Becoming all Fire (Reprised from 2018)

 In the apothegmata (sayings) of the Desert Fathers and Mothers there is a famous story. It was rooted in the personal experience of these original Christian hermits but it resonated with a line from today's reading from Paul's second letter to Timothy:  [[For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.]] A young monk, Abba Lot, came to an elder, Abba Joseph, and affirmed that he had done all that he knew to do; everyday he did a little fasting, praying and meditating. He maintained hesychia (stillness) and purged his thoughts to the best of his ability. He wondered what else he should be doing. The story concludes, [[Standing up, the elder stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire; and he said to him, "If you are willing, you can become all flame!"]]

I suspect most of us have experienced the formal laying on of hands that occurs during the reception of some sacrament or other. If we are not ordained we would still have experienced this at confirmation and during the reception of the anointing of the sick. Some of us who were baptized as adults may have experienced this during our initiation into the Church. In every case the laying on of hands signifies the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mediation of a kind of vocational event, a call to discipleship in and of the love and presence of God in Christ. (The sacrament of anointing has been called a vocational sacrament to be sick in the Church, a call to proclaim the Gospel of God's wholeness and holiness in and through the weakness and even the relative brokenness of illness. cf. James Empereur, Prophetic Anointing) And of course there are all the other ways God lays hands on us as "his" love comforts, heals, and commissions us to God's  service. I wonder if we realize the invitation these occasions represent, the invitation not merely to be touched and enlightened in so many ways by the love and presence of God, but to be so wholly transformed by him so that we become "all flame"!

This is another way of describing the coming of the Reign of God among us. In today's readings the Kingdom of God is not so much a place as it is an event. Jesus described it this way: [[Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.]] (Matt 11:4-5) And we know that beyond this, the coming of this mysterious event often involved the healing of those with inexplicable illnesses and forms of unfreedom or outright bondage, victims of the demonic in human hearts and the world at large. According to tomorrow's readings the seeds of  this event are planted deep within us, a potential harvest which is natural to us and whose fullness we cannot even imagine. With every encounter with Jesus, every encounter with the Word of God, every direct or mediated experience of the love of God, this human and vocational potential is summoned or drawn to fruition.

One of the privileged ways this encounter occurs just as it did in Jesus' time is through Jesus' parables. These are stories which quietly draw us more and more into the world Jesus calls home, the world of friendship with God, the countercultural world whose values and life we call prophetic. I have written about parables here before --- about their power to summon us out of this world, to empower us to leave our baggage behind and to embrace the newfound freedom of an enlarged and hallowed humanity. It is a world which, through the narrative power of the Word made flesh, transforms and commissions us to return to that same world we left and act as Christ-for-others --- in the world but not of it. Jesus says, "the Kingdom of God is like. . ." and our minds and hearts alert to the promise and  challenge of a reality we cannot explain, a mystery we cannot comprehend unless, until, and to the extent it takes complete hold of us.

This gradual but continual process of call, encounter, response, and missioning is the way the event we know as the Kingdom of God comes, first to us and then to others we meet and minister to, then to the whole of creation. And it is what the Gospel writers are calling us to today. May we each find ourselves grasped and shaken, comforted, healed and commissioned, disoriented and re-oriented by the Word of God that comes to us in Christ. And may we each come to know and believe the truth of our own potential and call --- that we are not merely meant to be touched here and there by the fire of God's love and presence, but that we are made, called, and commissioned to "become all flame" in and through that love. Amen.

We Are Pioneers! Part 2, Being Part of a New and Ancient Vocation!!!

[[Hi Sister, I loved what you wrote about being pioneers, but I was surprised you didn't speak of c 603 hermits specifically as pioneers. After all, it is the new vocation "on the block." Aren't you a pioneer in living c 603?]]

Thanks for this question! It is a good one and one I have been discussing a little with other c 603 hermits. Yes, you are correct; because c 603 is a new norm defining consecrated solitary eremitical life, and because every diocese that chooses to implement the canon is also doing something quite new, every c 603 hermit is a pioneer in this sense as well; it is a very new thing to have hermits living as integral members of parish communities and doing limited ministry besides being a contemplative at the heart of the local Church, and what this means to and for everyone is something we are all exploring together. However, I wanted to write about the heart of the adventure, the inner journey, before I spoke about this other central way c 603 eremitical life involves being a pioneer.  I did mention the dimension of ecclesiality, which is central to canonical vocations, and that anticipates this second post. 

So, yes, besides the inner journey that makes hermits explorers in profound and extensive ways, there is the whole outer dimension of being representatives of a "new" (and ancient) vocation in the Church itself. I'd like to look a little at that in this post, because it comes up indirectly every time someone asks one of us "what order are you?" or any time a potential candidate for profession and consecration contacts their diocese seeking to become canonically what they are already living non-canonically. In each of these situations, one needs to be prepared to speak of the new thing God is doing with one's life, and to do so in a way that allows people unprepared to hear this to truly hear it. That takes enormous preparation and courage (in the case of the diocese, for instance), and a sense of who one truly is (in either case).

It isn't enough for the Church to have created c 603. She must implement it and implement it wisely. This means hermits must come to their dioceses with sufficient preparation and a strong sense of God's call, and they must do so after some years working with a good spiritual director. And even then, the hermit does not know that she will be professed and/or consecrated. She responds to God's personal call to her, and after some years, she approaches the Church to submit to a mutual discernment process. If this goes well, the Church will call her to profession and then, to consecration as a diocesan hermit --- a hermit with an ecclesial vocation. But there are no guarantees in any of this. The solitary hermit has no community to fall back on should the diocese decline to profess her. Unless the diocese gives her substantive reasons to move in another direction, she will continue living as a hermit because she knows it is God's call to her. Perhaps she will contact the diocese again in another five or ten or twenty years, but whether she does or does not, she is a pioneer living the loneliness of every true pioneer.

For those hermits the Church does profess and eventually consecrate, the pioneering is still not over! In some ways it has only just begun. The journey one now makes is not only a solitary one for oneself and God, but becomes an explicitly ecclesial one lived for the sake of the Church and her own embodiment of Christ. The c 603 hermit reminds contemplative religious of the primary relationship their lives are really about, and she reminds apostolic religious of the relationship and depth of prayer necessary for all truly fruitful apostolic ministry. She reminds married persons of the faithfulness to one another and to God that is so essential to their vocation. She reminds the single person that even in their loneliness, there is Another who is always present, and always seeking to be heard and to hear, to love and be loved. 

She, especially if she is chronically ill or disabled, reminds the chronically ill that they are called to an essential wellness that is possible in spite of illness, and that their lives can be full and fruitful as one learns to live and witness to this essential wellness and the one who makes it possible. And, paradoxically, she reminds everyone in whatever state of life they are called to wholeness, that human life, even in its deepest physical solitude, is essentially communal or relational, that escapism and individualism are antithetical to the humanity to which we are each called by God, and that learning love and compassion are the work we are each called to if we wish to be truly human and "successful." The eremitical life is human life stripped of everything but the essentials (because it focuses on the one thing necessary for every life), and so, it witnesses in a universal way so long as it is truly eremitical and not simply idiosyncratic or "bizarre". The authentic hermit is a prophetic voice motivated by hope and love, and she serves in that way wherever the Spirit moves her.

But none of this happens without the hermit learning these things herself in her own relationship with God, and then in relating and speaking as needed to the people of her parish or diocese or larger world! Every step reflects a yet-untraveled path that only the hermit can take. No one can do it for her, for it is her knowledge and wisdom that is called for. Yes, mentors can help here, especially if they have been pioneers themselves, but again, the path being taken is the hermit's own, and she trusts in herself and the grace of God that she can be successful in this. And, after a decade or two, a diocese that has taken a chance on professing and consecrating this hermit will come to understand that the risk was a fine one and entirely justified. They may, therefore, be open to professing other candidates in the future.

For diocesan hermits are also largely responsible for the future of this specific vocation. If dioceses are not careful in who they admit to profession and eventually, consecration, and if they do not do all they can to be sure the person can live eremitical life for the right reasons and with the right spirit, for instance, they may well find other dioceses responding by saying what I once heard one Carmelite Sister being told. She was approaching her diocese regarding becoming a c 603 hermit and was told by the Vicar General of the diocese, "They are telling me to stay away from that!" Again, this vocation is made up of pioneers, and the responsibility of each one of us to live this vocation as well as we can is very weighty indeed. (By the way, this also means that bishops and diocesan personnel may be required to do some pioneering work themselves if they wish to have healthy hermits representing the diocese! Sometimes this doesn't work out, and hermits might do better to seek standing under c 603 in another diocese.)

There is so much more to say about this pioneering dimension of the solitary eremitical vocation, but I have gone on for a while here. I am sure I will return to this theme in the future, and I want to encourage readers to ask questions that push me to be more detailed in my explorations of the topic if it seems that it will be helpful. Thanks for doing that.

We Are Pioneers! The Goal and Witness of Eremitic Life

 I have always been a fan of Star Trek and its spin off series. Some I have liked more than others, but all of them have engaged me on some level. I am finding Strange New Worlds especially wonderful, not only because of the exploration being done in each episode, but because of the rich characterizations, the struggle each player has to be their best selves, and the ethics of equality and compassion that permeate the show. In all of these aspects, Star Trek generally, and in Strange New Worlds specifically, reminds me of a world we have the potential to be as part of a universe we can hardly imagine yet.

As a hermit, I don't imagine I will ever explore outer space! But I, and other diocesan hermits, are excited by the prospect of exploring inner space, the realm of life with God, and with living on the frontiers of eremitical life with our canonical commitments. More, we do this as part of our ministry to and within the Church, precisely so the Church can be alive in the way she is called to be. This is also essential to the health and well-being of the world around us, and integral to God's own will for the whole of his creation. We are pioneers of sorts, and we struggle in the ways all pioneers struggle, first to live our lives with an integrity that is true to the solitary eremitical tradition we represent, and secondly, to be open to whatever new the Holy Spirit wills to do in and with our lives. That makes our lives a strange mixture of old and new, inner and externalized, traditional and novel, profoundly personal and expansively cosmic, all at the same time. Like many who have gone before me, and numbers of others journeying in the same way today, I think this is what it means to be a contemplative and to live in the present moment!! 

It is also what it means to live in and from the Risen Christ, who abides at once in heaven and on earth. He is the one in whom the interpenetration of these realities is made real. In all of the Scripture I have done in the past years, two themes are newly important for my understanding of the nature of eremitical life and the journey I have been called to make. The first is the affirmation that God is the One who, from the beginning, has willed to be Emmanuel, an image of God that affirms his desire to be with me (and the whole of his creation) in every moment and mood of my life. Emmanuel is the name in which heaven and earth are drawn together to make the whole of God's dwelling place. The second theme that affirms this same will of God is that Jesus is the new Temple. A temple is not merely a holy place set apart for God or for worship of God. It is the place in which heaven (God's realm) and earth (creation's realm) are quite literally drawn together. Jesus as the new Temple becomes the One in whom heaven and earth interpenetrate one another, and the renewed world becomes God's own once again. 

Into this incredibly weighty story I have been born and born anew, and what I also know now for the very first time, is that both I and this solitary eremitical vocation were made for times like these. It is something of a truism to say that eremitic life tends to reappear or flourish during difficult times. But here we are, just 42 years into the life of the canon 603 vocation, and our world faces crises on every front. The US is facing a Constitutional crisis and the endangering of our democratic society on numerous fronts; our people need to be able to hold onto hope, and religious freedom needs to be protected, especially from "Christian Nationalism" and the assault on religious freedom that represents.  At the same time, the Catholic Church has just lost Pope Francis, one of our strongest voices for human rights, social justice, the threat to our environment, as well as to the place of a synodal Church in establishing and maintaining a just and compassionate Church and world. We look to the election of a new Pope and the renewal of the Church's mission, especially in the face of growing fascism, oligarchies, "Christian" Nationalism, and factionalization throughout the Church and the World.

I have written on this blog for almost twenty years about the task to become the person God calls each of us to be. A vocation is a means by which we achieve this task and goal. An ecclesial vocation also means being part of those directly responsible for allowing the Church to be the Church God calls her to be. As a part of this task and goal, I have worked with a highly skilled spiritual director during this entire time, and together we have explored the ins and outs of my own journey to growth, healing, and union with God. It has been surprising, at times gratifying, at others exhilarating, and at other times (though especially the past nine years) extremely difficult. In the main, just as it is for every hermit, it has been a journey of love --- loving, being loved, learning to be loved, and learning to trust and love more fully in return. This has meant exploring the depths of myself, learning what it means to be true and, through the love and mercy of God and others, to be made true and whole.  

In all of this, our relationship with the creator God is so central to our lives, so constitutive of who we are, that we can say we ARE this relationship, and like any relationship, it is both demanding and fulfilling. This is the inner world the hermit explores, commits to allowing being enlarged and deepened even to the limits of her human weakness and the darkness of personal alienation and fragmentation. The desert Abbas and Ammas spoke of doing battle with demons, and the vivid pictures they sometimes painted reflected the awesomeness of this same inner world. It was sometimes terrifying, always challenging, and, so long as one persevered, inevitably exhilarating in the victory of love over personal woundedness and brokenness. This is true of contemporary hermits as well. This victory culminates in union with God and the certain sense that one's life is given to God so that He may be the Emmanuel He wills to be, even as he makes of us those we are called to be, too. 

No, this isn't the final frontier of a Star Trek program. But it is every bit as exciting an adventure, and of much greater moment! At a time when truth is generally neglected and betrayed, when personal truth is sacrificed for the sake of inhuman disvalues like greed and power, when Christianity itself is betrayed by a "prosperity gospel" with no room for the Cross or the authentic grace of God, when individualism replaces the commonality of brothers and sisters in Christ, hermits explore and witness to this deepest of truths, namely, to the extent we are truly human and live this with integrity we ARE a relationship with God in which we both fulfill the telos of our lives and participate in the fulfillment of the whole of God's creation. This is the source of all hope in our world, and it is the one thing hermits are called to witness to with their lives. As Strange New Worlds might describe this vocation, Ad astra per aspera: Through difficulties to the stars!!

Easter Homily, Bishop Marianne Budde

 

Bishop Budde breaks open the Word of God for us. She does a really fine job with the otherness of the resurrection and the style of the narrative. Of course she balances this with a wonderful treatment of God's new presence in our everyday world! Finally, she treats the center of our Easter Hope. I hope you enjoy this!

Pope Francis: Requiescat in Pace

Though not exactly unexpected, there is shock at the death of Francis, sadness, and prayers for the Church as she moves forward in hope for her future in Christ. Just yesterday, despite his apparent frailty, I was celebrating the Pope's continuing recovery from life-threatening pneumonia! I never thought today I would be mourning his death. I am using the news article rather than writing something myself. I have to agree that the timing of Francis' death is striking. To complete Holy Week and then to die on Easter Monday is literally remarkable. May we all live our lives in light of Francis' life and values. They were quintessentially Christian. I wish readers here the peace of the Risen Lord, knowing that death does not have the last word!

Archdiocese of Glasgow

April 21 at 11:31 AM ·

The Vatican has tonight published the late Pope’s death certificate which records the cause of death this morning as a stroke, leading to coma and heart failure .

 
Also published is his strikingly simple final testament detailing his wishes for burial outside the Vatican near the shrine to Our Lady where he often went to pray. It reads:
In the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

As I sense the approaching twilight of my earthly life, and with firm hope in eternal life, I wish to set out my final wishes solely regarding the place of my burial.

Throughout my life, and during my ministry as a priest and bishop, I have always entrusted myself to the Mother of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary. For this reason, I ask that my mortal remains rest - awaiting the day of the Resurrection - in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
I wish my final earthly journey to end precisely in this ancient Marian sanctuary, where I would always stop to pray at the beginning and end of every Apostolic Journey, confidently entrusting my intentions to the Immaculate Mother, and giving thanks for her gentle and maternal care.

I ask that my tomb be prepared in the burial niche in the side aisle between the Pauline Chapel (Chapel of the Salus Populi Romani) and the Sforza Chapel of the Basilica, as shown in the attached plan.

The tomb should be in the ground; simple, without particular ornamentation, bearing only the inscription: Franciscus.

The cost of preparing the burial will be covered by a sum provided by a benefactor, which I have arranged to be transferred to the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major. I have given the necessary instructions regarding this to Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, Extraordinary Commissioner of the Liberian Basilica.

May the Lord grant a fitting reward to all those who have loved me and who continue to pray for me. The suffering that has marked the final part of my life, I offer to the Lord, for peace in the world and for fraternity among peoples.

Santa Marta, 29 June 2022
FRANCISCUS

Alleluia! He is Risen!! Alleluia, Alleluia!!

Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!!! All good wishes for a wonderful Easter Season!!

For the next 50 days, we have time to attend in a more focused way than we might otherwise do, to what Jesus' death and resurrection changed. In light of these events, we live in a different world than existed before they occurred, and we ourselves, by virtue of our Baptism into Christ's death, are new creations as well. While all this makes beautiful poetry, and although, as John Ciardi once reminded us, poetry can save us in dark alleys, we do not base our lives on poetry alone. Objective reality was transformed with Jesus' passion and death; something astounding, universal, even cosmic in scope, happened in these events, which not only had to do with our own salvation, but with the recreation of all of reality and our promise of an unimagined future for it. One of Paul's shorthand phrases for this transformation was "the death of [godless] death," something I hope to be able to look at a bit more as these 50 days unfold. We have already begun to see what happens in our Church as Christ's own life begins to shine forth more brightly in a myriad of small but significant ways because of synodality, for instance. Not least is the figure of Francis, and his continuing recovery from his recent illness, which has many of us singing a heartfelt alleluia in gratitude to the God of Life.

Still, it is probably good to recall that the early Church struggled to make sense of the cross, and that faith in resurrection took some time to take hold. (Today's lection from the Gospel of John makes that clear all by itself!) Surprisingly, no single theology of the cross is held as official, and variations --- many quite destructive --- exist throughout the Church. Even today, a number of these mistakenly affirm that, in various ways, God was reconciled to us rather than the other way around. Only over time did the Church embrace Jesus as risen, and then come to terms with the scandalous death of Jesus, and so, knew him as the Christ who exhaustively reveals God's own power in weakness. Only over time did she come to understand how different the world is for those who are baptized into Jesus' death. It is a lesson we are still learning, each of us, as we grow in faith. Thus, each year the Church offers us a more focused time to come to understand and embrace all of this more fully; the time from Easter Sunday through Pentecost is, in part, geared to this.

But today is a day of unqualified celebration, and a day to simply allow the shock and sadness of the cross to be completely relieved for the moment. Lent is over, the Triduum has reached a joyful climax, the season of Easter has begun, and we once again sing alleluia at our liturgies. The question raised in my last post has been answered, and, startling though this may be, Jesus, precisely as the Crucified One, is God's Messiah, his anointed One, his only begotten Son. Though it will take time to fully understand and embrace all this means, through the Church's liturgies and Scriptures especially, we do sense that we now live in a world where both death and life have a different character and meaning than they did before Christ's resurrection. On this day, darkness has given way to light, and senselessness to meaning -- even though we may not really be able to explain to ourselves or others exactly why or how that is so. On this day, we proclaim that Christ is risen! Sinful death could not hold him, nor can it hold us as a result. Alleluia! Alleluia!!

Exultet (or Exsultet)!!!

Madman or Messiah? In Darkness We Wait in Hope

 In reflecting on the periods of silence after Holy Thursday's Mass and reservation of the Eucharist and especially after the stations and celebration of Jesus' passion on Good Friday, I am struck by their importance. After all, in the first instance, our joy is bittersweet and marked by the anticipation of Jesus' betrayal and passion, while in the second instance we have just marked the death of Jesus; yet, there is a significant period of grief and uncertainty that we call "Holy Saturday" still standing between Jesus' death and his resurrection. The Triduum is one long liturgical event that embraces different moods and salvific moments. Because of this, the silence we observe between services is critical to our ability to enter into this extended liturgy.

After all, Easter is still distant. Allowing ourselves to hear and live with something of the terrible disappointment and critical questions Jesus' disciples experienced as their entire world collapsed is a significant piece of coming to understand why we call tomorrow "Good" and Saturday, "Holy." It is important if we are to hear our own deepest questions, and truly appreciate the meaning of this three-day liturgy we call Triduum; it is also a dimension of coming to genuine and deepening hope. I have often thought the Church could do better with its celebration of Holy Saturday, but spending some time waiting and reflecting on who we would be (not to mention who God would be!) had Jesus stayed good and dead is something Good Friday (essentially beginning after Holy Thursday Mass) and Holy Saturday (beginning the evening after the passion) call for.

In explaining the theology of the Cross, Paul once said, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." During Holy Week, the Gospel readings focus us on the first part of Paul's statement. Sin has increased to an extraordinary extent, and the one people touted as the Son of God has been executed as a blasphemous, godforsaken criminal. Throughout this week, we watch the darkness and the threat to his life intensify and cast the whole of Jesus' life into question.

In the Gospel for Wednesday, we hear John's version of the story of Judas' betrayal of Jesus and the prediction of Peter's denials. For weeks before this, we had been hearing stories of a growing darkness and threat centered on the person of Jesus. Pharisees and Scribes were irritated and angry with Jesus at the facile way he broke Sabbath rules or his easy communion with and forgiveness of sinners. That he spoke with an authority the people recognized as new and surpassing theirs was also problematic. Family and disciples failed to understand him, thought him crazy, urged him to go to Jerusalem to work wonders and become famous.

Even his miracles were disquieting, not only because they increased the negative reaction of the religious leadership and the fear of the Romans as the darkness and threat continued to grow alongside them, but because Jesus himself seems to give us the sense that they are insufficient and lead to misunderstandings and distortions of who he is or what he is really about. "Be silent!" we often hear him say. "Tell no one about this!" he instructs in the face of the increasing threat to his life. Futile instructions, of course, and, as those healed proclaim the wonders of God's grace in their lives, the darkness and threat to Jesus grows; The night comes ever nearer and we know that if evil is to be defeated, it must occur on a much more profound level than even thousands (or billions!) of such miracles.

In the last two weeks of Lent, the readings give us the sense that the last nine months of Jesus' life and active ministry were punctuated by retreat to a variety of safe houses as the priestly aristocracy actively looked for ways to kill him. He attended festivals in secret, and the threat of stoning recurred again and again. Yet, inexplicably, "He slipped away," we are told, or "They were unable to find an opening." The darkness is held at bay, barely. It is held in check by the love of the people surrounding Jesus. Barely. And in the last safe house on the eve of Passover as darkness closes in on every side, Jesus celebrated a final Eucharist with his friends and disciples. He washed their feet and reclined at table with them like free men did. And yet, profoundly troubled, Jesus spoke of his impending betrayal by Judas. None of the disciples, not even the beloved disciple, understood what was happening. There is one last chance for Judas to change his mind as Jesus hands him a morsel of bread in friendship and love. God's covenant faithfulness is maintained.

But Satan enters Judas' heart and a friend of Jesus becomes his accuser --- the meaning of the term Satan here --- and the darkness enters this last safe house of light and friendship, faith and fellowship. It was night, John says. It was night. Judas' heart is the opening needed for the threatening darkness to engulf this place and Jesus as well. The prediction of Peter's denials tells us this "night" will get darker, colder, and emptier yet.  But in John's story, when everything is at its darkest and lowest, Jesus exclaims in a kind of victory cry: [[ Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him!]] Here, as darkness envelopes everything, Jesus exults that authentic human being is revealed, made known and made real in space and time. Here, in the midst of the deepening "Night," God too is revealed and made fully known and real in space and time. It is either the cry of a messiah who will overcome evil right at its heart --- or it is the cry of a madman who cannot recognize or admit the victory of evil as it swallows him up. Amid these days of death and vigil, we do not really know which. At the end of these three days, this Holy Triduum, we will see the answer.

On the Friday we call "Good," the darkness intensified. During the night Jesus was arrested and "tried" by the Sanhedrin with the help of false witnesses, desertion by his disciples, and Judas' betrayal. Today, he was brought before the Romans, tried, found innocent, flogged in an attempt at political appeasement, and then handed over anyway by a fearful, self-absorbed leader whose greater concern was for his own position to those who would kill him. There was betrayal -- of consciences, of friendships, of discipleship, and covenantal bonds on every side but God's. The night continued to deepen, and the threat could not be greater.  Jesus was crucified and eventually cried out his experience of abandonment even by God. He descended into the ultimate godlessness, loneliness, and powerlessness we call hell. The darkness became almost total. It is difficult for us to see anything else. That is where Good Friday and Holy Saturday leave us.

And the single question these events raise haunts the night and our own minds and hearts: namely, messiah or madman? Is Jesus simply another idealistic but mistaken person crushed by the cold, emptiness, and darkness of evil --- good and wondrous though his own works were? (cf Gospel for last Friday: John 10:31-42.) Is this darkness and emptiness the whole of the reality in which we live? Was Jesus' preaching of the reality of God's reign and his trust in God in vain? Is the God he proclaimed, the God in whom we also trust, incapable of redeeming failure, sin, and death --- even to the point of absolute lostness? Does he consign sinners to these without real hope because God's justice differs from his mercy? The questions associated with Jesus' death on the Cross multiply, and we Christians wait in the darkness today and tomorrow. We fast and pray and try to hold onto hope that the one we called messiah, teacher, friend, Beloved, brother, and Lord, was not simply deluded --- or worse --- and that we Christians are not, as Paul puts the matter, the greatest fools, the most pitiable of all. 

We have seen sin increase to immeasurable degrees; though we do not see how it is possible, we would like to think that Paul was right and that grace will abound all the more. But on the Friday we call "good" and on the Saturday we call "holy" we wait. Bereft, but hopeful, we wait.

Holy Week Meditation from Sister Thea Bowman FSPA

Sister Thea Bowman, FSPA

The following Holy Week meditation comes from Sister Thea Bowman, FSPA through the Sisters of Social Service.

"Let us resolve to make this week holy by claiming Christ’s redemptive grace and by living holy lives. The Word became flesh and redeemed us by his holy life and holy death. This week especially let us accept redemption by living grateful, faithful, prayerful, generous, just and holy lives.

Let us take time this week to be present to someone who suffers. Sharing the pain of a fellow human will enliven Scripture and help enter into the holy mystery of the redemptive suffering of Christ.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by participating in the Holy Week services of the Church.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy within our families, sharing family prayer on a regular basis, making every meal, where loving conversations bond family members in unity.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy with the needy, the alienated, the lonely, the sick and afflicted, the untouchable. Let us unite our sufferings, inconveniences and annoyances with the sufferings of Jesus. Let us stretch ourselves, going beyond our comfort zones to unite ourselves with Christ’s redemptive work...

The Crucified God: Emmanuel Fully Revealed in the Unexpected and Unacceptable Place (Reprise)

 Several years ago, I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will come and really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. 

          + First, we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide, so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. 

          + Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent -- rather like air is present in our lives and he is impassible, incapable of suffering in any way at all. Because he is omnipresent, God seems already to be "Emmanuel," so we are unclear what is really being added to what we know (and what is now true!!) of God.  Something is similarly true because of God's impassibility, which seems to make God incapable of suffering with us or feeling compassionate toward us. (We could say something similar regarding God's immutability, etc. Greek categories are inadequate for understanding a living God who wills to be Emmanuel with all that implies.) 

          +  And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The eternal and transcendent God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who, in Christ, enters exhaustively into the most profoundly historical and personal lives and circumstances of his Creation and makes these part of his own life in the process.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus (that is, his entire living into death) to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God-in-Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience and the realm of human history, but in that same Christ, God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event, heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day God will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms dimensions of it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so, in Jesus' life and active ministry, the presence of God is made real in space and time in an unprecedented way --- that is, with unprecedented authority, compassion, and intimacy. He companions and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives, and sanctifies us. He is a mentor, and brother, and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum, we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death, God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us that our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us, as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross, having apparently failed in his mission and shown his God to be a fraud. (From one perspective, we could say that had he succeeded completely, there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion.) Jesus had spoken truth to power all throughout his ministry. On the cross, this comes to a climax, and in the events of Jesus' passion, the powers and principalities of this world appear to swallow him up. But even as this occurs and Jesus embraces the weight of the world's darkness and deathliness, Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus, even failure, but especially this one, can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability and all the world threw at him without mitigation. 

Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God (that is, his obedience) in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto godless death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the absolute lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death, Jesus again remains open (obedient) to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin and death into himself and makes these his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

In perhaps the most powerful passage I have ever read on the paradox of the cross of Christ, John Dwyer (my major professor until doctoral work) speaks about God's reconciling work in Jesus --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel to transform everything --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal One takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

Palm Sunday: Death as the Last Enemy (Reprise)

[[Dear Sister, I read something you wrote about God not willing the torture and death of Jesus. (I'm sorry for being vague here; I can't cut and paste from your blog.) That was not what I was taught. In fact, I was told when at different times two of my children died of serious illness that God "had taken them" and also was reminded that I should not be angry with God because after all, "he had not spared his only begotten Son." Are you saying that God does not will our deaths either? That God did not take my daughters from me? And if God did not do this, then where are my children? What hope do any of us have??!!]]

First, I am terribly sorry for your loss!! Please know I will hold you in my own heart and prayer. Meanwhile, yes, I have written that Jesus' torture and death by crucifixion were not willed by God; these were inhuman acts dreamt up and made as sophisticated and ingenious a way of killing someone in horrendous torture --- i.e., in as unspeakable degradation, pain, and shame, as was (in)humanly possible. The first thing I think we must accept is that our God is a God of love and life and that, as Paul tells us, death is the last enemy to be brought under God's feet (1Cor 15:25-26). What God is is Love-in-Act and what God wills is life, abundant, integral life in dialogue and union with Himself. He does not will the sinful death of anyone, including his only begotten Son,  though, as we will affirm, Jesus' choices do lead to this.)

The second thing we must see and embrace, then, is a somewhat different way of understanding Jesus' prayer and God's silence in the Garden of Gethsemane. Remember that there Jesus prays three times that his Abba allow this cup to pass him by. He does not pray that the cup not be given him by his Abba, but that God would remove it if possible. It is possible here to hear Jesus struggling in the presence of the One he loves and is loved by best --- the One who always hears him --- to find another way forward, another way to live his life and vocation with integrity without running headfirst into the powers that will kill him --- and this includes not only the religious and political authorities, but the powers of sin and death as well. But God does not remove or take from Jesus the cup of integrity --- the cup of a life lived with integrity in dialogue with God (and also with the world in which we live) for the sake of others and drunk to its very dregs. 

Did God will Jesus' horrendous and shameful death by torture and/or crucifixion? No. We can't accept he does nor does any text say this specifically is the will of God. To believe it is the will of God is to accept as well that those who betrayed, rejected, lied about, abandoned, spat upon, tortured, and executed Jesus were fully cooperating with the will of God. That is simply impossible, and if true, would give us a God few of us could believe in or trust. Where is the "good news" in that? To struggle in the way Jesus does in Gethsemane is to engage with God in order to come to terms with God's actual will; here Jesus struggles to come to clarity about and embrace fully what it means to live one's life and vocation with complete and exhaustive integrity --- especially when that life/vocation is defined in terms of dialogue with and complete dependence upon God. Jesus' life certainly is about this and our own lives are meant to be the same. It is not Jesus' torture and death that God wills but his absolute integrity and exhaustively authentic God-dependent humanity. This is the cup God cannot, and will not remove from him. And this is the cup Jesus says yes to, wherever it leads.

In Jesus' passion, we must learn to tease apart the things that are of man, and especially of man's inhumanity versus what is authentically human, and those which are truly of God or are the will of God. What I find of God in the crucifixion is the affirmation and reassurance that God, the One Jesus calls Abba, does not despise even the most godless of situations, places, persons, and events. Our God is the one is who absolutely determined to be found in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Jesus, precisely as truly and authentically human, reveals this God to us and in the power of the Holy Spirit lives his life and speaks truth to power in a way which means that God does not despise the godless places in our lives, even godless death; they are, in fact, the places God chooses to reveal his love and mercy most exhaustively.

Regarding the things of mankind, there are two aspects we must be able to see in Jesus' passion and death: first, there are the inhuman or less than truly human actions and attitudes of most of the actors in the narrative. These have to do with all the things I mentioned above in the second paragraph and several more besides -- the hunger for power and the correlative thirst for control at the expense of others, the fear associated with life in such a society for those who are diminished, oppressed, and exploited, the tendency to join in when a mob yells angry, bloodthirsty, and thoughtless slogans because otherwise we feel powerless, have no true sense of ourselves or of genuinely belonging, and believe we can achieve these things by joining ourselves to such groups even when that leads us to harm others. All of these tend to dehumanize us. The instances of inhuman and dehumanizing behavior and attitudes in the passion narratives are legion. 

Secondly, there are examples of true or authentic humanity, human humility, integrity, faithfulness, generosity, and courage. Jesus is the primary exemplar here, but the beloved disciple, Jesus' Mother, and a few other women along with Joseph of Arimathea and the Centurion who proclaims Jesus the Christ/ Son of God, are also participants modeling these virtues and dimensions of authentic humanity. What is especially true of authentic humanity is the way it is entirely transparent to God --- something I believe Catholic Christological dogma tried to express in the non-paradoxical language of hypostases, etc. So, the more truly human one is, the more transparent to God. And because this is so, when we see Jesus' helplessness, weakness, shame, brokenness, and so forth, we should also be able to see the paradoxical power of love that does not despise weakness, brokenness, or anything else that might once have been a sign of God's disfavor and absence. Instead, in the crucified Christ, God makes these his own, and there on the cross and beyond it in godless death, heaven and earth are drawn together in the very heart of Jesus precisely as crucified. (cf. 2 Cor 12:8-9 "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.") 

The Good News of the Cross

For purposes of this essay, again, it is critically important to remember that death is not some sort of weapon God wields to punish, but again, is an event linked consequentially to estrangement and alienation from God, self, and others.  As noted above, it, along with Sin, is a power or principality which is a consequence of human sinfulness, which Paul identifies as the last enemy to be put under the feet of God. It is imperative that we understand death, and especially what the NT calls "eternal death,"  "sinful death," or again, "godless death," as something linked to sinfulness with which God contends. God does this throughout the history of Israel's struggle against idolatry and he does it in Jesus' miracles, exorcisms, and in every other choice for life and love which Jesus makes on God's and others' behalf.  

What Paul also tells us is that the cross is precisely the place where God's ultimate victory over the powers of sin and death is won. It is the place where human beings do their worst to an innocent other, and it is a place where authentic humanity is made definitively real in space and time in Jesus. This happens in spite of the very worst human beings can do and experience. Finally, it is the place where God's love is revealed in its greatest depth and breadth; here we see God revealed definitively (i.e., made definitively real and known in space and time) as Emmanuel and so, the One who will not allow the isolation nd alienation of sin or death to have the final word or be the final scream or silence. Here on the cross, Jesus remains obedient (that is, open and attentive) to the God who wills to be present to, with, and for us without condition or limit. This, too, is God's will, or better said, perhaps, this is what the will of God to be Emmanuel looks like. In other words, despite so much that is not the will of God in these events, here in Christ on the Cross, heaven and earth come together as God has always willed, and as a result, there is no place where God is not personally present. Through Christ's death, there is no truly profane or godless place left in our world.

Paul says it this way: [[Very rarely will someone give his life for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God proves his love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,]] and again, [[God was in Christ, drawing all [creation] to Himself,]] and too, [[Jesus, the Christ was obedient unto death, even (godless, sinful) death on a cross."]] In all of this, God is at work bringing a new heaven and a new earth into existence where God will be all in all. Moreover, God does this for us so that, as my major theology professor used to put it, human beings might "live in joy and die in peace."

Your Questions:

So, with all of that as preparation, let me try to respond to your questions more directly.  Yes, in light of this theology of the cross, I am saying that God does not will Jesus' death or the death of any other person. Our God, the God and Abba of Jesus wills life --- full and abundant life, not death. He wills that Jesus live his life "abundantly" and with integrity and that he bring God's love to the whole sweep of human existence, every moment and mood of it. This is Jesus' vocation and the way he proclaims the coming of the Reign of God. The Father wills that Jesus oppose Sin -- that state of estrangement and alienation that occurs whenever human beings fall short of their truest humanity and choose idols instead of God. But death itself is not "of God," and godless, final, or eternal death is even less so. The truth is that while death invariably intervenes in and destroys life in a bewildering variety of ways, God, in and through Jesus and his cross, intervenes in death and brings eternal life, meaning, and hope out of that. Tragically, Death did indeed take your daughters, but in Christ, God has taken death into himself and transformed it entirely with his own presence, life, and love. In so doing, he rescues your daughters from death and welcomes them into his own very life. The hope this makes possible extends to all of us in Christ.

Your children are well and entirely safe in God as well --- not because God took them from you, but because he rescued them from the power that did. That is the hope that we all share because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us all. God in Christ loves us so exhaustively and effectively that he will allow nothing to stand in the way of this love, not sin or death, not anything created or supernatural. We are made for God, and nothing at all can prevent us from reaching that goal. Again, to quote Paul, [[Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. . .For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.]] (Romans 8: 35-39)

I sincerely hope this is helpful! It is meant not only for you but for any who have been taught some version of God using death as "punishment" or, when this doesn't fit the context, that he "calls us home" by causing our death. God calls us to himself, always and everywhere, including in our godlessness and relative inhumanity (sinfulness), but death is not his weapon or instrument in this; rather, it is the enemy that he vanquishes in Jesus' own obedient death, so marked as it is, by openness to God.

A Contemplative Moment: Divine Light Experienced as Darkness

                                                                                  

"We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see ahead,

but looking back the very light that blinded us

shows us the way we came,

along which blessings now appear,

risen as if from sightlessness to sight,

and we by blessing brightly lit,

keep going toward that blessed light

that yet to us is dark."

Wendell Berry

When I try to articulate something of the experience I have had through the past year and a half (and more) culminating in the post I put up at the end of March, (The Paradox of Prayer and Ever-Deepening Hunger) I am aware that it is a difficult paradox. After all, how can an experience of yearning be the presence of the source and ground of the thing hoped for? Similarly, how can an experience of abject loneliness and darkness be an experience of the Light that God is? During the past month, I have spent time "unpacking" this experience with my director, and it is this quote from Wendell Berry that comes back again and again to help explain things. 

I am pretty sure that John of the Cross would have recognized the way the Divine Light blinds and leaves us in darkness; at the same time, it allows us to look back at where we have been to see everything with a new kind of clarity and meaningfulness, a new wholeness and holiness. I am also reminded that John of the Cross admired the hermit vocation as an outward sign of an interior state, namely, the union with God to which every person is called. We hermits journey toward that union, "toward that blessed light/ that yet to us is dark." The joy of this darkness, despite the pain and struggle we also continue to experience, is awesome. That is the sense with which I enter Holy Week this year.

Almost twenty years ago, then-Bishop Vigneron asked me who my favorite saint was. It was a way of breaking the ice at our first full conversation on my petition to be admitted to perpetual profession as a c 603 hermit. I answered "St Paul," and then burbled on about how much I loved his theology of the Cross, declaring, "If I could spend the rest of my life coming to truly understand that theology, I would be a happy camper." (Yes, those were my exact words!) Well, be careful what you ask for!! I have continued to learn Paul's theology of the cross, not just academically, but existentially. It is another way of describing the journey I have been making, and the very heart of this eremitical vocation. That way or via crucis, is precisely the path, [[along which blessings now appear/ risen as if from sightlessness to sight,/ and we by blessing brightly lit,/ keep going toward that blessed light/that yet to us is dark.]]

Followup on the Relation of Physical Solitude to Existential Solitude

[[Sister Laurel, I was really struck by your assertion that eremitical solitude involves but is not about physical solitude, that it is about the existential solitude of the journey to the center of our being, where we meet ourselves and God. I was also struck by the way that ties in with the hiddenness of the hermit vocation and how it is that whether you are with people or not, your real vocation is solitary and hidden. I don't mean any offense, but have you written about this before this last month, and if not, why not? (Maybe it would be better to ask you what made it possible for you to write in this way now!) 

Other hermits I have read or heard have stressed how someone is no hermit if they are known by others or spend time with them, or wear a habit, or use a recognizable title, and so forth. They stress the externals a lot, and for them, physical solitude is the key to determining whether someone is really a hermit or not. But you have sliced through all that in a couple of sentences in your last post. Is it your opinion that a hermit must be measured by the inner journey they undertake, rather than the degree of physical solitude they live? That's what I hear you saying. ]]

What excellent questions! Your first one about why I am writing this way now is probably not one I can answer to your satisfaction because it involves a personal experience that happened at the beginning of Lent, and I am not yet sure what I can or want to say about that. You'll need to be patient with me regarding that part of things. Still, I have tried to write about the essential hiddenness of this vocation and also to distinguish between physical solitude and a more existential solitude from fairly early on. I first used the term existential solitude around 2013, at least as part of a piece that includes that label. And earlier than that, I wrote about the quest for authentic selfhood, and the inner journey one is called to make, even if I failed to use the actual term, " existential solitude". As I looked over the articles with the label "essential hiddenness", however, the things I have been writing about this past month are present, but without the clarity of my recent posts. And that makes sense because sometimes we can only see things clearly or have the freedom to say what we need to once we have travelled beyond the struggle to a new place and perspective.

I don't want to undervalue the importance of physical solitude to the hermit vocation. The past year and a half, especially, and to a somewhat lesser degree the time since the pandemic, has been marked by very significant degrees of solitude of this type. To varying degrees, it is a prerequisite for the inner journey the hermit is called to make. Even so, physical solitude is not the reason for the vocation and must not be absolutized as some seem wont to do. As I noted in my last post, [[The eremitical vocation requires physical solitude, but it is not primarily about physical solitude, nor does it exist for the sake of physical solitude. Similarly, the hiddenness of eremitical life is not about external hiddenness, anonymity, etc., though it may benefit from these. Instead, it is about the hidden journey to the very heart of our being. This journey continues in one way or another, whether I am with others or not, and it is hidden from everyone, even those whose place in my life makes them a privileged sharer in this journey.]] Physical solitude can sharpen our existential solitude, but so can being with people. I think physical solitude, however, is the privileged servant of the existential solitary journey and is essential to authentic eremitism.

I understand what you mean when you write about reading and hearing other hermits making physical solitude the key to the eremitical vocation, though. I agree that some seem too taken with externals (this includes those who criticize these) and even seem unwilling to look at the inner journey as the heart of the vocation. I absolutely believe the eremitical vocation and the authenticity of the hermit herself can only be measured in terms of the inner journey they have undertaken. Many people have embraced the newish phenomenon called "cocooning." Many others are misanthropes and agoraphobics, while in many prisons, criminals are locked in their individual cells for 23 hours a day. All of these and many, many more live physical solitude and are NOT hermits. 

The examples could be greatly multiplied with scholars, artists, writers, the isolated elderly,  many chronically ill, and others who live and work alone. Some try to validate their relative isolation by calling themselves hermits. Some of these even embrace some degree of piety and prayer. A small percentage of these may discover a genuine call to eremitic life. Even so, what tends to be missing for the majority is the intense, serious, and sustained inner journey to the depths of one's being involving an engagement with existential solitude.

The Church professes and consecrates c 603 solitary hermits and has done so since Advent of 1983. Some argue that canonical standing is not necessary. I differ because I understand how difficult the inner journey I am speaking about actually is, and how much support it actually requires. Generally speaking, in the process of discernment and (initial) formation, those working with the candidate have a sense of the person being about this inner journey, or they do not admit them to profession or consecration. The outer signs of this vocation remind the hermit of the inner journey to union with God they are supposed to be about. These things remind the Church itself that it has such persons in its midst. At the same time, admission to profession and consecration (when these are legitimately pursued and granted to the hermit), says to the hermit in the midst of this journey that the Church recognizes she is called to this vocation, and helps empower her to stay the course! So does the supervision of the local ordinary and/or his delegate and the spiritual director.

Of itself, living entirely alone is not all that important. It might even represent a failure to live with others or to be adequately socialized (remember those misanthropes and criminals!). But living alone or perhaps with one or two others in a laura, 1) with the approval and assistance of representatives of the Church, 2) within a local faith community, 3) all for the sake of an inner journey to union with God in, 4) a divine vocation that is, 5) paradigmatic of the ultimate call of every person that exists or will ever exist, is incredibly important. The externals of this vocation (including physical solitude) point at once to its ecclesial nature and remind us of its essential hiddenness. Even so, it is the inner journey to the depths of one's being and an active seeking of union with God that is the very heart of the call and justification for everything else, especially every sacrifice the vocation requires from us. It seems to me that a life committed to this particular journey is the only thing that actually merits the name "hermit".

On the Relation Between Physical and Existential Solitude

[[Dear Sister, I think I understand the place of physical solitude in assisting someone to encounter and journey to the depths of existential solitude. You seem to take a more flexible view on the requirement for absolute physical solitude than some hermits do. If physical solitude is so helpful in this, then why would you allow a hermit to ease it? Wouldn't that be an obstacle to going to the depths you have been talking about?]]

Great question and timely because I was thinking about doing just such a post! Thank you!! The interesting thing about existential solitude is that while physical solitude is critically important in helping us get in touch with this, being with other people in some instances can be similarly helpful. You remember I used the image of being more alone in a crowd than we are when we are by ourselves? This is an instance of being with others as a situation that also puts us in touch with our existential solitude. Remember that existential solitude is defined as that solitude that is intrinsic to being a human being. We are born alone, live alone, and die alone in this existential sense. There is always going to be a gap between ourselves and any other person. No one really knows our hearts or minds completely. We are always, at least partly, unknown and unknowable to others, as they are to us. That creates a sense of existential loneliness or solitude that only God overcomes.

In conversations with other hermits, we have spoken of this sense. It turns up for us most poignantly, I think, because each of us have very few people with whom we can discuss our lives with the expectation that they will understand what we are and why we do what we do. I have said before that usually folks think of hermits in some stereotypical way, probably because it is easier than having some huge cipher or question mark hovering over the word "hermit". Others narrow down the way they understand this vocation to "prayer warrior" --- a phrase I detest, not because I don't pray or because I don't, in fact, do significant battle with the demons of this world and my own heart, but because it is reductionistic, too belligerent, and contrary to the essence of this call. People in my parish are comfortable thinking of me as a religious, even a contemplative --- though here we are beginning to move close to being more than a bridge too far for them! Hermit is definitely beyond the usual bounds of understanding.

On the other hand, we hermits have each other, and it is incredibly important that we do. Existential solitude can be very painful; to have others who are on the same journey, who know what you are feeling and how important it is, is incredibly critical to living this vocation well. What I find is that my time with those who haven't a clue about what I live or why often sharpens my sense of existential solitude, while my time with my Sisters in c 603, or my Director, my spiritual director, and a handful of others, encourage and accompany me in my journey even though it is one I must still make alone with God. I believe that for established hermits (less so for beginners), the time hermits spend with others will not detract from the journey into their inmost depths that they are called to. These times can actually sharpen, intensify, or otherwise enhance the journey, though in different ways, depending on the relationship.

Physical solitude is absolutely critical, not only for getting in touch with one's existential solitude, but for learning to become aware of the deep hunger and thirst we have for wholeness, and thus, too, for God. However, sometimes physical solitude, when combined with the anguish or even the more tolerable pain of existential solitude, needs to be eased if we are to remain fully committed to the journey to the depths of ourselves, where we meet God and our truest self at the same time. The eremitical vocation requires physical solitude, but it is not primarily about physical solitude, nor does it exist for the sake of physical solitude. Similarly, the hiddenness of eremitical life is not about external hiddenness, anonymity, etc., though it may benefit from these. Instead, it is about the hidden journey to the very heart of our being. This journey continues in one way or another, whether I am with others or not, and it is hidden from everyone, even those whose place in my life makes them a privileged sharer in this journey. Granted, I try to share what the journey involves, to whatever extent is appropriate, but it remains essentially hidden, just as it remains essentially solitary.