In for the Long Haul

Thoughts move to the mother, now deceased, and how hard she worked. The house was in order, full meals prepared, much hostessing of relatives and friends. Laundry done, bills paid. A summer home, teaching career. But good health, thanks be to God. And a good husband who provided well and did some maintenance or arranged those matters, mowed the lawn, provided stability and calm.

The nothing Catholic hermit reminds itself it made the choice to build a small hermitage, to landscape in Mary Gardens, to tend orchids. Yes, if the health is tenuous these months, with pain on the rise and exhaustion accompanying--remain rational. Tasks have fallen behind a bit. Spiritual reading is tucked into bed at night, a few pages before eyes droop and the covers close over words and hermit.

St. Paul spoke at today's Mass. He reminds the nothing to persevere, to pour itself out as a libation, to encourage, reprove--all in patience. Persevere, run the race set out to the finish.

The nothing held firm with a caller who habitually complains of a relationship--and often unfairly so. There is true hatred built up over years. And, the caller is exhausted from doing too much. This time, the nothing defended quietly the caller's irritant, a close family member.
The subject was changed.

One needs strength to hold firm in such situations, bodily strength and emotional, as well as spiritual determination. Seems the more the nothing continues on this eremitic path, and the higher the pain rises with age and responsibilities, the more sensitive to souls it becomes. And the nuances of hate, envy, ridicule, distancing, posturing--whatever of any negative issue--runs the nothing's stamina to the nib.

The nothing reminds itself that in two or three months--maybe sooner--the outdoor chores will not be a high priority, and within a week or so of steady labor inside the hermitage, an hour or two a day, the place will be put in loving order. The editing takes a couple or more hours out, daily, and the phone call that usually comes daily can be handled while filing bills or tidying up the counter. But it is a grind with the energy currently low.

That is where going to Mass extra early and taking a book to read in the silence before the Tabernacle, and to simply wait within His Heart, is crucial today. And tomorrow. The nothing must allow itself to be refilled with the Blood of Christ and His water, for the libation is poured out, and not much remains. Or so it seems.

And the terrible demonic attack in the early morning hours followed with assistance in image messages. The nothing must still itself. The boundaries are being set all the more; and feeling guilty over summer hibernation only drains. The hermit vocation must set itself in concrete, not shifting sand.

It seems the Lord increasingly heightens the nothing's heightened intuition. (That is what the confessor calls it; the spiritual da terms it something else.) Whatever they want to call it, the nothing is increasingly sensitive to souls, and particularly to souls with issues. To help block this during Mass, the nothing sits in front, not able to see with physical eyes, and trying to absorb into the Holy Sacrifice so as to not see souls with inner sight.

Yesterday, at noon Mass, the nothing picked up something, and it yet is being worked through the nothing's being. The best thing to do is to pray and also to practice detachment, to struggle through striving for good attitude, love, and a knowing that the Lord is allowing the sensations.

Same with the demonic attack. The Lord allowed it, and although it is taking some work to work through the ordeal, being rational helps. Yes, the Lord allows such events to provide more counsel to a soul, to let the soul know it needs to be stretched, to remind the soul that it needs to persevere in prayer, spiritual life, Sacraments, Scripture, and its daily responsibilities, all in loving order and yet without rigidity. As for the devil, a soul can be reassured after an attack, that it was just that: an attack. And it is over, for now.

The race (walking race or most often crawling race!) continues. Yes, even if there is perhaps an overabundance of responsibility in owning a hermitage and managing all the work (washer going now, and the nothing thanks the Lord it is not out pounding the laundry on the stones of the pond, with weak wrist)--any one could suddenly have an illness or catastrophe, and fall behind some in the work.

Perseverance with patience in all matters, even in rationally viewing the devil's assault or the heightened sense of souls--yes, it is through prayerful perseverance that a hermit progresses, for nothing has agreed to eremitic life for the long haul.