What at one point was a blog post apologizing to you, dear and forgiving readers, seemed more necessary after a night's rest, to be an apology to God.
It has to do with my soul, my mind, the choices, the distractions that might not seem so bad, but at this seeming juncture are not good.
What is prickling me, within and my mind starting to grasp, is yet again how mundanity can take hold. Mundanity is not what a consecrated Catholic hermit such as me ought be about.
For one, you can discern from the posts (if you've suffered through reading some or most), the ones in which I deal with the more structural, temporal aspects of hermit life are at least for me, torturous. My writing becomes more stilted and not of the heart. It is how it was when writing portions of my doctoral dissertation, when completing my doctoral degree at the University of Southern California.
My supervising professor could tell the difference in the chapters involving review of the literature (research), setting forth the thesis, providing for and reviewing the statistics--and then the "findings" and prognostic for future study and change. She could tell of the slow, structured, staid sections that I struggled in style and completion. That contrasted with the present- and forward-moving, creatively genuine sections.
My advisor and mentor knew me more than I recognized. "You are a poet at heart," she said, while encouraging what was painstaking to write of the more mundane yet foundational aspects that must meet high standards in the academic world.
So I'm sorry for staying stuck or returning to writing of temporal aspects like hermits wearing a habit, or taking on a religious name when one becomes a hermit. Or when I write, explaining the obvious facts of whether privately or publicly professed, a hermit who professes the evangelical counsels and lives a God-called and directed eremitic life (with a Bishop director or priest or other qualified spiritual director) enters into the consecrated life of the Church.
I get sidetracked by such topics when others inquire of such, for I suppose such facts that are more of external aspects are of initial interest to lay persons or non-Catholics curious about the Church's hermits of today. So I attempt to rehash which includes such as some of the following of which some I will delete for it is tedium and not genuinely where this consecrated Catholic hermit "is", in this present phase of hermit life. These aspects, such as in a doctoral dissertation, are one-and-done type facts, like the review of past facts and findings. I must press onward, genuinely sharing what the Lord asks of me to not only write, but most importantly what He inflames in my heart.
So it is for me as a contemporary, Catholic hermit--one of God's Church's hermits--to not only think with the heart (as He instructed me in 1995 so profoundly) but to also write with and from the heart. As is written in Samuel 16:9, "Man looks to the outer appearances; the Lord looks at the heart." I tarry too long in the externals.
The Lord wants my heart, my soul--and yes, also my mind but not in rehash of easily understood facts such as are the Church's requirement for hermits to profess the three evangelical counsels whether or not privately or publicly, and to live then the vast interior reaches of what it is to be a consecrated hermit in the Church today. I'm to divest myself of mundanity and go to the heart of God Himself, while remaining true to the broad-reaching parameters the Church has so poetically yet rightfully set forth for Her hermits.
Thus, I can delete much of what I'd written last night, that shared of my early exploration based upon what I myself misguidedly wondered about once I was a hermit in the Church, following the more concrete and definitively doable requisites, although profession of the evangelical counsels includes much depth of the soul's discussion with God as to honoring a life lived in poverty, obedience, and chastity. There is so much more to a hermit's life and to what the Church sets forth for us, challenges us to the ways and means of living this vocation true to God and Church--Her Head and Her members, the Body of Christ.
Yes, at one time early on I experienced being a postulant and then novice, in a recently founded community of hermits in which we each lived in our own locales but followed an horarium and other structured features of living out daily and nightly, our hermit vocations. I wore a habit and was given a religious name (Pio of the Wounded Heart). I learned much from this experience, and I learned the external aspects in our current times are rather antithetical to ensuring stricter separation from the world, silence of solitude, and remaining hidden from the eyes of men.
I stuck out, noticed, a point of conversation and of controversy, over-admired or unjustly demeaned. The externals kept me ever reminded, as they were ever reminding others, of the outer, not the inner. I was not "noticed" due to what I was in Christ or He in me; I was noticed by clothing that was typical of the poor of desert hermits of early first century. The habit and having a religious name were fashioned after the ways of Medieval-initiated religious order, and that caused others to assume that which was not truth.
I learned from those brief externals, all the more. to seek the Lord, to listen to what He wanted of me in externals, and when He made Himself quite clear, I followed His desires in these regards. "Why would you want THAT, when you can have ME more directly now?" Who, when this is stated to one directly by the Lord, and discerned with the help of a holy priest of many decades, would argue otherwise?
And the truth of the matter is, years ago the Lord revealed to me my heavenly name, the name of which I will be called in heaven, and that name to me seems the more pertinent as it is eternal. But I would not go by my heavenly name while in the temporal nor expect others to call me by that name here on earth, any more than I would go by my eremitic name.
As a consecrated Catholic hermit, I simply do not want to be noticed for that to me is not God's need of me, use of me, and in external aspects that do affect the internal, is an unnecessary distraction. When I am out and about for a necessary outing (medical, grocery or other necessity shopping, rare charitable visit, Mass at the parish) how He wishes me to be noticed--if at all as His hermit, as His Church's hermit--is by the Light of His Love and His Real Presence within me.
The interior is what matters, what will make any difference of substance with and to others. As in Samuel 9:16, Man looks at the outer appearance; the Lord looks at the heart."
What stood out in the past--of the religious solitaries, the hermits--was their stricter separation from the "world" as an aide to their intense seeking Christ in the "spiritual desert," in the silence of solitude, in their devoting of their lives--bodies, minds, hearts, and souls--to the praise of God and the salvation of the world, of souls!
That is what ought stand out to others, now, if anything be noticed of us consecrated Catholic hermits. At least that is what my prayerful discerning and my 20 years of lived experiences as a consecrated Catholic hermit in these our times--and what His Real Presence has told and shown me in various ways thus far.
The issues that might seem important to some, such as what hermits wore in earlier centuries that now a causes one to be noticed more as a nun or monk or even as a theatrical person and changing one's name as is the practice when in a Church-condoned religious order are not this hermit's point in purpose. Whether or not a hermit is a consecrated Catholic hermit by his or her having professed the evangelical counsels privately or publicly, is not this hermit's issue nor should be beyond what was, in fact, which particular mode of entering into the eremitic vocation in the consecrated life of the Church.
My issue right now is moving from apologizing to readers, into apologizing to God, for my too-much mundanity. (I enjoyed reviewing in dictionary "mundane's" various definitions, synonyms, and roots. "Of the world", "unvaried", "sublunary", even "wearisome": mundanity can cause me to become "stuck". That is not my being the fire on earth that Jesus came for and of which He wishes I was burning already.)
What is best for a hermit's soul, could be what God wills for any holy soul, such as what has been best for the known and unknown saints of all ages. Holy souls whose very lives in the inner sanctum of their hearts, minds, and souls sought Christ with all their verve. We aspiring souls--and very much us Catholic hermits who are devoting our lives in particular ways and means, should still seek Christ with all our being. The Church's hermits did not nor should they yet today remain in what they've progressed through of what was, is, been-and-done: mundane.
Especially now, I am reminded in my current phase of life of yet deeper seeking, needing, yearning to be in Christ. In my grasping and clasping onto His Real Presence--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I am culled increasingly from the externals. I've fulfilled and continue to do so, the expressed profession requirements of the Church.
The more I discern God's specific call to me, coming upon entering my third decade as a privately professed hermit in the consecrated life of the Catholic Church, the more He desires me to come to increasing union with Him. It is in my mind, heart, and soul now, to write of what He wills from within Him to without, through Him without to within me. My soul in Him, deeper and more profoundly, with the living out of my life increasingly a living out of His will and His Heart.
Thus you readers can understand that I pray to share increasingly the matters of the heart and soul. I am inspired in my mind, heart, and soul by His Living Word; I am inspired in my mind (and my heart does flutter) by the writings of those before our time who have written of their lives fully in Christ, and of their progression therein.
Yet I am praying to write from the mind, heart, and soul that the Lord wants me to increasingly enter into His. I pray for the grace and discipline to not so much write from what others have found in Him, but what He has of me to write of what the mind and heart and soul He has given me to be in Him--what that of what God has created of mine, discovers in Him.
We shall see. I don't want to be distracted by other than the venture of the soul into and in His Real Presence--the fullness of the Holy Trinity. I pray to do so, of course, living out what Holy Mother Church asks of all her hermits, thus my on-going review of what the Church desires of me, Christ's and His Church's hermit, consecrated in Christ and consecrated in the vocational life of the Church.
Such as, there are thoughts from mind, heart, and hopefully my soul, regarding what it means for this Catholic hermit, at this point and prayerfully in God's purview, to live "in stricter separation from the world." Or, also, what it is that He wills of His Church's hermits--this hermit--to live in the solitude of silence, to be hidden from the eyes of men, to live a life of assiduous prayer and penance, and so forth.
What for example, does Christ will of His hermit in manifesting to everyone, "the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church--that is, personal intimacy with Christ?" How does God want me to be a "silent preaching of the Lord"--or for me to truly surrender my life to Christ "simply because He is everything to me?" How does God desire me, truly, deeply, genuinely, from within to without--to live His particular call and to find "in the 'desert', in the thick of 'spiritual battle', the glory of the Crucified One?"
To this purpose and mission I am increasingly called. To come to His Real Presence and to write what He wills and desires (or not to write if not His want of me to do so). I need His Grace! My progression of mind, heart, and soul must "hie hither" to the depth, breadth, and pinnacle of His Real Presence, to the Holy Interior of God. My body is at the phase of crying out to God my Father, united in Christ on the Cross, knowingly begging forgiveness of my not unfinished sinning, for I know not what I do. And I ask God our Father to forgive us all for all that we do not know what we are doing.
I wonder if I am completely yet broken and ready for Him to piece me back together in the image of the interior of His Sacred Heart--or of His Real Presence, deeply and truly. I simply do not know if I am yet that broken or ready. I think so, I want to believe so. I guess that is at least something: to have come to that desire as a hope in God reality.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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