Authentic Eremitism vs Stereotypes and the Source of Stereotypes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eremitism, A Life of Constant Vigil (Reprise)

Perhaps it is the focus of Advent with its emphasis on preparation and waiting, but I came today to see my life specifically and eremitical life more generally as one of vigil --- and continuous vigil. Whether the time in cell is obviously fruitful or marked by darkness and seeming emptiness, whether one turns to prayer with joy and enthusiasm or with resistance and depression, one waits on the Lord. One spends one's time in vigil.

Now this is ironic in some ways because despite loving prayer at night the Office of Readings which is also called "Vigils" has never been my favorite hour and this last two years I have substituted another way of spending the time before dawn which has been very fruitful for me (and, I hope, that means fruitful in terms of what God wills!). The time from 4:00am to 8:00am has been one of vigil but it consists of quiet prayer, Lauds, and writing with some lectio. A Camaldolese nun mentioned her own monastery (and the one I am affiliated with as an Oblate) treating these same hours as a time of vigil and I very much liked the idea. I did not know that it would define both my day and my life, however.

There is something amazing about living in a way which is not "just" obedient (open and responsive) to the Lord, but which is actively awaiting him at every moment.(Yes, these are intimately related, but not always practiced that way.) The heart of Benedictine spirituality is the search for God. When candidates for Benedictine monastic life arrive at the monastery, the goal they are expected to affirm is the search for God. This is the defining characteristic of the authentic monastic life and a significant point of discerning a vocation. We can hear that phrase as emphasizing an active, even desperate attempt to find something that is missing from our lives, or we can hear it as a process of preparing ourselves to find the God who is immanent in our lives and world at every point. In the latter case our lives become a vigil to the extent they are transformed into something capable of perceiving and welcoming this immanent God.

Another central Benedictine value is hospitality, and there is no doubt it plays a very significant part in this perspective. While we ordinarily think of hospitality as offering a place for guests who come to the monastery or hermitage in search of something, we should extend the notion to God. All of our prayer is a way of offering hospitality to God; it is a way, that is, of giving him a personal place to stand in our lives and world. While God is omnipresent and the ground of the truly personal, he does NOT automatically have a personal place in our lives. Like someone whose name we do not know, he may impinge on our space, but until we call upon him by name and give him a place he cannot assume on his own, he will remain only impersonally there. And so, in prayer we call upon him by name ("Abba, Father"), we carve out space and time for him, we give him permission to enter our lives and hearts and to take up more and more extensive residence there. We offer him friendship, hospitality, and we structure our lives around his presence. We continually ready ourselves and look for him just as we look for a best friend we expect any time and thus our lives become a vigil.

For hermits, whose whole lives are given over to God in a focused and solitary way, vigil is simply another description of the environment, goal, and gift (charism) of eremitical life we refer to as "the silence of solitude." Those four hours before Mass or Communion in my daily horarium define the characteristic dynamic of the whole of my life --- at least when it is lived well! It is a vigil which requires the silence of solitude (i.e., external and internal silence and solitude), leads to the silence of solitude (i.e.,communion with God), and gifts the world with it and all it implies. During Advent especially I think the call to make something similar of our own lives is extended to every one of us in a special way.

Patience People

I am working on a piece on desert spirituality and it corresponds with Advent and the image of the farmer waiting and watching the soil after plantings "in Winter and in Spring rain" for signs of growth and fruitfulness. But, until I can pull that together (probably in the next couple of days) I hope readers will enjoy "Patience People" --- one of my all-time favorite Advent hymns. All good wishes as you celebrate all those times of patient waiting on the God who brings life out of death, order out of chaos, as well as meaning out of meaninglessness, especially as we all wait patiently for the coming of Jesus in whatever way he wills to do that in our lives!

Gaudete Sunday and the Sacrament of Anointing

 Each year on this Sunday we celebrate the Anointing of the Sick; we did so this morning. I am always really moved by it as we each come forward and stand in a semi-circle in front of the whole assembly while facing the altar as Father John moves to each of us, lays on hands, prays, and then comes to each of us again anointing us on forehead and hands. I ordinarily come forward because I struggle with chronic illness and because I want to remain open to God bringing good out of whatever suffering is involved --- including whatever deep healing (he) will accomplish within me.

This year I felt keenly my need for healing, but too, my compassion for all those who stood in front of our brothers and sisters in Christ and implicitly proclaimed our vulnerability and need for one another and the prayers of each and all. We each have our own story of personal suffering, brokenness, illness, and neediness --- but we also have our significant stories of the Christ who comforts and strengthens us in every difficulty. I don't know the details of all of these stories -- though yes, I know a few, but I know how moving it is to witness to the Gospel in weakness and brokenness and how inspiring to stand silently with others who, though tacit about what the details of their vulnerability involve,  say clearly with their presence that they trust in God, trust in the Sacraments, trust in the support of the ecclesia and cannot, in fact must not, do otherwise.

We each come to this Sacrament looking for God to work miracles -- "acts of power" as the NT puts it ---  whether or not there is physical healing. We come as supplicants looking for God to transform our weakness into a complex canvas at once flawed and sacred, a Divine work of art, Magnificats proclaiming the One who is sovereign and victorious over the powers of sin and death even as (he) embraces and transforms them with his love and presence. It is especially significant that we do this on the day proclaiming the greatness of JnBap who is the greatest of "those born of women" and who prepared the way of the Lord who, [[Strengthen(s) the hands that are feeble, (and) make(s) firm the knees that are weak, say(s) to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.]] (Isaiah, today's first reading.)

Through the years I have written of a vocation to chronic illness -- a vocation to be ill within the Church, to bear our illness in Christ and (thanks to James Empereur, sj) of the sacrament of anointing as a prophetic sacrament of commissioning and call. This is what we celebrated today at St P's: brothers and sisters in Christ who came forth together in their vulnerability and need in order to be strengthened in our witness to Christ and help inspire the faith and prayer of the entire assembly. Physical healing is not necessary for the effectiveness of this sacrament (though we certainly open ourselves to it) but the increasing ability to bear our illness in Christ --- the ability to trust in and witness to the God whose power is perfected in weakness and who puts an end to fear and deep insecurity is the real vocation here. As Isaiah reminds us, such trust can lead to strong hands capable of touching others with compassion and gentleness; likewise it can result in "knees" that support us as we try to stand tall in our own truth and the ability to dance and sing our lives with a joy which comes when we truly know and trust in the love of God.

Gaudete Sunday with the Philippine Saringhimig Singers

I love Advent generally but Gaudete Sunday is often the high point of the season. Tonight I went with a friend to my parish for an Advent/Christmas concert. It was absolutely glorious!! The acoustics in our church are very good (much improved after the redecorating we did a few years ago) but tonight we heard voices (as my friend noted) our church has never heard before!! If church buildings are anything like violins (which become more responsive the more they are played, especially in the higher ranges), the voices tonight shaped the acoustics as much as the acoustics shaped the sound we heard and made of St P's a better "instrument" itself!!

The choir was the Philippine Saringhimig Singers and they are just wonderful! Great voices, amazing spot-on harmonies,  wonderful dynamics (great pianissimo moving to a fortissimo marked by a tone quality that was astounding), and some really interesting arrangements marked the entire concert!! I was blown away with a duet of  "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" arranged by Margaret Bonds and sung by Maya Lopez and Rachel Larson. The range in these two voices alone and the concord and musical intimacy of the way they sang together, well, I need to say it again --- it totally blew me away!!

We are lucky to have Mary Jo Malabuyo as our music director here at St Perpetua's. She (an amazing soprano and instrumentalist besides directing our choir and cantors) along with her Mother (a professional opera singer) and Father sing with Saringhimig regularly and Mary Jo was largely responsible for bringing them here this year. We are fortunate indeed! Above all they sang with love, faith, and a joy which reflected the day perfectly! Gaudete!! He is Coming! Alleluia!! I am hoping this is the beginning of a seasonal tradition her at St P's!!

Another Look at Hermits and the Place of Friendship

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I very much appreciate what you have written about the need for friendship in hermit life. Do you think friendships can also be a distraction? I remember when I was growing up Sisters weren't allowed to have what were called "particular friendships". Do you remember that? Is that still something Sisters watch out for? Do hermits decide about the place of friendships individually? Does anyone assist them? One hermit writes about some of this: [[When the hermit gives over to the Lord in accepting the less of the world and the more of the interior life, when the excuses or rationalizing of going and doing, of enabling and encouraging particular friendships, the hermit will settle into the rubrics, and essences exemplified by the saint hermits of history and tradition, the hermit will be in their mystical company, also increasingly so. ..]]

Thanks for your comments and questions; I have enjoyed this series of exchanges because the importance of friendship in eremitical life (and the care these require) is a dimension of eremitical life which is often misunderstood and leads to further misunderstanding of the nature of hermit life. I hope you will continue writing from time to time. It is a help to this blog, so thanks again.

Truly, I think almost anything can become a distraction for the hermit committed to the silence of solitude and bound to the evangelical counsels. I think even the multiplication of prayers and devotions can become a distraction from genuine prayer for those too busy with "doing prayer" and refusing to allow God to pray within them. Some approaches to piety as a way of self-perfection can distort authentic spirituality and distract from a genuine faith committed to allowing God to be God. So too can study, lectio which devolves into simple reading, manual labor which takes over one's life, But yes, of course, friendships could become distractions, particularly if a hermit is unhappy in her hermitage and/or her friends do not share her values or similar vocational commitments. However, if one lives one's Rule, one's vows, and is committed to allowing her life to be the gift which life in the silence of solitude truly is, friendship can, and ordinarily will play an important, though necessarily limited, part in growth in authentic humanity and abundant life.

Last March I wrote a post focused on an apothegm of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (it is reprised in the post below this one). That saying was: [[When one desert father told another of his plans to “shut himself into his cell and refuse the face of men, that he might perfect himself,” the second monk replied, “ Unless thou first amend thy life going to and fro amongst men, thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone.”]] (Sayings of the Desert fathers and Mothers) cf: The Desert Fathers and Mothers on the Hermit's Need for Human Relationships in Achieving Holiness.  There I acknowledged that I found this unambiguous part of Catholic eremitical tradition to be fascinating; I also think it was/will be very surprising to those who write that friendships and an eremitism built on a rich solitude rather than on isolation or physical solitude alone is some sort of betrayal of authentic eremitical life. To my mind that certainly includes the author of the blog you quote from above. Hermits affirm with their lives that God Alone is sufficient for us, but at the same time we recognize the ways God is mediated to us in human relationships and the importance of such relationships theologically as well as humanly.

Yes, I am familiar with the term "particular friendships"; I wrote about it not long ago. (cf On Hermits, Selfishness, and Friendship. Particular friendships were certainly something forbidden when I first entered religious life. But remember, this was about life in community and there was a sense that "particular" friendships could cause problems in loving one's Sisters --- all of one's Sisters --- in a similar or equal way in Christ. There was also the fundamental idea that Christ always came first in each Sister's life. (I suspect a piece of all of this was fear that some young Sisters would fall into lesbian relationships as well -- though that was not explicitly mentioned.) I remember when I first entered there were seven of us and we divvied up rooms according to natural affinities. Very quickly (I think it took about two days to a week) and our superiors shuffled us around so we tended to be "rooming" with those we had no natural affinity for. (When I say rooming here I am referring to the fact that we had taken over an old apartment building. Each apartment had three rooms and a bathroom. One bed was placed in each room so there were three Sisters in each former apartment.)

Generally I think this kind of discipline fostered an inadequate affective life in community and also could affect one's interior life with Christ similarly. One lived with Sisters one was discouraged from coming to know in the way we each need to know and be known; we often found (at funerals, for instance) that one had never come to know this person at all, might never have said a kind or truly personal word to her, and could say very little about her to one's other Sisters. Imagine this kind of finding in a community of women living as Sisters in Christ and sharing some of the most intimate values known! But this situation changed in the late sixties or early seventies onwards and in general what was discovered was that life in community became more loving and personal, Sisters grew in their own affective lives, while liturgies and prayer lives generally became warmer and more intimate in entirely appropriate ways. Yes, there were also occasional problems as Sisters negotiated a new approach to community and affective life, but generally speaking, I don't know any Sisters who would go back to the relatively distant institutionalized relationships that were so common when I entered.

Mainly Sisters don't use the term "particular friendships" any longer and it doesn't really work as a cautionary term except for those living in community. Sisters (including canonical hermits) have and benefit from friendships. Those friendships may be with Sisters in other congregations, with lay people with whom a Sister works and prays, etc. But of course Sisters live disciplined lives and have many responsibilities which don't really allow for using friendships to distract from their vowed commitments. More, most congregations involve some expression in "intentional communities" which allow for closer friendships, prayer, and so forth while protecting life in the larger community. For me it is an absolute joy to be able to spend time talking about prayer, Christ, Scripture, theology, poetry, and spirituality with my Directors or Dominican friend. I have three good Sister friends especially; they are from three different congregations and each could not be more different from one another --- or from me. Even so, we share our relationship to Christ who is our Beloved and help one another nurture that relationship. The old idea that one can't love Christ enough if one loves others or that one cannot have good friends and a truly intimate relationship with Christ at the same time has been shown to simply be untrue and even spiritually destructive. Loving better and more widely does not, of itself, diminish one's love for God in Christ. Instead, when one truly loves others and grows in one's capacity for love within the context of a committed religious or consecrated life, one's relationship with Christ will also grow (and vice versa).

But let me get back to hermits per se. Here I would argue that it is far more dangerous to have hermits who speak as the one you quote does about friendship than those who appreciate the place of friendship, for instance. That is especially so when the hermit has difficulties with relationships, for whatever the reason. Eremitical life is often seen as (and has often been) escapist, unloving, misanthropic, selfish, and essentially irrelevant. Someone who cannot maintain good relationships with friends or even family, who rejects the Church as a people called together in Thanksgiving (Eucharist) and speaks of it instead as some abstract, bloodless reality, who defines "world" as everything outside the hermitage door and derides everything else existing in space and time as somehow tainted or profane rather than potentially (or actually!) sacramental, gives the truth to these complaints. We must not allow this. Because eremitical life has a checkered history at best which quite often justified these stereotypes, and because c 603 seeks to protect and nurture an eremitical life which values the silence of solitude, but also because it is a way of proclaiming the Gospel and is lived for the salvation of the world, hermits must be free to develop quality friendships which actually enhance eremitical solitude and counter the destructive stereotypes still prevalent today.

I do think every hermit determines the place of friendship in her life. Canonical hermits will do this with the mutual assistance and discernment of her Director (i.e., her delegate), her spiritual director, and perhaps her bishop --- but she will mainly do this by looking at the deepening nature of her prayer and other dimensions of her life alone with God. She must discern the place of friendship, not on the basis of an abstract definition of eremitical life (though she will respect and live the fundamentals that define the life), but instead on the basis of the way God is working in her life and calling her to fullness of personhood in eremitical solitude. The space and time the hermit has for friendships is different from that of others, whether laity or religious, and the way these are maintained will differ as well. They will be significant relationships though --- rooted in prayer, fruitful for faith, important for growth in compassion and generosity, and for abundant life in Christ. To the extent friendships come from a healthy solitude rich with love and life and lead back to the same, they will be clearly discernible as blessings of God bestowed on the hermit and on her friend(s). Our God comes to us in the ordinary things of life -- that is a truth at the heart of the Incarnation. Authentic friendships, no matter the special care these require, is one instance of this, nothing less.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers on the Hermit's Need for Human Relationships to Achieve Holiness (Reprise)

In posting the last two posts on the relationship of eremitical solitude and chronic illness I forgot I had posted the following text from the sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers just last March. I consider this reprise a contribution to that recent conversation.

[[When one desert father told another of his plans to “shut himself into his cell and refuse the face of men, that he might perfect himself,” the second monk replied, “Unless thou first amend thy life going to and fro amongst men, thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone.”]] (Sayings of the Desert fathers and Mothers)

I think this Desert Father and Mother apothegm is fascinating and especially important because it explicitly forbids one to move into solitude and away from others merely in some attempt to perfect oneself. This flies in the face of the way many conceive of eremitical life as well as the way some would-be-hermits describe the vocation. But it should not surprise anyone who carefully reflects on the Great Commandment and the interrelatedness of its two elements, love of God and love of neighbor. Especially it should not surprise those who live eremitical life in the name of the Church; we know the communal nature of our eremitical solitude --- nuanced and rare as it may be. 

We know too that our formation as hermits generally comes after (and requires) years of life in community, whether religious or parish (along with all of the other forms of community we experience throughout life). Similarly, ongoing formation requires personal work with directors and delegates --- and usually some degree of life in a parish community. (As I have written here before, actual eremitical reclusion today (reclusion is a much stricter solitude than most hermits are called to) is allowed by the Church in only two congregations: Camaldolese and Carthusian, and even in these very rare cases it is important to recognize the community context, supervision, and support this vocation requires and implies.)

The genuine human perfection we call holiness is the wholeness of the reconciled and integrated person who is therefore alive in God and the fullness of his or her personal truth. This implies reconciliation with God, with self, and with all else in God. It implies a profound capacity for compassion, for the ability to see Christ in others, and the willingness to spend oneself for the sake of others while becoming more and more completely dependent upon God as the source of our Selves. Desert elders knew the desire to seek perfection in physical reclusion by simply turning one's back on people was doomed to failure; it is frequently badly motivated, is paradoxically guided by a spirit of perfectionism and competition which is a betrayal of genuine humility and can lack the preparation necessary for becoming a hermit and moving into, much less sustaining a healthy eremitical solitude. They knew that solitude is a demanding and dangerous environment and particularly so for those unprepared for or not called to it. Even in those who are called to it eremitical solitude can be the source of illusory and delusional thinking and perceptions -- especially about oneself and God. Thus, the requirement for ongoing direction by experienced spiritual directors and the supervision by bishops and/or their delegates.

The desert Fathers were convinced that the way human beings come to achieve the necessary experience leading to repentance for sin and amendment of life is through one's ordinary interactions with other human beings. Contrary to popular opinion perhaps, the authentic eremitical vocation is not one where an individual moves into the desert merely to pursue personal or "spiritual" perfection in some sort of "solitary splendor" or in an interpersonal and relational vacuum. One moves into solitude 1) because solitude has truly opened her door to one, and 2) because with the church one discerns this is what God is calling one to and is prepared to live for the whole of her life as the fulfillment of the Great Commandment. Discernment that one is called in this way will include a sense that one is healthy in terms of interpersonal relationships and that one has achieved relative maturity in one's spirituality and Catholic identity. This is a traditional stance. St Benedict, for instance, affirms that hermits must have lived in community for some time and, of course, not be in the first blush of conversion.

I want to emphasize the place of discernment here, not only the discernment we each do on our own but the discernment we do with the Church itself in the person of legitimate superiors and directors, i.e., bishops, vicars of religious, delegates, et al. Part of this discernment, and indeed initial and ongoing formation is meant to ensure that the hermit or hermit candidate's motives are not selfish or otherwise misguided and that solitude has indeed herself opened the door to this vocation. What this means is that the hermit/candidate is responding to a Divine call; the Church will also make sure the hermit/candidate is prepared not only to live in solitude but more, that she will grow and thrive in it in ways which will be a gift to the Church and thus, to others. There are subtleties involved here and nuances which the hermit/candidate may not appreciate until much later and may not be able to determine on her own. It is also important to remember that since a hermit does not do apostolic ministry** the ways she lives her solitude and the meaning her life embodies within and as a result of this solitude are themselves the gift God gives the Church through the hermit. Supervision and discernment (mutual and otherwise) are required not only early on for a candidate not yet admitted to profession but throughout the hermit's life. ***

One of the reasons I stressed the need for supervision and discernment and the way they are ensured is because they are a part of the hermit's integral need for others in her life. Whether we are hermits or even recluses we need others who know us well and are capable of assessing in a continuing way the quality of our vocational life, as well as encouraging and assisting us to grow in our responsiveness to God's call to abundant life. Canonical (consecrated) hermits are called to ecclesial vocations and the Church has the right and obligation to oversee these just as she expects us to continue to grow as human beings; canonical hermits have accepted the obligation to grow and participate in those "professional" relationships which help ensure that. Yes, hermits do grow in light of their experience of the love of God; they grow in authentic humanity and as hermits through their experience of Christ in the silence of solitude and the disciplined and attentive living of their Rule and horarium, but what growth there is in these things is often dependent on the hermit's work with her director and delegate, and also with her interactions and relationships with folks from her parish and/or diocese.

In eremitical (or any other) solitude it is simply too easy to say, "God wills this," or "God is calling me to that," when discernment is done by the hermit alone. In such a situation the temptation is to canonize or apotheosize one's own opinions, perceptions, tendencies, and so forth as the movement of the Holy Spirit. God does not literally speak to us as human beings do but instead does so through Sacred texts, sacraments, prayer, and the fruits of our choices and actions; since we learn to love and be loved in our connection with others, hermits must 1) be well-formed in learning to hear (discern) and respond to God in authentic ways, and 2) they must be adequately supervised and directed in this. This does not mean one meets every week or even every month with one's delegate, or spiritual director. "Adequate" means whatever is sufficient to allow the hermit/candidate to grow in her vocation first as a human being called to live from and mediate the love of God (and others) and to do this as a hermit in the silence of solitude.

** Hermits may do some very limited apostolic ministry but are not and cannot be identified in terms of this ministry as are apostolic or ministerial religious. The silence of solitude is always primary and a defining element for the hermit's life.

*** Some have written that the need for direction and supervision cease to be important when the hermit has lived the life for some time. I believe this is a false conclusion. It is true that the nature of direction and the supervisory relationships change with time and maturity, but it seems to me they may become even more critical over time. Whether that is generally true or not the need for ongoing formation and discernment continues through the whole of the hermit's life.

Our Lady of Guadalupe: God is the One Who Lifts up the Lowly (Reprise)

Fifty years ago at Vatican II the messiest, most passionate, and often "dirtiest" fighting to occur during the council took place during discussions of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Out of nearly 2400 bishops the fight was divided almost exactly evenly between two factions, those nicknamed the maximalists and those nicknamed the minimalists. Both factions were concerned with honoring the greatness of Mary in our faith but their strategies in this were very different from one another. The maximalists wanted the council to declare Mary Mediatrix of all Graces and to proclaim this as a new dogma in the Church --- never mind that the thrust of the Council was not toward the definition of new dogmas. They wanted the council to write a separate document on Mary, one which effectively made her superior to the Church.

The minimalists also wanted to honor Mary, but they wanted to do so by speaking of her within the document on the Church. They desired a more Scriptural approach to the person and place of Mary which honored the dogmatic truth that Christ is the One unique Mediator between God and mankind. The Church would be spoken of as Mother and Virgin, for instance, and Mary would be seen as a type of the Church.

The minimalist position won the day (had only 20 Bishops voted differently it would have been another matter) and so, in Lumen Gentium after the Church Fathers wrote about the Mystery of the Church, Church as People of God, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the Laity, the universal call to holiness, Religious, and the Church as a Pilgrim people, they wrote eloquently about Our Lady in chapter VIII. Mary is highly honored in this Constitution --- as it says in today's responsorial psalm, she is, after all, "the highest honor of our race", but for this very reason the Church Fathers spoke of her clearly as  within the Church, within the Communion of Saints, within the Pilgrim People of God, not as a rival to Christ or part of the Godhead, but as one who serves God in Christ as a model of faithfulness.

It is always difficult, I think, to believe and honor the Christmas truth we are preparing during Advent to celebrate, namely, that our God is most fully revealed to us in the ordinary things of life. We are a Sacramental faith rooted in the God who, for instance, comes to us himself in bread and wine, cleanses and recreates us entirely with water,  and strengthens and heals us with oil. Especially at this time of the liturgical year we are challenged to remember and celebrate the God who turns a human face to us, who comes to us in weakness, lowliness and even a kind of dependence on the "yes" we are invited to say, the One who is made most fully real and exhaustively known in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Advent is a time when we prepare ourselves to see the very face of God in the poor, the broken, the helpless, and those without status of any kind. After all, that is what the Christmas Feast of the Nativity is all about.

I think this is one of the lessons today's Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches most vividly. We all know the more superficial story. Briefly, in 1531 Juan Diego, an indigenous man and Christian encountered a beautiful Lady on the hill of Tepeyac; she told him to ask the Bishop to build a church there. The Bishop refused and required a sign of the authenticity of Juan Diego's vision. Diego returned home to find his uncle dying. He set out again to fetch a doctor and avoided the hill where he had first met the woman and went around it instead --- he did not want to be distracted from his mission! But the Lady came down to him, heard his story about his uncle, reassured him his uncle would be well, and told him then to go to the top of the hill and pick the flowers he found there. Diego did so, gathered them in his tilma or mantle, and went again to the Bishop. Juan poured out his story to him and he also poured the flowers out onto the floor. Only then did he and the Bishop see a miraculous image of the Lady of Tepeyac hill there on the tilma itself.

But there was a deeper story. Remember that Juan Diego's people were an essen-tially subjugated people. The faith they were forced to adopt by missionaries was geared toward the salvation of souls but not to what we would recognize as the redemption of persons or the conversion and transformation of oppressive structures and institutions. It was more a faith enforced by fear than love, one whose central figure was, a la Anselm, a man crucified because an infinitely offended God purportedly willed it in payment for our sins. Meanwhile the symbols of that faith, its central figures, leaders and saints, were visibly European; they spoke and were worshipped in European languages, were dressed in European clothes, were portrayed with European features, etc. At best it was hard to relate to; its loving God was apparently contradictory and remote. At worst belief in this God was incomprehensible and dehumanizing. Moreover, with the "evangelizers" who had forcibly deprived the Indians of their own gods and religion came diseases the Indians had never experienced. They were dying of plagues formerly unknown to them, working as slaves for the institutional and patriarchal  Church, and had been deprived of the human dignity they had formerly known.

It was into this situation that Mary directly entered when she appeared on Tepeyak hill, the center of the indigenous peoples' worship of the goddess Tonantzin, the "goddess of sustenance". The image of the Lady was remarkable in so many ways. The fact of it, of course, was a marvel (as were the healing of Diego's uncle, the December roses Diego picked and poured out onto the Bishop's floor or the creation and persistence of her image on Diego's tilma), but even more so was the fact that she had the face of a mixed race (Indian or Mestiza) woman, spoke in Diego's own language, was pregnant, and was dressed in native dress. And here was the greatest miracle associated with OL of Guadalupe: in every way through this appearance the grace of God gave dignity to the Indian people. They were no longer third or fourth class people but persons who could truly believe they genuinely imaged the Christian God. The appearance was the beginning of a new Church in the Americas, no longer a merely European Church, but one where Mary's Magnificat was re-enacted so that ALL were called to truly image God and proclaim the Gospel. One commentator wrote that, [[Juan Diego and millions after him are transformed from crushed, self-defacing and silenced persons into confident, self-assured and joyful messengers and artisans of God's plan for America.]] (Virgilio Elizondo, Guadalupe and the New Evangelization)

Here too then, in the truly unexpected and even unacceptable place, our God turns a human face to those seeking him. He, and those who are from and of him, comes to us in weakness and lowliness as one of the truly marginalized. In the process we see clearly once again the God of Jesus Christ who scatters the proud in their conceit, unseats the mighty from their positions of power, and lifts up the lowly. During this season of Advent Our Lady of Guadalupe calls us especially to be watchful. God is working to do this new and powerful thing among us --- just as he did in the 1st Century, just as he did in the 16th, just as he always does when we give him our own fiat.

Follow-up on the Relationship of Eremitical Solitude and Chronic Illness

[[Sister Laurel, thank you for your response to my questions. I think "illegitimate" was maybe too strong a word to have used but you understood what I was getting at. You're right, I was not expecting an autobiographical-type response but it was a great answer and indicated the various topics you have written about over the years apparently are a kind of building blocks leading to a coherent theology of eremitical life and solitude. I have a follow-up question or two if you don't mind. Since I have not read much of your blog I don't know what you have written about this, but when you began exploring eremitical life you might have found it exacerbated the isolation associated with chronic illness. 

Was this a question you dealt with specifically in determining if you had such a vocation? And if you did deal with it specifically was there something in the tradition of the vocation which helped you to do that? Would a diocese know to look for the distinction between isolation and eremitical solitude in the lives of others seeking admission to profession as a hermit? I think it is amazing that you were concerned with this question in the way you have been and for as long as you have been. Do you think others with chronic illnesses might become "hermits" without the kind of self-awareness you have shown? That seems like a danger to me. . . .]]

Thanks for following up! Yes, there was a risk in exploring eremitical life. It might well have exacerbated the isolation associated with chronic illness and there were significant periods of time in the beginning when I did not know what the answer would be, nor -- a very much larger question ---whether my motivations regarding pursuing this vocation were completely skewed or not. The question of whether I was looking to validate my isolation or something more authentic and meaningful was one I dealt with during the earliest years of my eremitical life. Eventually I discovered that while part of me was looking to validate isolation a deeper part of me was moved by the Holy Spirit and was seeking the redemption of that isolation (and the whole of my life) in a way which would respect my own limitations (especially those associated with illness) while opening me to life in and of God in a richer and more demanding way.

At the heart of all of this was the biblical injunction, "By their fruits you shall know them". I would say that everyone seriously connected with my life, everyone who loved me along with my spiritual director and even my physicians, watched to discern the fruits of this experiment. We were all hopeful, and it looked like I was acting on a strong experience of the Holy Spirit and sense of vocation, yes, but there was no guarantee I had gotten it right! Still. the evidence of being on the right track began to come in right from the beginning and over the years has only become more clear in an eremitical life which does indeed bear good fruit. God's grace is sufficient, his power is indeed perfected in weakness!

Parts of Eremitical Tradition that Influenced me: 

I think the thing that most helped me in dealing with the distinction between isolation and solitude, the piece of tradition that was compelling to me was a piece of Camaldolese history, namely the writing of St Peter Damian on the hermit as "ecclesiola". In one of his letters Damian is dealing with the way a hermit is to approach prayers which are not themselves solitary or solitary in focus. Is it valid to recite lines like "The Lord Be With you" when the hermit is the only one present at liturgy? What about saying "Our Father" as part of the Lord's Prayer? The result was this letter which explains how the church is wholly present in all of her members, both together and individually. He writes:

[[The Church of Christ is united in all her parts by the bond of love, so that she is both one in many members and mystically whole in each member. And so we see that the entire universal Church is correctly called the one and only bride of Christ, while each chosen soul, by virtue of the sacramental mysteries, is considered fully the Church. . . .From all the aforementioned it is clear that, because the whole Church can be found in one individual person and the Church itself is called a virgin, Holy Church is both one in all its members and complete in each of them. It is truly simple among many through the unity of faith and multiple in each individual through the bond of love and various charismatic gifts, because all are from one and all are one.]]

It was this emphasis on this "bond of love" which unites all persons in the Church along with the notion that the canonical eremitical vocation is an ecclesial vocation which helped me see most clearly how different eremitical solitude is from isolation, but especially that of chronic illness. A hermit is not alone in her hermitage. Of course she is with God there, but she is also accompanied by the whole communion of saints in her solitary cell and lives her life with God for the sake of these and all others. Other dimensions of life at Stillsong also underscored this, not least the permission to reserve Eucharist here --- a practice that is integrally linked to daily Mass (even when I am not there) and continually underscores the ecclesial dimension of all life in the hermitage. Also very important was my reflection on the phrase, "the silence of solitude," in canon 603. I knew on the basis of Carthusian tradition that this was as much richer reality than mere silence and solitude but it took time to work out the way it indicates personal wholeness, shalom, and the stillness and centeredness of life with and in God.

Additional dimensions of life at Stillsong which kept the distinction between isolation and solitude ever in mind include my own work with my delegate (Director) and awareness of and reflection upon the meaning of "public profession and consecration" and the way this implicates me in the life and expectations of both the local and universal Church. Neither of these ever allow me to think of eremitical life as individualistic or to forget the bond of love rooted in God as ground of being and meaning that links a canonical hermit to the whole Church and all of creation in fact. The issue of a publicly mediated responsibility to the whole of the Church is especially critical here as is the realization that admission to profession and consecration is an act of trust by the whole Church where the c 603 hermit (or any other religious) is allowed and actually called to live this life in the name of the Church. Finally, the image which summarized all of these and more was that of hermit as (living in the)  "heart of the Church". It is hard to reflect on all of this and allow solitude to be defined in terms of isolation.

Would a Diocese Know to Look for this Distinction?

In my writing throughout this blog I have consistently drawn the distinction between a lone individual and a hermit. This is an expression of the same distinction existing between isolation and solitude or between the individualist and the hermit (who is usually highly individual but not an individualist). My sense is that some dioceses certainly do know about and watch out for these fundamental distinctions in discerning vocations to canon 603 life. I agree it might be difficult in the beginning of a person's journey toward profession and consecration, particularly if they deal with the limitations of chronic illness, to be sure of what one is dealing with. But with time it will become clearer and clearer what motivates this "candidate", and the  quality of the life she is living. Also dioceses require letters of recommendation from people who know the hermit, especially her spiritual director and her pastor.  To the extent a diocese spends enough time discerning the purported vocation the question of isolation vs solitude will be more likely to come up.

However, the eremitical vocation is not well-understood and remains mysterious to many dioceses today. The concern you raise with regard to knowledge of the distinction between isolation and solitude may not occur and sometimes seems not to have been entertained. I think this failure is more apt to come from a simplistic notion of solitude which focuses only on aloneness or correlative requirements of silence than from a failure to distinguish individual from individualistic, for instance, but yes, some dioceses might fail to look for this distinction. Of course this is one reason reflection on canon 603 life specifically and eremitical life generally must be carried on by those who have lived or supervised it. It is a service to the Church and to the vocation itself which will open up canonical eremitical life further in the future. Every diocese entertaining the idea of professing and consecrating someone as a diocesan hermit will engage in research on the vocation; as this continues the distinction between isolation and eremitical solitude will become clearer and clearer.

Sources of Reflection and Candidates for Eremitical Life:

Once again, chronic illness has served as a grace leading me to greater sensitivity re the distinction between isolation and eremitical solitude as well as to reflection on this distinction. I am sure other life experiences can do the same. The deep yearning for a meaningful life is universal and intensified by experiences like chronic illness, and this makes me think that of any demographic group, those with chronic illnesses might represent a potentially relatively higher number of eremitical vocations than others might. Even so, eremitical solitude remains a gift of God and a rare vocation in an absolute sense. I believe that even when those with chronic illnesses lack some degree of self-awareness they might well discern eremitical vocations --- though I also believe that in genuine vocations self-awareness will develop as the vocation matures.

I agree there is some danger to authentic solitude when individuals substitute isolation instead, It is here that we get flawed spiritualities which mistakenly treat the whole of God's creation as "the world" from which the hermit is more strictly separated, or which measure the quality of eremitical life in terms of separation rather than love, incompleteness and alienation rather than wholeness and community (koinonia). However, as eremitical life continues to become more fully understood in the contemporary Church I believe counterfeit versions will become more apparent and authentic approaches to eremitical solitude something those involved in discernment will come more and more to look for explicitly.