Fra Jerome Hawes, the hermit of Cat Island* is a helpful friend to the nothing Catholic hermit. His biography includes thoughts about his call to the hermit life, realized at age 64. Part of his growing dissatisfaction with his spiritual life, and the inner nudging that caused him to follow the hermit-vocation star, was his great love of architecture, his career prior to Anglican priesthood which converted to Catholic priesthood.
He wrote in his journals of the distraction, growing, that would come from beginning a new cathedral or church architectural plan. His mind would become absorbed in the creativity. He felt in these times a great satisfaction artistically, and he was asked by his Bishop to use his architect skills--ordered to build churches for dioceses in western Australia and the Bahamas (and early on in the UK). But he sensed a deeper call from God, to draw apart and be for God, alone, within Him, to know God intimately.
This Fra Jerome expresses in journal notes about the time he agrees to follow the hermit-vocation star.
"...I suppose it is to follow my heart....Last week I was delving into a life of St. Teresa....The saint says: 'St. Peter lost nothing by throwing himself into the sea, though he was afterward afraid. God loves courageous souls, but they must be humble and have no confidence in themselves.'
"Monsignor Hawes [Fra Jerome had been thus honored in Australia] went on to describe two ways of looking at the missionary and apostolic life from the point of view of the priest or religious: (1) The Way of Prudence and (2) The Way of Divine Folly. He was absolutely sure that he had been called to give up the former, which he had adopted for many years because he had not been courageous enough to try the latter. It was just a matter of vocation. Now he knew that he had been called toward the contemplative and eremitical life. God had shown him the way; he dared not turn back to the way of prudence. He condensed on paper: "I am a priest of God but not a man of God. I have not been a man of prayer. I am 'a well without water, a fountain dried up,' self-centered, self-seeking, a lover of pleasures, recreation ease and comfort; immersed in outward activities. The ears of my soul are stopped up with active works lest I should halt and listen. What pleases me or serves my ends I labor for, especially architecture, with an intensity and devotion that looks like fervor. I love work more than all else. I look at the life of a St. Francis of Assisi or a Charles de Foucald, and either such lives as theirs are an illusion, or else mine is.
"'Be courageous. Those holy saints I admire, sinner, miserable sinner and backslider as I am, I will start to try to imitate them in their love of solitude, silence, abnegation and penance. When, and not until after, I have done this will I know whether there is any definite work for me to do among others. Come ye apart into a desert place and rest awhile, to rest (not the body) but the soul, to refresh it. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'"
The nothing Catholic hermit recognizes in Fra Jerome's thoughts the facets of vocational call and renewal. There is an on-going sense in the soul of one called, that revisions must be made--in a kind of horror at what one has become and that which is reprehensible compared to what one is called to be. This revelation comes off and on, even once one has become a hermit. It is what a harpist must do prior and during playing the instrument: tune. In fact, it is said that a harpist spends as much time tuning the instrument as playing it.
So to with the hermit life. For being hidden, silent, and solo, a hermit's required spiritual intensity is a sensitive instrument with many strings requiring on-going assessment and refinement to the One.
The nothing is in such a tuning stage. God enforces this with the nothing through physical pain which requires a stop-play mode and a listening which is requisite to be able to tune one's instrumental body to the call within the soul. The nothing has scattered, called by good people in the good world, and inundated with good distractions. Yes, all very good tasks, thoughts, intentions, deeds--but even these must be tuned to perfection or the music simply will not suit the ears of God (or His world audience!).
The nothing also could relate with the distraction Fra Jerome expresses in his love of architecture. The nothing has been distracted even at Mass, with beauteous specimen trees swaying before its mind's eye, picturing where they could be planted, and also fretting some about their cost. Fra Jerome noted the contrast in the beautiful churches he built in poor areas, but he wrote of the tremendous devotion and heightened worship of the Catholic natives, in awe and appreciation of such beauty built for God. Beauty adorns Truth; Truth enables Beauty.
Yes, the Mary Garden at Agnus Dei with now the side garden (Our Lady of Fatima Garden) are examples of the Way of Divine Folly, within the larger construct of Agnus Dei Hermitage, within the framework of a hermit vocation, with the hermit moored (sometimes yawing) within the consecrated life harbor--a bay within the sea of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
The recent active works of mercy for an elderly couple (longtime friends) has set the nothing Catholic hermit on end. Worn out but joyful. And assured that except with extreme need, the Lord asks little if any exterior works of charity. The desert is filled with opportunities for love. As the hermit of Cat Island discovered, there is love and work in becoming a person of prayer, to be a man of God.
But these notes must be heard within the soul, and discerned. One ought not drop octaves of active works of mercy unless the Maestro directs. If the soul is called to hermit life, all will be directed, and usually in graduals and swells, over the course of the composition. But if one balks and does not follow the cues, dischord affects not only the individual but is reverberated to others who may not understand at all why--but yet know there is a miscue, an unpleasant effect.
To go the Way of Prudence when one is called to the Way of Divine Folly, creates disharmony in the soul; and the effect for others is like a train's rumbling obliterating bird-song in a nature preserve.
* Anson, Peter F. The Hermit of Cat Island: The Life of Fra Jerome Hawes. 1957. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons. pp. 125-126.
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