life the answers are, "Well, I am not really living in silence yet", "I am not living alone yet", "I'm only praying a few times a day; I don't want to be a fanatic", "I haven't modified any of my relationships or contact with others because I am afraid my friends and family won't understand", "I don't really think I should have to give up all TV and I only watch it for three hours a day," and similar things. Many of these are variations on the ideas 1) that what the desert Fathers lived or what anchorites in the middle ages lived, or even what Thomas Merton lived for a few years and wrote about profoundly can't possibly be relevant today, and 2) when canon 603 speaks of the silence of solitude, stricter withdrawal, and assiduous prayer and penance it can't really literally mean what it seems to say!!

In each of these instances the person sets up a compromise or series of compromises and evasions through which she basically fools herself into believing she is "discerning" eremitical life. In actual fact, such persons are still deciding if and when they will really discern this and in some cases have already decided not to really do so; they just haven't admitted the truth to themselves. In these cases there can be a tendency to call "eremitical" something which really is not that at all. There can also be a tendency to attribute doubt to the absence of a vocation (or of a sign from God) when in actual fact it is more likely to come from the person's profound sense they are going about things in a halfhearted and essentially unworthy way.

I think such situations are a bit like a person standing on the edge of a pool with the water lapping at their ankles, knees or even their waist while telling themselves they not sure they are capable of swimming. They simply are not going to be able to tell that until and unless they dive in and stop standing around. Similarly, it  may be a bit like a person paddling around in the shallow end of a pool while wearing water wings; for such a person to convince themselves they are discerning a call to swim in the Olympics is hardly accurate. Nor is such a discernment possible at this point. Doing so will take commitment to swimming long and hard. Of course if one finds they simply hate swimming after a few weeks or months the answer may be clear, but discerning a call to be an Olympic swimmer means being a swimmer first and giving oneself entirely to the sport.

The Carthusian Practice:

As you say the Carthusians do ease postulants then novices into the full rigors of Carthusian life but this does not mean the postulant or novice is gradually introduced to solitude, etc. They embrace life in cell but it takes time for them to be able to do the fasts or night watches and broken sleep. Their bodies must become acclimated and for this reason the Novice Master introduces them to these over a period of weeks and months with significant oversight and supervision. It is not like the postulant or novice keeps their cell phones with them for the first three months and then relinquishes these after a time, or leaves the Charterhouse regularly "until they get used to the solitude" the life demands. Nor is it the case that the kitchens prepare them a diet of meat, their favorite foods and other things they are used to for the first year and then weans them off of this thereafter. The novices may be gradually introduced to the rigor of Carthusian fasting, but they are eating as Carthusians from the get go.

My suggestion to you is that, with the assistance of your Spiritual director you simply take the plunge and begin living as a hermit. Know that it will be difficult and take time to learn what you need to know as well as to acclimate to all you are letting go of and embracing but take the plunge and persevere in this! Give yourself a year to really see if you can live this life and more, begin to thrive in it. If you and your director conclude you are doing well, write a Rule including the major components of every eremitical life tailored for the ways God works in your own life and heart, and make a private commitment to try living that for a set time period. (More detailed suggestions on this can be found in other articles on the relationship of writing a Rule and formation.) Continue meeting regularly with your director and discerning whether this really suits you and whether you are growing as a whole and holy human being. While your director cannot discern this vocation for you, she can give you frank feedback on how she sees things progressing or not. Sometime during this period I would suggest you make a silent retreat for at least 8 days to two weeks at a monastery where substantial silence is the Rule of the day, coupled with work, study, and liturgical and personal prayer. This  can give you an idea of what your own life really should look like --- though without the immediate communal dimension you will find there. You can experience others living as your own days should be lived and, given the absence of real silence in contemporary culture you can be exposed to that. It might be mind opening!

Be aware of how your prayer is doing. Ask yourself some serious questions. Is this really the way God works best in your life, speaks to your heart? Do you feel strong needs to serve God's People in other ways and if so, where do these come from? Are they the result of your growth in generosity and compassion via the eremitical life or do they represent a competing call? Do they stem from your insecurity with the value of contemplative and eremitical life or have you, at this early stage, come to trust more completely the value of eremitical life itself? After two to three years do you still feel a profound urge to live as a hermit? Has this sense deepened and lost the confusing sense of novelty that it first involved (is the honeymoon period really over?)? Are you still finding ways to compromise your commitments to silence, solitude, and the other sacrifices the life involves (everyone does this I think) or are you past this for the time being? How has your understanding of the life and your motives for embracing it changed in these years?

If this Goes Well

If this goes well and you find that after two to three years you can say you really believe solitude has opened her door to you and made her home in your heart, you might make another silent retreat. The questions (you are still discerning!!) now become about how you are being called to live this eremitical life for the rest of your life. Are you called to live it as a lay hermit --- just as the desert Fathers and Mothers did? Are you called to live it in a canonical community with someone like the Sisters of Bethlehem at Livingston Manor? Are you being called to live as a diocesan hermit with public vows and all those entail? Work with your director to explore these options and what dimensions of yourself they speak to most deeply or challenge most sharply. Then begin to take steps to pursue which ever path seems best. If you want to do a "come and see" period with a community of hermits find a way to do that. If you need to be sure you have a way of providing for yourself over the long haul in case you live as either a lay hermit or a diocesan (c 603) one, be sure to take care of this. I think you get the picture!

I should add that at this point you are preparing to enter a new and more intense period of discernment. If you decide on a community of hermits and are accepted for admission there will be a period of three years before you are admitted to temporary vows and as many as 6 more before admission to perpetual or solemn vows. If you decide to petition for admission to vows as a diocesan hermit and are accepted for a period of serious mutual discernment (not everyone is) it can take several years until the recommendation is made to admit you to temporary profession. (If you are well-prepared and the diocese is ready to profess c 603 hermits this may only be a year or two.) Once the recommendation to the Bishop is made it may take another year for the Bishop to do his own discernment and then, if this is positive, some time to get on the diocesan calendar for the actual rite of profession.

Admission to temporary profession under c 603 is usually for a period of from 3 to 5 years and then one may (or may not) petition and be admitted to perpetual profession. All of the time until perpetual  profession is properly considered a period of discernment and during all of this time one is expected to live as a hermit so that it may be discerned whether or not one thrives (becomes more whole and holy, compassionate and loving) in this vocation.

I sincerely hope this is helpful! Best wishes on your "adventure".

On Solitary Hermits, C 603, and Stable states of Life

[[Hi Sister Laurel, did you see the story about the hermit profession in the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese? The story says two of these hermits live together. I wondered how that might work if the vocation is one of silence and solitude.]]

Yes, I did see the article. Several things about it surprised me. The first was that two of the women were living together; a second surprising thing was the specification of three canonical hermits in the diocese (if the number is correct it suggests a young woman professed several years ago may not have persevered). A third was that Bishop Kevin Rhoades has professed a relative "lot" of hermits in a fairly short amount of time (his tenure as Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend is only a few years and he has admitted four people to at least temporary profession under c 603).

Your question is a good one since c 603 is meant to govern solitary eremitical vocations. Lauras (colonies of no more than three) are permitted but these may not rise to the level of an actual community or institute of consecrated life. (cf Jean Beyer's work on this including his comments in Coriden'sThe Code of Canon Law, A Text and Commentary.) This means each hermit in such a colony should have her own Rule, her own bank account and source of income, her own horarium, spiritual director, diocesan delegate, etc. In lauras, hermits may come together regularly (usually weekly) for walks or Sunday dinner, festal offices, and daily Mass, but otherwise, their lives are lived in cell. This ordinarily includes daily office, meals, recreation, study, lectio, etc. All of these "requirements" would certainly hold for two diocesan hermits living together in the same residence. If the two women really are solitary hermits (as they are supposed to be under c 603) and not a couple of Sisters living a communal life (no matter how contemplative or prayerful) while using c 603 as a stopgap way to achieve canonical profession, then a few things will need to be true. First, the residence must be large enough for each to have an entirely private and silent prayer space or cell where she prays, does lectio, says daily office, sleeps, eats, studies, and recreates. (A staggered schedule could allow each woman to cook and eat in the kitchen/dining room separately from one another and a separate, dedicated library could allow for both to read or study in shared silence and solitude.)

The Sisters could, if mutually agreeable, come together occasionally for office and dinner on Sundays or significant feasts just as they might schedule significant time together for shared prayer, a walk, a shopping trip, etc once or twice a week perhaps. They could also travel together to daily Mass, but conversation, if any was necessary, would also need to be minimal and each person's need for silence respected. Moreover, each one would need her own Rule and director along with absolute freedom and diocesan support in discerning the needs of her own solitary eremitical life; while accommodations would be required for the shared times and premises, the individual Rule would need to be sufficient for the Sister's own life as should her income, etc, should she be required to leave this residence. The possible reasons are several: the other Sister dies,  either one decides she needs to leave eremitical life, either person discerns she requires a more physically solitary situation, the rhythms and nature of the two calls to solitary eremitical life are simply too different from one another, and so forth. Another reason includes changes in health which are substantial enough to affect both members of the house. More about this is below.

Without these things, neither woman would be living an eremitical life and significantly, neither would be able to accommodate any divine call to greater reclusion --- which is an integral part of an eremitical call. (The need for greater reclusion can occur from time to time as well and this would have to be given priority over the already-scheduled times together.) Especially critical in the case of two older hermits is the provision for health care (including in-home caregivers) affecting one of the two hermits. For instance, one hermit should not be automatically expected to provide these things for the other while the presence of in-home caregivers could also considerably impact the silence and solitude of the second hermit's life. In a religious institute like the Carthusians, brothers and sisters provide all the care an elderly hermit or nun requires, but this critical responsibility which no Carthusian would turn over to an outsider does not fall to a single person. The eremitical vocation to the solitude of all the others in the Charterhouse is preserved while their communal commitment to being family for one another is also carefully maintained.

Likewise, in a laura of diocesan hermits, the cells are a sufficient distance from one another that visitors (caregivers, for instance) do not impact the others. Some lauras actually require a hermit needing full-time medical or in-home care to move to a nursing facility or infirmary. This may seem heartless or lacking in charity but in point of fact, it protects the vocations of the other solitary hermits. Remember these hermits are NOT professed as part of a community; their vocations are to solitary eremitical life. They neither have Sisters to care for them in this way nor are they necessarily called to do something similar for other members of the laura. The allowance of a laura for canon 603 hermits is something additional meant for mutual protection and support in solitude but it is not an essential part of the life defined by canon 603. It does not and must not change the nature of the vocation itself which is that of the solitary eremitical life. What I am saying here is the situation described in the diocese of Fort Wayne could certainly work for these two hermits but everyone must be clear about what each person's vocation really consists. Sufficient solitude and personal freedom to respond to God's call could be ensured but there are some significant caveats and also, some significant provisions for each Sister's vocation, both in the present and in case of future need, must be assured.

By the way, I should add here as a kind of postscript that in the case of a serious illness, a solitary hermit living with another Sister might, with the assistance of her Bishop and SD, discern that for the space of a few weeks or months, it is important for her to assist the ill Sister to the best of her ability or tolerate others coming into the hermitage to care for her. Charity, it might be determined, required this. This might well necessitate a temporary suspension of parts of the Sister's Rule, for instance, which the Bishop may grant. However, it is also the case that as with work outside the hermitage, everyone should continue discerning the impact of this arrangement on the Sister's own health and vocation. Should either of these begin to suffer, or should the situation become more extensive in its demands of time and personal commitment, the Sister who is not ill should be free to say she cannot continue to assist in this way or even accommodate further intrusions in the hermitage's privacy or functional "cloister". A suitable resolution for both Sisters would need to be found, and the diocese which approved or even encouraged the common living arrangement would absolutely need to assist in this. Of course, this would be very difficult on a number of levels for all involved but this is one of the problems which could well be encountered by c 603 ("solitary") hermits who choose or are encouraged to live together.

[[My second question is why would the Church allow some consecrated Catholic hermits with private vows to live without legitimate superiors, move wherever they wanted and at the same time require other consecrated hermits with public vows to live in the same diocese where they were professed? Don't all consecrated persons have to be accountable to superiors and live where they are permitted? Anyway, it hardly seem fair that some consecrated hermits could live anywhere and others would be tied to a [specific] diocese. Joyful hermit at the blog A Catholic Hermit wrote that this is the way things are though.]]

First, let's be clear: hermits with private vows (unless they are ordained) are dedicated lay hermits. They are not consecrated hermits and have no right to call themselves Catholic hermits because they have neither been extended nor accepted the legal (canonical) rights and obligations associated with living the eremitical life in the name of the Church. Hermits who are publicly professed and consecrated by God through the mediation of the Church have been extended and accepted the public (canonical) rights, and obligations as well as the implicit expectations of every member of the Church who rightly sees her profession as a public matter. (N.B., priests who live as hermits without public vows either under c. 603 or as a member of a religious institute, are ALSO not consecrated hermits; they are ordained and hermits (hermits in the ordained state of life) but they are not members of the consecrated state of life.)

Moreover, as I have also written here a number of times, public profession initiates one into a stable state of life. This means a number of things but mainly it means a series of legitimate relationships that are absolutely necessary for the accountable and authentic living of her commitment which are essential to the life itself. Part of this means such persons are not footloose and fancy-free. They are not and cannot be the equivalent of gyrovagues or Sarabaites so critically viewed in the Rule of St Benedict simply moving wherever the "spirit" moves them. They are tied to place and to superiors in some substantial way. With religious communities (institutes), for instance, the erection and suppression of houses associated with the institute are established according to canon and proper law. Such houses are approved by the institute's superiors and either the local Bishop or the Apostolic See and members live in these houses or, with proper consideration and permission, in the same area or diocese. (cf cc 606-616)

Somewhat similarly, secular or diocesan priests are incardinated into a diocese --- another instance of the Church's concern for stable relationships and accountability. They cannot simply move from diocese to diocese as they please while acting as a Catholic priest. Diocesan hermits are responsible to the local bishop who is their legitimate superiors. As I have noted here several times, in a kind of excardination and incardination, she may move to another diocese and remain a diocesan hermit if the Bishop there agrees to receive her as a diocesan hermit and act as her legitimate superior. Otherwise, such a move would find her vows either dispensed or rendered "invalid" (no longer binding) by the substantial change in her circumstances.

In all of these cases consecrated and ordained life requires stable relationships and ways of assuring accountability to the local and universal Church in whose name these persons live their lives. The reason a person with private vows can move wherever and whenever without reference to law or legitimate superiors is precisely because her commitment is a private one rather than a public one.  Such a person is not publicly accountable for the eremitical life or tradition and has not been initiated into a stable state of life that would specifically allow for that. Lay hermits live their lives in the stable state into which they are initiated with baptism, confirmation and Eucharist. But to live as a consecrated Catholic hermit requires other stable relationships commensurate with a new stable state of life marked by additional rights and obligations.

Because hermits in the lay state have neither been extended nor accepted additional rights or obligations beyond those of baptism this also means such a person has no right to style him/herself as a consecrated religious, a Catholic hermit, a professed religious (the term profession itself, by the way, implies public commitments and initiation into a stable state of life) or anything similar. What you describe would indeed be unfair. It would be inconsistent, and disedifying. Frankly, it would be hard to understand why any hermit would seek profession under canon 603 if the biggest difference between her vocation and that of a lay hermit with private vows is the fact that a lay hermit is free to do anything she wants whenever and wherever she wants without legitimate accountability while the publicly professed hermit is constrained by legal relationships and canons. In any case, don't be concerned about apparent unfairness; the situation you described or cited is simply not rooted in fact.

Once again it is important to remember the Church values and is directly responsible for vocations to the consecrated state in very specific ways. She is careful about anyone using the term Catholic to designate a vocation, enterprise, or institution without ecclesial authorization to the point of creating canons that prohibit this. Again a Catholic hermit, Catholic theologian, Catholic priest or religious, etc, must ALL have been granted the right to refer to themselves in this way. Baptism gives a person the right (and obligation) to call themselves and live as a Catholic. The other specifications (Catholic hermit, Catholic nun, Catholic priest, Catholic friar, etc.) require the admission to and acceptance of further legal (canonical) rights and obligations because these terms don't simply mean "a Catholic who is also a priest, nun, hermit, etc". Again, the use of the term Catholic in these examples and many others means someone who lives this vocation in the name of the Church and as an official representative of this very vocation. Such persons are directly accountable every day of their lives for the ecclesial commission the Church has extended to them. Not so with those whose commitments beyond their baptismal consecration are private rather than public.

P.S., I have added one final question from another person to this post since I don't really want to write about it separately. I hope you don't mind; it deals with the same post you asked about so it fits very well here.

[[Sister Laurel,  is it true that first and final vows are not documented in the Church's institutes on eremitical life? I read this online and thought I would ask, [[However, this is yet one example again, of how bishops vary in attitude and norm for those they canonically approve or receive what they might call "first vows" (first or second or third or final vows are not actually required nor documented in the Church institutes on eremitic life).]]


First of all as I have noted in the past, the Church speaks of canons, norms, universal (canon) and proper (particular) law to refer to what this poster calls "institutes". The Roman Catholic Church does not use institutes in the way this poster does. Instead, in c 603, for instance, when the Church says, "besides institutes of consecrated life", she means "besides canonical congregations, communities and orders". The term "institutes" means societies, in this case, those of consecrated life.

The use of institutes in the poster's sense has its roots in a misreading she once did of c 603 when she inserted the definite article "the" in the phrase already cited: "Besides the institutes of consecrated life. . ." This allowed her to mistakenly think of institutes as statutes and argue that c 603 was only a proviso that applied to some solitary consecrated hermits but not to others. Again, c. 603 is the norm for ALL solitary consecrated hermits in the universal Church. There are no solitary consecrated hermits (solitary hermits in the consecrated state) apart from c 603 hermits.

Secondly, and to answer your direct question, while canon 603 does not mention first vows but merely profession using vows or other sacred bonds, other canons in the New Code dealing with religious life DO refer specifically to temporary profession and perpetual profession. C 603 hermits are not bound by only one canon, but by those binding religious in the Roman Catholic Church more generally. Meanwhile, conferences of Bishops rightly hold that the eremitical life requires long testing and discernment which makes temporary profession at least prudent if not absolutely necessary. Hermits themselves know that admission to perpetual profession without long preparation is imprudent; temporary profession, though not strictly necessary with canon 603, is the usual way to become knowledgeable about what living the vows really means. Moreover, a profession by its very nature must be temporary or perpetual, and c 603 clearly requires a public profession. It is a mistake to say that such a practice including final or perpetual profession of vows or other sacred bonds and the necessary preparation for these are not actually required or documented.

On Birthdays and Anniversaries

Tuesday and Wednesday this week were days of special celebration for me. The 1st is my birthday and the 2nd of September is the 8th anniversary of my perpetual profession as a diocesan hermit. (I have lived as a hermit for 30 years and as a religious for 40 but these last 8 years have been especially blessed with a new kind of fruitfulness. God has been very gracious to me.)

My parish "daily Mass community" sang to me at Mass on the 2nd (we always do that with birthdays) and my pastor, hand resting on my shoulder, gave me a special blessing for the anniversary of profession:

O Lord, Holy Father, graciously confirm the resolve of your servant Laurel and grant that the grace of baptism, which she desires to be strengthened by the bonds of her religious profession, may produce in her their full effect so that she may render due worship to your majesty and spread with apostolic zeal the Kingdom of Christ

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. 

The prayer for increased resolution confirmed with the grace of God --- mirroring the elements of human dedication and divine consecration present in every definitive profession --- was an especially powerful petition for which I am most grateful. 

Both days were wonderful (I heard from family and so many friends from high school onward), but John's blessing coupled with the reception and love of my parish community was the high point of these days for me

Questions on Formation and Discernment

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I know you can answer this, but to me it seems tricky.  Isn’t it true that the formation and the writing of a rule of life are substantially different for C. 603 hermits and lay hermits, whether these are good Christians and sincere God-seeking hermits or the fairly common people-haters, selfish lovers of their own company?

Could you say a few words about the kind of formation a loving Christian “beginner” on the path needs, and how to distinguish one’s calling?  I am pretty sure about myself, but I have had some not-very-close friends who insisted they were true Christian hermits, yet showed few or none of the signs.]]

Thanks for your question. I don't believe that the formation for the Christian hermit is essentially the same as those you refer to as "fairly common people-haters, selfish lovers of their own company". I don't see how the lives of the latter involves any formation at all so for the purposes of this answer I am not referring to such persons. They are not hermits as the Church understands the term nor, perhaps, are they suitable to become hermits in the sense the Church uses that word. That leaves c 603 hermits and lay hermits. In regard to these two expressions of eremitical life I understand your question to be, [[Isn't it true that the formation and the writing of a Rule of Life are substantially different for these two groups of hermits?]] I sincerely hope I have understood your question. You also ask if I can say something about formation for the beginner, as well as about how a beginner discerns she is called to eremitical life.

Formation in the eremitical life is a matter of learning to live --- and being made capable of living --- a contemplative life of prayer and penance in the silence of solitude. It is a matter of being made more fully human in solitude and thus, learning to thrive there. That means not only becoming acclimated to solitude and silence, but developing a prayer life which moves one ever deeper into the life of God as reflected in the silence of solitude. While there are some things to do, some prayer forms to learn and tools to acquire which make such a life  possible, formation is, most essentially, a matter of becoming a person for whom the silence of solitude (meaning here the relationship with God experienced in silence and resulting in personal stillness) is the context, goal, and heart of her life. If this relationship with God is truly the heart of her life it will pervade and condition everything she does --- no matter how mundane or apparently "unspiritual".
 
The Initial Years:

For the beginner then, she must be exposed to various prayer forms (quiet prayer, meditation, Office or psalmody, lectio divina, rosary, etc) so that she comes to know God in each of these and is comfortable praying them in the silence of her hermitage. Similarly, she must learn to study there as well as eat and do the daily work (manual, intellectual, etc) her life requires. What this requires is consistency and patience with growth that occurs little by little, not in great leaps or dramatic experiences. Especially it requires consistency in silence, solitude, and the ongoing practice of prayer. Over a period of several years the aspiring hermit will learn how God speaks to and works in her. She will choose the prayer forms required, balance these with study, work, rest, personal work (for spiritual direction, etc), exercise and recreation and she will give herself over more and more completely to God in all of this. Her spiritual director will assist in all of this and help her to negotiate the ways of praying, as well as to discern how she is growing or not growing in her daily life.

During these initial years the aspiring hermit is essentially preparing to write a Rule which reflects all she has learned about how God is calling her and what is essential to her response to that call. She might be ready to write an experimental Rule at the end of a year or two, for instance. She would then live this Rule for another year or two while occasionally tweaking it with the  assistance of her spiritual director as she discerns more clearly what God is calling her to. For the person seeking to make a formal commitment with the profession of public vows --- a profession which binds her in law to live her Rule --- she needs to have moved past this experimental stage and have written a Rule she knows she can live which is also life giving in all the ways her prayer life requires. Such a Rule requires the aspiring hermit know herself fairly well just as it requires she knows the essential ways God works in her life, the various ways she is called to give herself in prayer, and the eremitical tradition which she desires to represent with her own life.

While formation and writing a Rule are not the same thing they are intimately related. Whenever a person manages to distill her life into a livable Rule --- a Rule which truly reflects her own needs for growth, prayer, work, social contact, recreation and which can assure these needs are met day by day --- she will find the experience immensely formative all by itself. Moreover, as she considers her life, the ways God works therein and the ways she best gives herself to God, she will be preparing to write a Rule even if she does not realize this is the case. Whenever she articulates  for her spiritual director the ways God works in her life, the difficulties she meets, and the growth she has accomplished she is preparing to write or (perhaps) to redact her Rule.

Vastly Different Processes for Lay Hermits and c 603 Hermits?

The primary difference between lay hermits and c 603 hermits in all of this besides the fact that a lay hermit does not make public vows, is the lay hermit will not be bound in law to live her Rule. This means that others will not have the same expectations of her as they would if she made a public commitment. Otherwise, however, I cannot see a lot of difference since whether one is a lay or a consecrated hermit the writing of a Rule requires the same experience, preparation, spiritual direction, and work distilling one's experience and knowledge. It is true that a solitary canonical hermit will need to include provisions for the essential elements of canon 603, but these elements are also common to any eremitical life so I don't think there need be much difference here. It is also true that a canonical hermit may be allowed the privilege of reserving Eucharist and all that entails while a lay hermit will not. This will cause some differences in the way each hermit approaches Mass attendance, for instance, but I don't think this means that the "formation and writing of a Rule are vastly different for a c 603 hermits and lay hermits."

The things I have written about composing Rules was not geared only to canonical hermits. A livable Rule, whether one is a lay hermit or will become a canonical hermit, is a profoundly and prudently demanding reality. Unless we want to say a lay hermit is really living a half-hearted life whose Rule requires far less than a c 603 hermit (and far less from them!) I think we have to recognize the eremitical life itself  is more demanding than many realize; this means the Rule which structures and governs such a life is always similarly demanding.

As for formation, I think the same truth holds. ALL eremitical life requires formation whether or not that formation involves a formal process received in religious life or whether one acquires this on her own. Since any hermit must live the evangelical counsels and the essential elements of canon 603 whether or not they are publicly professed and bound in law to do so, any person desiring to live these realities will require formation in them. They will need to read about what they are doing so that they may understand what these values and central elements mean and entail. Again, unless a lay hermit is merely a name we give to someone in the lay state who is seeking to live something less than an authentic eremitical life, the need for formation, both initial and ongoing, as well as ongoing competent direction and oversight is simply an imperative. The life itself, a disciplined, demanding, and all-engaging life given over to God in the silence of solitude, requires these things whether or not the Church also requires them of the hermit!

Is One Really Called to Eremitical Life?

I have written about discerning whether or not one has a call to eremitical life or not a number of times here and I am not sure I can add anything unless something I have said was unclear. You will need to let me know if that is the case. However, I can summarize some of the signs of a true vocation and perhaps some signs present in those not truly called to be hermits.

1) One should have a deep desire to be the person God calls them to be and be committed to seeking God in whatever ways God comes to them.

2) one should have a clear sense that the primary way this occurs for oneself is in a contemplative prayer life lived in the silence of solitude. (Clearly the person who never experiences real silence or solitude and who, for whatever reason, cannot make the commitment to these cannot draw such a conclusion.)

3) one should clearly thrive as a generous, loving, compassionate, human being in this context and come to do so ever more deeply so that silence and solitude as a physical context is transformed into the silence of solitude --- the silence of union with God who is the silent ground and source of creation. One's director and/or one's superiors should see signs that this is so while the hermit herself should be able to articulate a pattern of growth associated with becoming a whole and holier human being whose very life will benefit others.

4) one should be able to write a livable Rule on the basis of several years experience in solitude; this Rule should reflect one's own experience and a sense of the eremitical tradition one claims to represent with one's life.

5) one should be able to commit to living this Rule and be faithful to that commitment. (If changes are made to the Rule they should be made with the assistance of one's director, be occasional, and finally, they should be the result of growth in the life, not merely ways of attenuating the commitment one has made. An exception  here is a situation of serious illness or aging.) This means that one is able to commit to the sacrifices and discipline involved in such a life and live out this commitment day in and day out over the whole of her life.

Signs one is not called:

1) One seeks to live as a hermit for some reason other than a deep desire to respond to God in a contemplative life of the silence of solitude. Any reason which is not generous at its root is either inadequate or inappropriate and will be insufficient to ground or sustain one's commitment in any case.

2) One does not thrive in such a situation. Such a lack may show itself either in mediocrity in one's daily life which may include the failure to ever make a real commitment, in a lack of faithfulness to one's Rule and the need for distraction, in the failure to grow in one's capacity to love and be loved, or in outright development of personal bizarreness, mental instability and illness, unhealthy piety, isolation, and individualism. While solitude always creates some degree of disintegration that disintegration is part of a growth process which is more markedly one of reintegration and transfiguration. A competent director will be able to see these signs and so should a hermit that is at all self-aware.

3) One experiences a persistent doubt one is called to this, experiences a persistent sense one is not fulfilled in such a setting, is driven to seek other ways of serving God and others, and is never personally capable of justifying eremitical life to others. (By this I mean one not called may well harbor deep or not so deep insecurities and doubts about the validity of the vocation itself. Only a person who knows first hand the redemption of her own emptiness and weakness in the starkness of solitude will be able to offer the justification required; this, of course, requires she has lived the life well enough to have experienced the kenosis it occasions.) One may be led to try this for any number of reasons including chronic illness, old age, etc, but unless one shows the signs listed above and truly grows to wholeness and holiness in this vocation --- meaning one is clear that this is the way God has called her to achieve the fullness of selfhood for the sake of others, an aspiring hermit should probably look elsewhere for their vocation.

4) One refuses to make the necessary sacrifices and commitments required to really be a hermit. This could include not educating oneself in terms of theology, spirituality, Scripture, etc, not assuring one seeks out the formation one requires, failing to get regular and competent spiritual direction or consistently resisting that direction, never really committing to either silence or solitude much less the silence of solitude, refusing to give one's entire abode over to God and to the values (poverty, chastity, obedience, etc) of eremitical life, resisting the discipline of a daily horarium (at least a general order and regularity in one's prayer and daily living) etc.