US Air Force One Voice

I thought this was a particularly apt song and production given the recent conversation here about Peter Damian's ecclesiology and Ponam in Deserto Via. I especially like the way the idea of "one voice" moves back and forth between singularity in plurality, and multiplicity expressing a single Spirit. (That is, sometimes "one voice" means a single voice in the midst of many, and sometimes it means many persons singing with the same Spirit.)  A hermit participates in and recognizes both realities in her solitude. Others, I believe, should be able to recognize the same in her.

My first experience of community was not Church; it was orchestra. So, when I hear something like this, it reminds me of that first awesome moment when the conductor brought down her baton and all of our individual parts, parts we had learned at home and only heard alone, came together in a sound I had never imagined or guessed was possible! It was my first introduction to a hint of the reality Peter Damian describes in his Letter #28. In one way and another, whether as a violinist playing in orchestras, a Franciscan praying in community or working in a clinical lab, a theologian reading the Scriptures and people like Peter Damian, or a solitary hermit journeying toward deeper union with God, it has always been about "surrendering to the Mystery," that both transcends and enlivens our world.

Question on Non-Canonical Hermits and the Danger of Individualism

[[Sister Laurel, do you think non-canonical hermit lives are individualistic?]]

This is a great question, and an important one called for, not only by contemporary circumstances, but by the entire history of hermit life. So let me say that every hermit's life is tempted to individualism. What I have written about my own vocation is that being subject to canon law and the various elements of life in the consecrated state (supervision, rule or proper law, public role and visibility, public vows, etc.) helps avoid that temptation and assures a stronger bond to the whole Church. Because in this way of living eremitic life, the silence of solitude is not merely about being alone but is an availability to God that includes solidarity with others, the hermit is called to ever-deeper understanding and representation of the ecclesial dimension of the eremitic life. 

Non-canonical hermits are called to realize and represent the same truth of any hermit's role within the Church and world. What you may or may not remember is that years ago, I was asked if it was easier or harder to live either canonical or non-canonical eremitic life. My answer was that I thought it was harder to live as a non-canonical hermit. I wrote: [[While there are greater explicit rights and obligations associated with canonical standing, the discernment and profession/consecration with and by the Church ensures that one also experiences a greater correlative permission to stand in the face of the values of the world around us and to be the person one is called to be by God in his Church. That permission is part of what leads to greater freedom to be oneself.]]

In the rest of the piece, I argued that I thought the constraints of canon law and the other elements of canonical life led to a freedom that was greater than that of non-canonical life because I defined freedom in terms of the power to be the persons God calls us to be. What I discerned with my Diocese and the persons involved in that process was that this was the way I could grow into the person God called me to be. I accepted the constraints of canon law, an approved Rule of Life, a Delegate who worked both on my behalf and that of the Diocese and Church more generally, and the profession of vows in a commitment that made me responsible for witnessing to the nature of eremitic life in the Catholic Church and the Church herself in this contemporary world. I also did so because I had the sense that I had something (both in terms of giftedness and limitations) that I was called to bring to the Church in this vocation.

If a non-canonical hermit makes a conscious choice to remain non-canonical, to embrace eremitic life on the basis of their baptismal consecration alone, because this is the way they perceive God calls them to realize their vocation to authentic humanity, then that is their way to the kind of freedom I experience within the canonical and consecrated state. If, as was the case in my own diocese for the first number of years I lived as a hermit, a person's diocese will not implement c 603, and will not consecrate c 603 hermits, then the person has, in the main, two alternatives and must determine which of these will lead to greater freedom and the power to become the persons God calls them to be. They may either live as a non-canonical hermit and revisit the possibility of consecration with their diocese from time to time over the years, or they may need to move to a diocese where c 603  is already implemented or will be implemented upon the appearance of a truly suitable candidate. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees here; the process of discernment is not necessarily easy. (As one Vicar I know put the matter, "It's not easy. I always thought the process of discernment was more art [than science]!")

There is nothing automatically or inherently individualistic about non-canonical hermit lives, no. Neither is the canonical hermit life automatically free from individualism. Both are capable of being lived in the way c 603 and groups like the Camaldolese, Carthusians, Carmelites, et al. live them. I continue to believe it is harder because I am aware of the obligations and responsibilities that mark my own life precisely as a member of the consecrated state of life. Every day, and especially when I meet with other c 603 hermits in our "virtual laura", post here, or reflect on the beauty and nature of c 603 life, I am aware of not allowing my own life to become individualistic. Similarly, when I see the examples of "private" hermits who are present online, it seems to me that some are not aware at all of the danger of individualism, much less of the fact that they may well have fallen into this disedifying trap.

It is important to remember that eventually hermits died out in the Western Church, whereas in the Eastern Church, where hermits were always integrally tied to monastic communities, hermits never died out. Whether one is canonical or non-canonical, hermits are called to be actively involved in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. To sever ties with the Church and become a lone pious individual is to betray the very heart of the vocation within the Church and subject it to a quick death in its individualism. Non-canonical hermits who maintain their ties (say, through membership and activity as part of a parish) and who believe they are called by God to witness to the same realities canonical hermits are responsible for in law can, even if this is difficult, certainly avoid the temptation of individualism. Once again, I hope that such hermits will begin to reflect on and write about their lives as lay (or clerical) non-canonical hermits. Their witness is important and needs to be heard!

On Peter Damian's Letter #28 and the Ecclesial Nature of c 603 Vocations

[[Hi Sister, you referred to Saint Peter Damian's Letter #28 (Dominus Vobiscum) and cited Ponam in Deserto Viam too. I am not clear why the ability to say, "The Lord be with you" is such a question. Also, Ponam in Deserto Viam speaks of two phrases in par 16. One is solitudo pluralis and the other is moltitudo singularis. I dont understand these or their importance, and I didn't hear Ponam make that clear. (I honestly read par 16 several times and just felt more confused.) Can you help me with this? Why begin with such a meaningless question and take it into the kind of difficult terms Damian does?]]

Important questions. Thanks!! One key to understanding the phrases in Par 16 of Ponam is Par 15. In these references, Ponam is exploring the nature of eremitical solitude and the way it represents and even defines the ecclesial role of the hermit life.  It says, [[In the Latin tradition, as Peter Damian (1007-1072) wrote. . .radical solitude most carefully defines the ecclesial role of the hermits' way of life. Hermits are like a microcosm of the world and the Church in miniature. Therefore, they cannot forget the Church and the world which they represent in their totality. The more one is alone before God, the more one discovers within oneself the deeper dimension of the world. With an expressive phrase, Peter Damian underlined this openness: 

. . .by virtue of the Holy Spirit, who is in each one and fills all, on the one hand one perceives a singularity [or perhaps singleness or solitariness] that has plurality in itself [solitudo pluralis], on the other hand a multiplicity that has singularity [or perhaps, singleness] in itself [moltitudo singularis].

Then, as you know, Ponam (par 16) explains something of these two phrases, solitudo pluralis and multitudo singularis, and concludes, "The hermit's life is not one in which its subjective distinctiveness becomes the criterion of all. Rather, it is a life in which plurality (personal and social) finds meaning in the only One who is necessary. Thus, the complexity of the individual part is integrated as in a microcosm of the whole. True identity is rooted in a vital tradition that neither excludes nor rejects, but includes, integrates, and reconstructs." I think that it might be important to look at some of what Peter Damian says in his 28th letter. In some ways, I think he is clearer than Ponam manages in its brevity. Damian says, 

"Truly the Church of Christ is so joined together by the bond of love that in many it is one, and in each it is mystically complete. Thus we at once observe that the whole Church is rightly called the one and only bride of Christ, and we believe each individual soul, by the mystery of baptism, to be the Whole Church. . . . If you search diligently through the open fields of Holy Scripture, you will frind the Church is often represented by one man or one woman. And although, because  of the great number of people, the Church seems to be many parts, it is still one and simple in the mystical federation of one faith and one divine regeneration.. . .  And so we conclude . . . since the whole Church is symbolized in the person of one individual, . . .holy Church is both one in all and complete in each of them; that is to say, simple in many by reason of their unity of faith, and multiple in each through the bond of love and the various charismatic gifts [gifts of the Holy Spirit], since all are from one, and all are one." (The Fathers of the Church, CUA Press, pp 262-263)

Peter Damian's letter goes further and speaks about hermits who might misunderstand the nature of their vocation: 

"It is possible that in their simplicity some of the brothers might be tempted while living alone to think that they are somehow separated from the community of the faithful, and that they would also be loathe to use the common language of the Church in their prayers." . . . For we are not here concerned with the number of persons but rather with the mystery of the Church's unity. Here indeed, unity does not exclude multiplicity, nor does multiplicity violate unity, for one body is at once divided among many members, and from the various members one body is made complete. Nor are many members lost in the unity of the body, nor is the wholeness of the body minimized in the multitude of its members." (Ibid. pp 271, 274)

In recent years, I have stressed that the canonical eremitic vocation is ecclesial. This does not mean that other hermits, especially non-canonical hermits, do not belong in an integral way to the Church, nor that they do not give their lives to the Church. Instead, it means that canonical hermits have accepted a public role in the very life of the Church that reminds every person, at least implicitly, of the two dimensions Peter Damian and Ponam in Deserto Viam put at the center of understanding eremitical solitude (in our oneness we are always part of a multiplicity, and in our multiplicity, we are one in the Spirit). Part of this witness by hermits embracing ecclesial vocations requires a canonical commitment to the life of the Church as consecrated hermits in order to witness to the very nature of the Church and the consecrated life within it. Solitude in such vocations is marked by a serious and radical aloneness, and at the same time, it participates in and reflects community in an equally radical way. One source says it this way, [[the solitude of the hermit is a solitudo pluralis, a corporate solitude, and (her) cell is a miniature Church.]]

The canonical hermit participates fully in the Sacramental life of the Church. She prays the Church's official prayer (Liturgy of the Hours); she may join with other hermits in lauras --- including virtual lauras that are non-geographic and allow for the strengthening of ecclesial bonds and witness. She lives her life according to an approved Rule of Life and under the supervision of Bishops (and often, accepted delegates) and spiritual directors. She does not live an individualistic life where canon law is dismissed as something only legalists or the "less spiritual" or "more temporal" choose. Instead, she allows herself to become subject to additional canons beyond those associated with baptism alone, because she understands that hermit life is a radically ecclesial and incarnational life, that, in a unique way, sees the multiplicity in one, and the one in and as the many. She wants to witness to this double reality in her own life and to do so officially for the sake of the Church and world.** Of course, it goes without saying that no hermit is alone because she lives with and from God, but what is also true is that no hermit is ever alone because we each carry the entire Church with us in our solitude. In fact, we are that Church.

While the question that begins Peter Damian's essay in this letter seems almost meaningless to contemporary readers, I personally love it. What I see Damian doing is taking a tremendously small act in the daily schedule of eremitic life, and demonstrating how it and, in fact, every single act done in cell is shot through with both the solitude and the multiplicity of the Church. This solitude and solidarity were what Pope Leo XIV spoke to in his address to hermits during recent Vatican festivities. Canonical standing, again, helps witness to these values and distinguishes the eremitical life from the individualism noted above. When I speak of the structure of canonical eremitic life protecting from the dynamics of "the world," the temptation to individualism is one of these.

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** When one does something officially, it really does have greater effectiveness than doing something unofficially. The very fact that the Church chose to create c 603 in response to interventions at the Second Vatican Council indicates the Church's openness to freshly evaluating or re-evaluating the importance of solitary hermits in the life of the Church as well as looking at the reality of religious life not associated with membership in an institute of consecrated life. The cogency of Peter Damian's ecclesiology in Letter #28 is strengthened by the contemporary establishment of c 603 and solitary hermits. These are very good reasons for the "official" or canonical establishment of the solitary eremitical life.

Is it a Sin to Call Myself a Catholic Hermit?

 [[Sister Laurel, if I am a privately vowed hermit and have called myself a Catholic Hermit, am I guilty of sin? I have read what you wrote about this and I think I understand what it means to call myself a Catholic Hermit. I really didn't understand before. I just thought it meant I was a Catholic and a hermit!! But I didn't mean to do anything wrong but now I see from another hermit that this is even sinful. Should I go to confession for this? Am I an illegal hermit?]]

Please don't worry!! You used language in a way that was entirely understandable and simply mistaken. That is not a sin. It only becomes a sin if you are corrected by someone truly knowledgeable and you persist in misusing the language for unworthy motives. Then you might become culpable for actual sin, not because you misuse the title per se (though you would then be guilty of being fraudulent or a counterfeit "Catholic Hermit"), so much as because of accompanying stubbornness, arrogance, a lack of charity (it is uncharitable to knowingly misrepresent oneself in this way), and disobedience or other such motives. The fact that we are baptized gives us the right to call ourselves Catholic, but we cannot call ourselves a Catholic Hermit because, as I have already explained here, that means a Hermit specifically representing this vocation in the name of the Church. It would be similar to a situation in which you are a teacher and a Catholic, but not a Catholic teacher (an official catechist) who teaches in the name of the Church, not in her own name.**

No, you are not an illegal hermit. I cannot emphasize that enough. You are a Catholic and a hermit living that calling by virtue of the grace and freedom of your baptism. You have every right to do that. In  October 1983 the Church added c 603 to allow for solitary consecrated hermits for the first time in universal law. It became, on that day, the norm (canon) for solitary Catholic Hermits. Because you do not fall under that canon (norm) or under the canons applying to religious men and women living semi-eremitical lives, you are a "non-canonical" hermit. Those of us who do fall under these canons in addition to those that apply to every Catholic by virtue of baptism, are called "canonical". This also means that you are not called to live your hermit life as publicly normative of the Church's understanding of this vocation. Those who live canonical hermit lives are called to publicly represent a normative form of eremitical life. 

This does not mean, by the way, that they are perfect hermits nor that they are identical to one another, and certainly it does not mean that they are better hermits than one that is non-canonical, but rather, that they have petitioned and been admitted to a public commitment that will deepen and intensify in time, and that their call is an ecclesial vocation that proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the hope it brings to both Church and World. (It does this latter because the inner journey such a hermit has made (and is committed to making ever more deeply for the whole of her life) allows her to experience both death and resurrection in her encounter with Mystery.) 

In a world where individualism is rampant, even epidemic, canonical hermits with public, ecclesial vocations are countercultural and the solidarity with Church and World that is demanded by their ecclesiality is critically important. We need to be able to see the profound linkages between hermit and Church, as well as hermit and the world. Public commitments allow this. (More about this in a piece I am working on re Saint Peter Damian's letter #28 and a passage from Ponam in Deserto Viam.) If you, or other non-canonical hermits, should discover that your own eremitical life is moving in this direction, you might then consider whether you feel called to a canonical commitment. Even if you do not move in this direction, you can continue to live freely as a non-canonical hermit based on the grace and freedom of your baptism. Please don't let anyone convince you that that makes you an "illegal" hermit! That inaccurate and unnuanced form of language denigrates the lay (or non-canonical) hermit vocation!!

By the way, as a kind of postscript, your question also raises an important matter of moral theology. You should be aware that if you do something wrong, or see someone else doing something wrong, even something the Church identifies as an intrinsic evil (like killing someone), only the one doing the wrong and God can say whether a sin has been committed. I have heard of someone opining on the hermit life and speaking wrongly about others' sins, or even about (her own) "being an occasion of sin for others". In fact, to speak this way, to suggest that another person is sinning or has sinned because one knows what actions they took, is an impermissible judgment. We can know that the person's behavior (the action they took) is wrong, unworthy of being chosen, and even intrinsically evil, for instance, but we cannot know whether they have sinned unless they tell us they have. (I am assuming God is NOT going to tell us such a thing!!)

A Contemplative Moment: The Absence

The Absence

It is this great absence

that is like a presence, that compels

me to address it without hope

of a reply. It is a room I enter

from which someone has just

gone, the vestibule for the arrival

of one who has not yet come.

I modernise the anachronism

of my language, but he is no more here

than before. Genes and molecules

have no more power to call

him up than the incense of the Hebrews

at their altars. My equations fail

as my words do. What resource have I

other than the emptiness without him of my whole

being, a vacuum he may not abhor?

R.S. Thomas

How much do you long to experience God's Presence?

from Janet Morley's haphazard by starlight, 

A poem a day from Advent to Epiphany

 

Second Sunday of Advent

We all choose what is important for celebrating Advent well,--- what is necessary to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths, to ready ourselves to see (i.e., to receive, understand, and to be transformed and transfigured by) the salvation of our God in Christ. This year I am going back to focus once again on the Lord's Prayer as one key to this preparation. I am spending my mornings doing lectio, study, and writing on this prayer. It has always been an incredible source of life, insight, and strength for me; two of my favorite authors, Tom Wright and Gerhard Ebeling, write especially about this prayer in terms of Advent and waiting on the Lord.

 

One of Ebeling's most striking observations in his work, On Prayer, The Lord's Prayer in Today's World is an insight that transformed my own theology and understanding of prayer when I first read the book as an undergraduate @ 1973. Ebeling was writing about the petition, "Hallowed be Thy name," and said: [[. . .we ought not to tone down its amazing, and indeed offensive, aspect or reduce it to a mere act of reverent adoration before the glory of God. For this is the most necessary petition. In other words it is concerned with the greatest need, God's need. . . .we must pray to God on behalf of God: that he would take up his own cause, that he would assert himself as God, that he would come, that he would appear, that he would reveal himself, that he would arise as God, that he would in very truth become God. This is the deepest source of prayer: God himself compels us to this intercession for God, to this passionate longing, that God will become God.]] In this passage I think Ebeling captures two senses of the meaning of waiting on God: 1) looking forward to God's coming and to the fulfillment of God's purposes with anticipation, and 2) serving God and allowing our lives to be defined by this service.

 

I am reading or rereading two other books for Advent. The first is a collection of poetry that my former pastor recommended. (John is returning to it for Advent himself and has looked forward to doing so. Sounded excellent to me!) And so it is! This is Janet Morley's Haphazard by Starlight, A Poem a Day from Advent to Epiphany. Each day has a corresponding poem by a famous poet and then a reflection looking at the poem's content as it relates to themes of the season. Finally, there is a question directed to the reader. Yesterday's selection was a poem by Ruth Fainlight called "The Other" and the reflection explores the crucial importance of waiting, the theme of the poem. The question one is asked to sit with is, "What is your most important experience of patient (or impatient) waiting? 

While I didn't get the book until the 4th of December, I am definitely loving it and am looking forward to spending time with today's selection, "We grow accustomed to the Dark" by Emily Dickinson. The day's question is, "Have you ever experienced the sense of being totally in the dark, either in your prayer life or in life decisions generally? Was it possible for you to risk keeping going in that darkness?

That fits well with my reading of John of the Cross and my second book, Ruth Burrow's work on his spirituality, Ascent to Love, the Spiritual Teaching of John of the Cross --- something I am doing at the same time another hermit in the UK is reading it! (We did not plan this. It just happened that we were each reading the same book. We will discuss it at the end of the month during Christmas week and maybe beyond that.) Burrows' reading of John of the Cross is very honest and may surprise readers, especially if they do not understand that he is a sure guide for the "beginner" (spiritual "high flyers" need not apply!). So, that's part of what my Advent looks like. 

If you are looking for a way to spend Advent in terms of lectio divina and great prompts for prayer and journaling, I highly recommend Janet Morley's book, Haphazard. . . She has another one for the season of Lent to Easter called The Heart's Time.

On the Importance of the Laity and Lay or Non-Canonical Hermits in the Contemporary Church

[[Dear Sister, it has always been hard for me to understand how some people can be called to consecrated life and others are not. That just seems exclusivist to me. You wrote that everyone is expected to live some form of the evangelical counsels, but not everyone is called to do it as Religious men and women do. If I am a lay person I am wondering how I live the evangelical counsels. Do I make vows? Also, if I want to be a hermit and desire to live like the Desert Fathers and Mothers did, will the Church recognize me as a hermit? What if I make private vows? Is it possible for me to try to become a canonical hermit and be refused? Isn't that exclusionary? Why do dioceses refuse people? I heard a hermit saying that Jesus never rejects us, but isn't the Church rejecting those who want to be c 603 hermits when they refuse to consecrate them in this way? I am still struggling with the sense that lay persons in the Church are second class citizens.]]

Thanks for your questions, and also for the heartfeltness of your comments. I have struggled with the same issues in the past. In important ways, Vatican II's focus on the role of the laity was dealing with the same set of questions and sense that you have described above. Those called to lay vocations, and not to consecrated or ordained life, felt like second or third-class citizens. What this meant for the Church itself was that it had not reflected sufficiently on the nature of the lay vocation, nor appreciated it sufficiently to convey the esteem it felt for it (and sometimes, apparently failed to feel for it!). What the Church recognizes is that all three states of life, lay, consecrated, and ordained, are essential for the Church as Church. All three are required and contribute to the truth, beauty, integrity, and holiness of the Church as the Body of Christ. All three witness to the Church's call to holiness, though they will do so in different ways. 

In Vita Consecrata, John Paul II commented that he could not imagine a church composed of just priests and laity. Here he was pointing ot he importance of consecrated life for the Church. However, the same could be said of the laity. It would be impossible to imagine a Church composed of only religious or consecrated persons and the ordained! It would be impossible to imagine a Church given over to the kind of holiness or missionary presence Jesus represented in our world, and called all his disciples to, if the Church had no laity. Vatican II spoke of the call to holiness, not as an exclusionary or elitist vocation meant only for a minority of its members, but as a universal one. When we begin to reflect adequately on the laity, we begin to look at vocational pathways of every sort: family, education, business, medicine, science, law, politics, etc. Similarly, we consider all the ways society is created and sanctified, all the ways the world is cared for, explored, honored, healed, and even made sacramental through the Church's living presence. The lion's share of these vocational pathways and the ministry associated with them belongs to the Catholic Laity. Critically, when we look at ministry in the Church today, we reflect on the way the laity shares in the priestly, prophetic, and royal offices of Christ, so that today we speak of lay ecclesial ministry --- something that would have been impossible prior to Vatican II and the years following the Council. What would the Church be without the laity? Not the genuinely Catholic Church of Christian discipleship and witness to the Kingdom of God!

While I write mainly about the nature and significance of my own vocation here, I have tried, over the past decade and a half and longer, to indicate my appreciation for hermits who choose to or otherwise need to remain "non-canonical" or lay hermits -- just as the Desert Abbas and Ammas were. I continue to think it is unquestionable that the majority of hermits in the Church are not canonical hermits, whether under the canons and proper law of institutes of consecrated life, or under c 603, dedicated as it is to solitary hermits, and sometimes, lauras of solitary hermits. Online listserves, Facebook sites, etc., demonstrate this to me, as do newsletters like that of Raven's Bread. What I would love to see and what I have tried to encourage is that some of these hermits give time and energy to writing about their vocations, to make them known, and to explore their significant place in the Church.  They live these lives for the sake of others, and they do so specifically as laity. Share what this call is!! Demonstrate who it serves and how!!! Especially, indicate how it helps the Church appreciate not only the eremitic vocation, but the importance of the laity for the Church and the World!!!

You asked if you do this, will the Church recognize you as a hermit? Well, I can tell you that the Archdiocese of Seattle is doing that today and has been doing so for a number of years.  The (newer) Archbishop there (Paul D Etienne) is not consecrating new c 603 hermits, and is accepting the commitments of lay hermits in the Archdiocese at Eucharistic liturgies. Look into this. Check into your own diocese and see if they would be open to something similar. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with being a hermit living your vocation in the lay state. It is not about being second-class or "illegal" as one online commentator puts the matter, however, the exploration of such a vocation and discovery of its significance in and for the Church must be done by those embracing such a vocational path and helping to make it a real presence in the Church. I personally believe that c 603 gives the entire Church permission to pay attention to and esteem solitary eremitic life today. It has helped establish this form of eremitical life as a significant contemporary vocation, not a long-gone, irrelevant vocation that died out in the Western Church several centuries ago! One does not have to be consecrated according to this canon to benefit from it!! What one does have to hold strongly to, however, is the Church's teaching on the laity made freshly present at Vatican II and synods thereafter. This will take real courage and vision in a Church that is still in the throes of a crippling clericalism!!

I know I haven't answered all of your questions, but I sincerely hope I have answered those that might give you a pathway to consider lay eremitic life anew. The Desert Abbas and Ammas lived their lives as laymen and laywomen, not only for the sake of personal holiness, but because the Church needed them to do so when it became relatively easy to call oneself a disciple of Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire. We need such men and women today, calling all Catholics to such discipleship in the midst of a world that seems to have forgotten where and why Jesus lived out an exhaustive incarnation of God's love. Deserts come in all shades and stripes, including urban settings; stricter separation from the world involves a freedom from enmeshment in that which is resistant to Christ, and an obligation to love God's good creation into wholeness. The evangelical counsels assist in both of these. ** I would not be surprised to find God calling a whole host of new Desert Abbas and Ammas, not to canonical eremitic life, but to non-canonical or lay eremitic life today!! Perhaps you are one of these!

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** You could make private vows, but every Christian is called to live these counsels in their own state of life. That would mean embracing the values of poverty (or simplicity), chastity (which is really about generously and appropriately loving others in Christ), and obedience (an attentive listening and responsiveness to God in every situation). How anyone is to implement these counsels apart from religious or consecrated life depends on each person's creativity and faithfulness. What the laity are not called to is religious poverty and religious obedience.

John Climacus and the Ladder of Divine Ascent

Sister Susan sent this on to me this evening, and I thought it was excellent even in its brevity. It echoes a lot of what I have described in speaking of deepening union with God. What Climacus describes in his Ladder of Divine Ascent is a process of divinization leading to profound stillness,  greater consciousness,  and presence, both one's own complete presence and the presence of and to God. I was especially struck by the use of the idea of transparency to the reality of God and the Communion marked in that way. As Christ was entirely transparent to God, so we are called to be transparent to, and thus, mediators of the Divine, in Christ, intercessors between the divine and the human. This is certainly the very vocation of the hermit as exemplar of God's call to every human being. Enjoy.

Bernard of Clairvaux and the Four Stages of Love

Hi Sister, I was looking for a piece you wrote on the four stages of love under Bernard of Clairvaux but couldn't find it. Did you remove it? (Response: Hi there. No, it is right where it has always been since 2015, but I had it under Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, not Bernard of Clairvaux. My bad!! Here it is! I have also updated the labels under which it is located.) 

[[Dear Sister, so often we love God for what he can give us. Is loving God for his own sake the highest form of love? St Bernard says this, right?]]

Hi there,
         Thanks for the question. You are absolutely correct that, according to St Bernard of Clairveaux and many others as well, love of God for God's own sake is a higher form of love than love of God for the sake of our own needs --- that is, for the sake of the gifts and blessings God gives us. However, according to St Bernard, loving God for God's own sake is actually the third of four levels or stages of love, not the fourth. This will certainly seem to run counter to common sense, but the highest form or "fourth level" of love, according to Bernard, is love of self for God's own sake! It is quite difficult, though to love ourselves simply because we are loved by God, simply because we are empowered by God in this way. It is difficult and paradoxical because it is a form of self-love in which we are wholly empowered by God and forgetful of self! Paul expressed the paradox in this way, "I, yet not I, but Christ in me."

The prerequisite for this is the third level of love, that's for sure. We will only be able to forget (and truly love!) ourselves in the way that is necessary if we can love God simply because it is what God is worthy of, and moreover, if it is that which Love-in-act itself empowers. We have to become practiced and strong in this intimate form of love of God if we are ever able to love ourselves and others in the way God loves us! In other words, we must love God in this way (the third level) before we can love ourselves and others in God (the fourth level of love)!  The importance of this fourth stage and the way it follows the third cannot be overstated. Maybe it would be helpful to recall the first two stages of love, the two more immature forms, before saying more about this.

First and Second Stages of Love:

The first form is one we all recognize. It is love of self for one's own sake. Sometimes called selfish love, it is all about what one needs and desires. This is the earliest form of love we know, the love of infants and children who love others for the gifts they give, the blessings they bring. This form of love is often not really a form of self-love at all; the better word is narcissism. It can and ordinarily does grow into more authentic and mature love for the sake of the other, just as children ordinarily come to love their parents despite not being able or desiring to get anything from them in return. The second form of love is love of God for the gifts and blessings which come from God. This is a higher form of love than the first because it includes a real love of God, despite this being offered for the sake of the kindness, correction, empowerment, etc., which God gives to us. We are loving God here but at the same time, we are looking for God to help us in our sinfulness and immaturity, our lack of self-discipline and frailties of all sorts. There is a little forgetfulness of self involved here (we are no longer as narcissistic as we were as infants), though, of course, we can and ordinarily do grow in this form of love just as we do in the first one.

Third and Fourth Stages:

The third level of love is, as mentioned above, love of God for God's own self or God's own sake. This is an intimate form of love where we recognize God's infinite worthiness of our love. Those who sit in quiet prayer despite no expectations of mystical "experiences", no sense of God's presence beyond a faith commitment to this Divine truth, these persons know this level of love. Those who attend Mass regularly not merely for what they get out of the liturgy, nor because the Church requires this of them, and not merely as an opportunity to put their petitions before God, but simply because this is an act of worship of the One who is worthy of such time, attention, and love, they also know this level of love. 

I think these examples could be multiplied many times over. However, this level of love is not the same as union with God --- though there is certainly communion with God, which empowers this particular level of self-forgetfulness and generosity (for genuine worship always involves self-forgetfulness and generosity). This form of love, like those earlier stages also mentioned, is also capable of growth and increasing degrees of maturity or perfection. Over time, one's heart is purified, and eventually one reaches union with God, where one loves self and all else only in the power of God, who is Love-in-act. When this occurs, one has entered or reached the fourth level of love. One has truly "put on the mind of Christ."

The fourth level is described by Bernard as loving oneself for God's own sake. It means loving oneself as God loves one and in the way God does, but doing so as an act of worship of God alone. In short, it means letting God alone act in and through you -- which is really the highest form of worship. Here one truly loves oneself but does so with a kind or degree of self-forgetfulness one had not known earlier. One certainly does not despise oneself. Instead, one embraces a humility which is absolutely honest and loving precisely because one sees and knows oneself as God does.

Even the subtlest forms of self-hatred are healed in this form of love. One sees oneself as God sees us, and we find we are truly loveable, precious, and a delight in God's eyes. One takes care of oneself and one's legitimate needs, but one does so precisely so that one may further spend oneself as God wills and empowers. This means one may certainly give one's life for others in the way Jesus did in his passion and death, but it also means spending oneself for others in ALL the ways God wills in a daily (continued) dying to self --- as Jesus and his true followers do every day of their lives. Take a look at how radically different the first stage of love is from this one! Both are ways of loving self, but the first stage is self-centered and protective; it is lived at the expense of others. The fourth stage is other-centered and kenotic; it is love of self lived for the sake of others, whatever the God-willed cost to oneself --- just as Jesus' life was lived.

Fourth Stage Love as Corrective to Spiritual Individualism and False Mysticism:

I don't recall if St Bernard spoke of this specifically (though from the Cistercians I know, and the relatively little I know of the Cistercian Reform, it would not surprise me that it was a motivating insight of Bernard's own life and efforts at monastic reform) but seeing this as the necessary stage of love coming after love of God for God's own sake is an important corrective to forms of monastic practice and prayer which focus on despising the world outside the monastery or a mysticism which focuses on a "Me-and-God alone" relationship which is individualistic and exclusionary or exclusivist. 

Union with God means we love both ourselves, others, and the whole of creation with God's own love. Union with God empowers this kind of love and the selfless giving of self our world both needs and is made for. It allows God to love in and through us as exhaustively as God desires to do. It is not so much a spillover of our love of God, but a stage of love which love of God for God's own sake makes possible. It is precisely the way Christ loved, the love God calls us each to, and thus, the very apex of what having a covenant nature (as all human beings do) is all about.

Had the stages of love stopped at "loving God for God's own sake" we might never have been able to understand why Christ ever "came down from the mountain" or left any of those solitary prayer periods with God that so characterized his identity in order to spend himself for the sake of others; neither might we understand what moves the Triune God (a community of such love) to continually create and redeem as God constantly does. But being moved so is the very nature of union with God, the very character of God's Mediator, and the Trinity itself. Union with God leads naturally to a divine love which goes out of itself to and for the other.

Had St Bernard not written so wonderfully and in a way which runs counter to common sense that loving God for God's own sake was "only" the third stage of love, we might be tempted to adopt forms of spirituality which are really thinly veiled forms of selfishness or not-so thinly veiled forms of self-hatred. We also might be tempted to denigrate representatives of active as opposed to contemplative forms of life (or eremitical vs coenobitical) for choosing a "lower" form of love. This has certainly been done in the past by even the very best theologians, and I recognize it as a significant temptation today.

I should also note that the significance of the fourth stage of love fits very well into the new cosmic consciousness I have mentioned recently because it does not allow spirituality to ever be an individualistic or privatistic matter. (Need I say yet again that this is especially true for hermits?!) We must be ultimately concerned with God's own will, God's own projects and plans for reality; moreover, we must do so ONLY as God's own Life/Love in us makes possible. Union with God empowers something our world needs from each and all of us so very badly, something we were each made for and are called to by God as we participate in moving the drama of an evolutionary and unfinished universe forward, namely "love of self (and others and all reality) for God's own sake"!

P.S., What should probably be emphasized, I think, is that these four stages are somewhat like Kohlberg's ego stages. It is not so much that one stage of love is completely left behind as another is entered, so much as it is the case that the earlier stage is integrated into the higher stage of love and transformed or transfigured in the process. For instance, as I understand it, we do not cease to care for our everyday needs or seek assistance as required, but securing our own needs (and desires!!) are not the driving force of our lives. Moreover, integration means one meets one's own needs in appropriate ways while one's desires are tempered and moderated by higher stages of love.

Similarly, when we have reached higher stages of love, we do not cease to ask God to help us with our needs or to count on God's blessings and gifts, but this is no longer the defining form of love motivating our prayer or our approach to reality. And of course, as noted above, we do not consider love of self something "base" to be despised and outgrown or simply rejected. Instead, our love of self is healed and transfigured by God's own love; it becomes something we do for God's own sake, and that makes all the difference! Thus, as we become more and more certain of, filled with, and moved by God's own Self (Love-in-Act) we become more and more secure, less needy,  anxious, or fearful of loss and death, and more willing and even grateful for chances to generously spend ourselves for others. The paradox here includes the fact that in the third and fourth stages of love, our own profoundest needs are also met, but without the self-seeking found in the first two stages. ("Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.")

Becoming All Fire (Reprised)

 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.

Advent: Shaping our Lives in terms of the Future (reprised from 2015)

So many things have changed in Theology today in light of the scientific discoveries on the nature of the cosmos. We used, for instance, to read Genesis as though it referred only to past events, a state of perfect blessedness that had been lost and which one day would be regained in another realm we called heaven. Similarly, our enmeshment in and subjection to death was treated as the result of a "fall" from perfection. Today, more and more we are reading the Scriptures, writing, and preaching with a new focus and perspective --- that of an unfinished universe that one day will reach perfection or fulfillment in God, the day when God will be all in all. At the same time then we human beings are called to a fulfillment that lies before us and it is possible to read Genesis as a powerful myth reminding us of all we are called to --- and all our world is meant for as well. Our identity as imago dei would then be something we are in the process of moving towards, something we are allowing or at least are called to allow God to transfigure us into day by day.

Sin, a Situation of Enmeshment in the Past and that which is resistant to the Future God Wills and Represents

The situation of enmeshment, incompleteness, falseness, distortion, or sin in which we find ourselves is not a fiction that can be dismissed by a non-literalist reading of the Genesis narratives. It is as real as ever, and Genesis narratives, especially when read as myths ** conveying profound truths, explain how it is we each collude with death in all its forms as we lead one another into greater and greater enmeshment in everything we identify as sin. In light of the unfinished developing nature of our universe, I think it is especially important to remember that hamartia (sin) is most fundamentally defined as "missing the mark" or "falling short". We miss the mark or fall short of being the persons God has created us to be in any number of ways. 

In attempts to become what we are meant to be, in attempts to become more genuinely human, we choose gods of all sorts who themselves fall short of true divinity and make us even less complete or true than we were before we embraced them. In acts of forgetfulness and carelessness, fear, insecurity, and woundedness, we choose to embrace the past rather than the future and therefore to be someone other than the one God calls us to be. But too, we are summoned into and embrace the future as we become Advent persons, persons of the Eschaton for whom the words holiness and Saint actually fit. Our God is working constantly to bring us to freedom and fulfillment, truth and authentic humanity; his Word is active in our world and in our own hearts and each one of us is called to incarnate that Word just as fully as possible.

If we now read Genesis in a way different from what we were once used to and comfortable with, so too do we approach the Nativity of Jesus in somewhat different ways as well. Advent reminds us that the Word is at work in our world looking for those who will allow it to bear fruit in their lives. It reminds us that God's plans for us and our world are something we can hardly imagine yet --- and with the Gospel readings from next week, something we may find profoundly disturbing or even offensive. It is part of our past, but even more, it is the future by which we are called to measure ourselves.

Authentic humanity has been born into our world and we will celebrate that at Christmas, but at the same time, it is waiting to be born in us and in every person we know so that God's plans for the fulfillment of reality may be brought to fruition. The Annunciation is an invitation to enter an unimaginable future we should each experience here and now while Mary's fiat is an acceptance of this invitation we too should each offer --- and offer many times over this period of Advent! Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus who will, throughout his life and death, incarnate the Word of God more and more definitively. But Christmas is not only in the past; it lies ahead of us as well.

Embracing the Future: Christ Brought to Full Stature

Ephesians speaks of Christ one day "coming to full stature". We speak of the Christ Event which includes not only Jesus' life and death but his resurrection and ascension as well. We are participants in this Event because we have been baptized into his death and resurrection. Thus, while part of this Event is in the past it continues in the present as well. WE are the Body of Christ and it is we who are responsible for helping to usher in the Kingdom of God, WE who are called to incarnate the Risen Christ here and now. It is only right that we celebrate Advent as a season in which we begin to look not primarily at the past but instead to the present and future. Even more, as was the case with the Annunciation when Mary began to shape her life in light of the future the angel announced to her: "You shall be overshadowed by the Most High and bear a Son and he shall be called Emmanuel," we too are called to begin to shape our lives less in terms of the past than in terms of the future which Christ's death and resurrection proclaims, the world in which in us Christ comes to full stature.

Advent reminds us it is not enough to be freed of serious sin. Baptism and the Sacraments do that, of course, but that does not make us all we are called to be, all that God dreams and wills for us.  We cannot shape our lives merely in terms of freedom from serious sin or restored innocence. It is not enough to look to the past to what we once were. Instead, we are called to truly become a new creation, (an) imago dei, those in whom the Word of God finds its full expression. Christ is the model of this new life, the first fruits of this new creation. He is the incarnation of our absolute future made real here and now in a proleptic way, the One in whom all reality has been redeemed and imbued with true hope and profound promise. Christ variously announces to us who we shall be, "I call you friends." He invites us to be his disciples, his own brothers and sisters, salt and light to the nations, Sons and Daughters of God, and citizens of the Kingdom; in him, we are called to be expressions of the Logos and commissioned to bear lasting fruit. We too are to be overshadowed by the Most High. Advent asks us to begin shaping our lives according to this vision, not that of who we once were, but of who we are created to become. In our embracing this future lies the hope of our entire world.

Readings of Genesis Sharpened by the New Cosmology

By the way, in light of the new ways Theologians read Genesis, one of the newer shifts in that reading is to understand Adam and Eve and the story of the Garden as a narrative describing the ultimate future of our world as well as (and sometimes instead of) some primordial history. That reading has been around for a while but it has been honed considerably in light of our sense of an unfinished, yet-to-be-perfected universe. The future reality described in the myth** will be a place where human beings are completed in their relationships with one another, with God, and with creation itself. As in Jesus' language to his followers, this future is defined in terms of friendship. If this is correct, then sin is most fundamentally a matter of refusing to embrace this future. That means refusing to commit to God and God's plans for his Creation, refusing to embrace our truest self --- an identity shaped in terms of this reality in which God is all in all. Sin is a matter of refusing to be made new and remaining bound by the past. And of course, that definition of sin is really not all that different from the one we are so familiar with. Our own "falling short" or "missing the mark" (hamartia) though is a matter of falling short when measured according to our future, not the past.

** It is important to understand that myths are not fictions but rather narratives or stories that convey deep truths that can be adequately described in no other way than through narrative. While the more superficial details of the stories (myths) may be untrue (e.g., there is no such thing as a talking snake or a literal tree that is the source of life and death!), their deeper truths are just that, profoundly true (talking snakes are a good way to externalize Eve's (and our own) insatiable tendency to theologize, for instance, or to describe the temptations she (and we) struggle(d) with).cf: More on Stories and the Tower of Babel or Myths, Parables, and Narrative Theology

Does a Particular Spirituality Work Best for Hermits?

 [[Hi Sister Laurel, If I wanted to become a hermit is there a particular spirituality that works best for that?]]

 Hi yourself. It's a good question, but I would think that any well-known (I want to say "mainline") spirituality would work with eremitical life. All of the main ones have had hermits or can support eremitical lives because all of them put God first and have a strong sense of ecclesial faithfulness. Since there is no contradiction between life as a hermit and a commitment to the faith (ecclesial) community, even those most associated with active ministry can work well for a hermit. (Think of the unique eremitical expression associated with Franciscanism!) I think most of us gravitate to one form of spirituality or another, not because that's the one that "should" be embraced by hermits, but because they (and their representatives) resonate most personally with us. They will also support contemplative life as a way of loving others and building the Church.

I would encourage you to read widely until you feel yourself drawn to a particular spirituality, and then do a deeper dive into it to see where it leads. If more than one spirituality speaks to you, explore these more fully. See who they call you personally to be and the ways they humanize (deify or divinize) you and your life. Spend time reflecting on their representatives and founders, and what they were trying to live and why. You may want to visit houses formed in specific spiritual streams and get a sense of the living tradition that interests you. Have conversations with these representatives and pray about it all. 

In this way, I believe you will discover the spirituality (or spiritualities) that resonate(s) most creatively with you and your own call, whether that is eremitic life or not. My own journey began as a Franciscan and moved into Benedictinism and Camaldolese Benedictinism. Only later did I find myself drawn to Cistercian spirituality (also a form of Benedictinism that focuses on the monastery as a "School of Love"). Today, as I return to John of the Cross and other Carmelite writers, I recognize that these have all influenced my spirituality and, while I am a Camaldolese Oblate for whom the "threefold good"** is central in inspiring and informing the way I live out c 603, my hermit life is enriched by all of these streams.

** The Camaldolese triple good or triplex bonum is solitude, community, and evangelization.

1st Sunday of Advent: Godspell Movie

 

My sincerest wishes for a joyful and fruitful Advent to everyone who reads here! If you can't watch the entire movie, please check out at least the first 12-15 minutes, including the scene in the fountain and the face painting scene. The scene in the fountain is one of the happiest "calls to newness" I can ever remember seeing. It captures the spirit of Advent with its focus on the coming of God into our midst and the newness of life that results, and is perfect for the first Sunday of Advent. For all of us, day by day, we come (or are brought) closer to Jesus and to the fullness of the truly human life we are made for. And day by day, we proclaim the Way of the Lord in our world.

Touching the Wounds of Christ: Proclaiming a Power Made Perfect in Weakness (Reprise)

This post was first reprised in 04/2016. I reread it as part of my preparation for Lent and for writing a post that follows up one I posted earlier today or very late last night (03.March.2024). It also reflects a book I am reading for Lent this year, namely, The Wood Between the Worlds, A Poetic Theology of the Cross. It is a book about the way God uses Jesus' passion and death to reconcile this world with himself, thus transfiguring this world and the way we are called to perceive it.

Thus, considering the questions that follow and what I have written recently about eremitical life, I find a night and day difference between those whose illness is a sign of "the world's" power and those whose illness has truly been transfigured into a sacrament of the presence of God. Most of us with chronic illnesses or disabilities find ourselves between both of these worlds -- at least part of the time. Lent seems to me to be a good time to focus especially on the kinds of choices that allow us to stand firmly in the light of God's love so that even our illnesses and disabilities are transfigured and we come to know ourselves as precious and a delight to God. All of this is reflected in the following post.

_____________________________________________________

[[Dear Sister, if a person is chronically ill then isn't their illness a sign that "the world" of sin and death are still operating in [i.e., dominating] their lives?  . . . I have always thought that to become a religious one needed to be in good health. Has that also changed with canon 603? I don't mean that someone has to be perfect to become a nun or hermit but shouldn't they at least be in good health? Wouldn't that say more about the "heavenliness" of their vocation than illness? ]] (Combination of queries posed in several emails)

As I read these various questions one image kept recurring to me, namely, that of Thomas reaching out to touch the wounds of the risen Christ. I also kept thinking of a line from a homily my pastor (John Kasper, OSFS) gave about 7 years ago which focused on Carravagio's painting of this image; the line was,  "There's Another World in There!" It was taken in part from the artist and writer Jan Richardson's reflections on this painting and on the nature of the Incarnation. Richardson wrote:

[[The gospel writers want to make sure we know that the risen Christ was no ghost, no ethereal spirit. He was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with us, with our human condition, did not end with his death. . . Perhaps that’s what is so striking about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns us with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us. The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a  union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.]] Living into the Resurrection

Into the Wound, Jan L Richardson

My response then must really begin with a series of questions to you. Are the Risen Christ's wounds a sign that sin and death are still "operating in" him or are they a sign that God has been victorious over these --- and victorious not via an act of force but through one of radical vulnerability, compassion, and solidarity? Are his wounds really a passage to "another world" or are they signs of his bondage to and defeat by the one which contends with him and the Love he represents? Do you believe that our world is at least potentially sacramental or that heaven (eternal life in the sovereign love of God) and this world interpenetrate one another as a result of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection or are they entirely separate from and opposed to one another? Even as I ask these questions I am aware that they may be answered in more than one way. In our own lives too, we may find that the wounds and scars of illness and brokenness witness more to the world of sin and death than they do to that of redemption and eternal life. They may represent a prison more than they represent a passage to another world.

Or not.

When I write about discerning an eremitical vocation and the importance of the critical transition that must be made from being a lone pious person living physical silence and solitude to essentially being a hermit living "the silence of solitude," I am speaking of a person who has moved from the prison of illness to illness as passage to another world through the redemptive grace of God. We cannot empower or accomplish such a transition ourselves. The transfiguration of our lives is the work of God. At the same time, the scars of our lives will remain precisely as an invitation to others to see the power of God at work in our weakness and in God's own kenosis (self-emptying). These scars become signs of God's powerful presence in our lives while the illness or woundedness become Sacraments of that same presence and power, vivid witnesses to the One who loves us in our brokenness and yet works continuously to bring life, wholeness, and meaning out of  death, brokenness, and absurdity.

To become a hermit (especially to be publicly professed as a Catholic hermit) someone suffering from chronic illness has to have made this transition. Their lives may involve suffering but the suffering has become a sacrament which attests less to itself  (and certainly not to an obsession with pain) but to the God who is a Creator-redeemer God. What you tend to see as an obstacle to living a meaningful profoundly prophetic religious or eremitical life seems to me to be a symbol of the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It also seems to me to remind us of the nature of "heavenliness" in light of the Ascension. Remember that one side of the salvation event we call the Christ is God's descent so that our world may be redeemed and entirely transformed into a new creation. But the other side of this Event is the Ascension where God takes scarred humanity and even death itself up into his own life --- thus changing the very nature of heaven (the sovereign life of God shared with others) in the process.

Far from being an inadequate witness to "heavenliness" our wounds can be the most perfect witness to God's sovereign life shared with us. Our God has embraced the wounds and scars of the world as his very own and not been demeaned, much less destroyed in the process. Conversely, for Christians, the marks of the crucifixion, as well therefore as our own illnesses, weaknesses and various forms of brokenness, are (or are meant to become) the quintessential symbols of a heaven which embraces our own lives and world to make them new. When this transformation occurs in the life of a chronically ill individual seeking to live eremitical life it is the difference between a life of one imprisoned in physical isolation, silence, and solitude, to that of one which breathes and sings "the silence of solitude." It is this song, this prayer, this magnificat that Canon 603 describes so well and consecrated life in all its forms itself represents.

Bowl patched with Gold

We Christians do not hide our woundedness then. We are not ashamed at the way life has marked and marred, bent and broken, spindled and mutilated us. But neither are woundedness or brokenness themselves the things we witness to. Instead it is the Sacrament God has made of our lives, the Love that does justice and makes whole that is the source of our beauty and our boasting. Jan Richardson also reminds us of this truth when she recalls Sue Bender's observations on seeing a mended Japanese bowl. [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]  So too with our own lives: as Paul also said, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves."  (2 Cor 4:7) It is the mended cracks, the wounds which were once prisons, the shards of a broken life now reconstituted entirely by the grace of God which reveal the very presence of heaven to those we meet.