In very slowly reading St. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs, I, I'm discovering that the saint makes excellent points for the Church's hermits--past and contemporary. I know I'm not the only consecrated Catholic hermit who has run up against an argument of some lay persons in the Church, of other faiths, or also secular types, that it is not right for Christians to "hole up" and selfishly not share themselves, not do acts of charity, among their fellow human beings.
Some even consider the hermit life to not be "Christian."
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1190-1263) was the superior of what became known and still is, the Cistercian Order. At the time he wrote his sermons based upon the Song of Songs (Solomon), he'd been a monastic over half his life. As superior to the other monks, he spoke to them often in Chapter meetings as well as other times personally in guiding the monks in various aspects of religious life.
What he expressed to them regarding the role of a superior or any Christian who has come to a point in spiritual life in which he or she has experienced divine love, I think expresses the point at which a hermit's goal and role is understood. And as per St. Bernard, in a hermit this point arrives as it did for the saint, well into the living out of the spiritual life in vocation.
We do know instances in which the Lord bestows the gift of union with the sweetness of Divine Love on someone fairly young, but these instances are not the usual, not for a hermit nor for a monk or nun, nor for any aspirants in the spiritual ascent to God. The rare instances are miraculous. I'm thinking of persons in Scripture as well as saints of whom I've read; usually these souls are marked for a particular mission in a short life, like a shooting star, or they are destined for suffering and additional experiences with the Lord that will continue over the course of their longer lives with specific mission to be accomplished and shared.
Have we hermits of the Church not heard it said that by virtue of our silent and solitary vocation, we neglect charity to others, we cut ourselves off from humanity? Have we not read or head it said that hermits are recluses or misanthropes, and that it is wrong, so uncharitable to remove ourselves from others in such uncharitable fashion?
As to what crossover point St. Bernard makes that is good and pertinent for hermits, the following expresses beautifully and succinctly. This could be an answer a hermit might give, or also be well to digest for those times a hermit may be tempted to question aspects of the eremitic vocation.
"There is no need to fear that when it is absorbed with God, a soul [hermit] will forget its neighbor. On the contrary, God's love is a divine flame that nourishes and enkindles true fraternal charity." (Sermon 52)
"It is proper to true contemplation that it stir up in the soul such a flame of divine love that it no longer resists the vehement desire to communicate it to others that they too may be consumed by love." (Sermon 57)
The above, for a hermit, must be considered along with a "hermit's silence of solitude", with the hermit's remaining "hidden from the eyes of men."
St. Bernard writes of the ordo caritatis, that there is an order that must come with performing acts of charity. He knows well there is only one supernatural love: love that turns us both to God and to neighbor. In our growth and development to perfect love, the saint describes three types of affections. The first is of the flesh--pleasurable but can result in sin; the second is submissive love to God and results in acts of charity; the third affection is wise--experiences the "ineffable sweetness of God" and is "affective charity." (Sermon 50)
"Active charity busies itself with more humble tasks, it comes to the aid of others. Affective charity has a more elevated object: the enjoyment of God. Bernard obviously gives preference to the latter love, the love of God. However, in practice, the reverse order may have to be observed. Care of one's neighbor may be more urgent...." (Halflants, M. Corneille, OCSO, St. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs, I, Introduction, Cistercian Publications, Collegeville, MN, xxvii.)
We can interpose our hermit lives into the second and third of the three affections. We Catholic hermits already know that love of God is the highest love to which we are called and for us an exclusive love in our vocations. Yet, as the saint has pointed out correctly, from divine love flows fraternal charity, the love of neighbor as oneself. Affective charity is the hermit's delight and God's gift to the hermit after lengths of time--years it can be--in prayer, spiritual reading, meditation, contemplation and other aspects of our hermit lives that aid the spiritual lives we lead.
But we hermits also must, in consideration of an ordered charity, to reverse the order and turn from affective charity, our love of God, to active charity when there is urgent need placed before us.
For a hermit, the urgent needs of our neighbors can be as tangible as someone who writes (email, text) or calls us with spiritual or other need. Yes, it could be wise counsel, encouragement, advice on handling some temporal problem or in providing options--always with the truth of active charity and the love of God within us guiding our own interaction. The urgent needs of our neighbor may be when we might be on an errand or entering or leaving the Church for Mass; someone may want to speak with us or have some other need--a donation requested, some help in active measure such as one injured or in danger, or needing tangible help in some fashion.
The urgent need also might be that of prayer--of prayer needs we discern from the news we might read on the internet or hear if we listen to video clips of news stories. The prayer needs may come to us through the suggestions of our guardian angels and the Holy Spirit in the silent darkness of night or in our listening during the day while tending to our hermitages or in manual labor or lectio divina. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we include in actuality all the souls who are within the "our" of Our Father--souls all over the world, souls in purgatory, souls in heaven.
The need of charity can come in the form of those of us hermits who have families and friends who desire and need contact--perhaps those of another faith or in such situation as to not be willing to place their need in wise and charitable order of affection would actually be unwise and uncharitable--an offense of charity that is displeasing to God--not charitable at all.
Of course, we hermits must discern the needs that arise or are presented to us, in each circumstance. Some require us to not be pulled away from the focus of affective charity if the urgent need is more a repetitive need of a nature that some other person is better equipped to meet their need.
Otherwise, a hermit could be fragmented and misguided, him- or herself, in being pulled away from affective charity to active charity--becoming more a Martha busy about many things than the Mary sitting at the Lord's feet, absorbed in listening and learning, adoring and worshipping God--loving Him in Himself. A hermit, like a monastery superior such as St. Bernard describes, in wisdom of divine love and closeness to the Lord in that ineffable sweetness of having had experiences of such union even if brief--will need to discern and remain within the parameters of the vocation to which the Lord has called us.
A hermit's vocation is similar to but different from that of a cloistered religious ordered monk or nun. We are not among others in living situations; we do not have other ordered religious living the spiritual life in kind, or a superior at hand, on premise, to guide us in particulars as they arise. We must turn to the Holy Spirit as our in-hermitage superior. We may make contact with a spiritual director, an earthly guide, but that take time and effort which also draws us away from the sweetness of divine love simply due to the temporal channels we must utilize to have written, verbal, or face-to-face consultation.
From St. Bernard's Sermon 50, come the following thoughts as expressed by M. Halflants, OCSO, in the Introduction, p. xxvii.
"Affective charity...looks to the hierarchy of values. It appreciates things as they are and tastes them in all their fullness. Thanks to such charity, the soul loves God first with all the strength of which a creature is capable, then itself to the extent that it recognizes that it has no value save insofar as it belongs to God; finally, its neighbor in the measure in which it loves God or is pledged to this love."
It is then pointed out that while affective charity can be considered as true wisdom, affective charity does not reach full development until the soul is in heaven. In heaven, only affective charity is necessary; active charity is not.
There is much more on fraternal charity, as explained by St. Bernard. But we grasp the point that we don't have purity or full fraternal charity until we have union as a grace from God, even in brief breaths of this divine love. We come to understand others when we are able to increasingly, and eventually fully, see them from the perspective of divine love and God's light.
As for all the above points that are so good for Catholic hermits to consider, desire, and ask to be given by God's grace, we recognize that we must consider the points and then the graces given, relative to our unique vocation as hermits consecrated in the life of the Church. Our charity, especially active charity, will be measured and meted out in proportion, degree, and vocational structure as hermits; our hermit lives are willed by God, are united in Christ as His and the Father's will are one, and guided according to the love and power of the Holy Spirit.
Some aspects of active charity as opposed to affective charity, will be easier to discern than others. But with affective charity being imbued by God's wisdom, the ordering of charity, the types of charity, when and to what degree, will come through discernment and prayer as the days, months, and years of a hermit progress. As with St. Bernard and religious monks and nuns of cloistered monasteries, hermits pursue love of God, affective charity, as first order.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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