Someone who comments and also likes to send information on a saint of the day, is intrigued by the young saint, not long ago canonized: St. Rafael Arnaiz Baron. He died at age 27, just 9 days since receiving the Cistercian (Trappist) habit.
He entered the Trappist monastery (in Spain) when age 23, and due to a rare type of diabetes that was resistant to insulin, three times had to leave the monastery to return home for treatment when his diabetes would flare. Thus he lived as a conventual Trappist (lived as a Cistercian oblate on monastery grounds). In other words, he lived his time as postulant and novice and as if a Cistercian but not with vows or full status until shortly before a diabetic flare up took his life.
There are not many of his writings--but enough to be inspired by his life and his love of God, his strong faith, and his great desire to be a Trappist despite his health trials. He was a victim soul, surely, given his on-going suffering of diabetes to an extent of no means of cure or life longevity. There is one biography in English that includes excerpts from his letters and other forms of bits of writing his thoughts. A Cistercian monk priest who was reading a German translation of Baron's writings translated from Spanish, shared on a blog one excerpt.
I found it simple, picturesque, poignant and relatable regarding a cold, dreary morning in the monastery in which Rafael was also very cold and peeling vegetables, notably turnips upon turnips. He began to slip into a despair--tempted--describing his fingers are red demons. Then he experiences some thoughts that uplift him, and he recognizes the grace of God in His Persons, uplifting him and helping him rejoice and delight in what the turnip-peeling taught him and brought him to a point of delightful grasping of the glory of God in various facets.
I get tempted to purchase yet another book, as I love to read of other mystics and learn from them. But I am so depleted myself by pain and the fatigue of pain currently, that I do not begin to read all the books I have on the shelves here at Solus Deus. And when I read the excerpt of Rafael's writing and researched more of his life, it is sufficient to appreciate him and ask him to please befriend me. I could use some GUMPTION, actually. I need his perseverance with turnip peeling, so that I go out and churn some soil with grass clumps invading the beds around trees, to mow the front yard, to plnat the tiny shrubs and trees that remain from last year that did not get planted prior to surgery.
A major facet of Rafael's writing is that he reminds me through it, of the simplicity of the types of situations and nuances of observations, and the interplay of communicating within with His Real Presence, that so much was the delight of many years of my life--the bulk of them. But this delight is suffocated off and on, and now more on than off, by the weight of the temporal aspects of what is not actually the brilliance of spiritual life, of the Christian progression of the soul winging its way to union with God.
Rather, it is the weight of the crushing and suffocating squishing of a caterpillar nearly formed into a butterfly yet still in the cocoon, that deadens my mind, heart, and spirit: my soul reason to exist, my main purpose, my mission for which we all are called. We are to love God in Himself and enjoy His love for us, and to share that love in God with love of others as God loves--the sparkles of noticing the reality of His Real Presence and of heavenly beings--Mary, the saints, the angels, the loved ones sanctified on the other side of the thin veil that separates us on earth from those in blessed eternity.
I wrote many thoughts--poured out in an email to the parish priest, of gratitude for his time and effort several days ago in a phone appointment of brief duration but for a focused and busy parish leader to a mystic, victim soul, hermit none of it, I realize, what a parish priest needs to be tending to. I let out the thoughts and feelings, some of the situations of past, with the reality they gurgle to the surface because I need to forgive. The priest had brought up sensing fear. How much and variety and reasons why fears, I mentioned some. And am grateful, for faith is the flip side of fear; and fear spurs us on to action in ways we never thought possible, and that includes action that seems inaction to those in active life.
Email contact is akin to trying to speak on phone or in person; it goes through a channel of someone else, and who knows if the priest ever gets an email or reads it. That did not matter; I just needed to pour out the fears which are real and valid and for good reason--but not necessary. I do not need to hang on to those fears but rather let them free me, spur me on to freedom and butterfly emergence from crushing cocoons and onward winging with assurance of God-with-me-always, now and forever.
As to fear of being so crushed as to lose my Catholic Christian faith, that is not a realistic fear, either, from someone who'd years ago exclaim in the depth of a horrific pain siege, to a priest who brought the consecrated Host to me laid out in agony, "The Catholic Church is my last and only hope!"
But fears of all types will no doubt be the devil's means of trying to discourage and distract my butterfly-self from freely flitting upon delights in the union with His Real Presence I've enjoyed for a long time. Off and on has this delightful, inter-playful union in actuality existed, and assuredly is on when I fly out of reach of temporal, grasping fingers of all types and sorts, metaphorically and literally, wanting, trying, to touch and grasp my butterfly wings.
I must not tarry low! Must, need, fly out of grasp of that which will disrupt and harm the butterfly freedom in flight of delight in God's love and the love of life temporal and mystical, the love of noticing and appreciating the observations and tiny details of joyful existence and on-going communication with the Beloved and of, in, those and what He loves.
I must write of these encounters with the Beloved. And in Jesus, I trust!
But as to a mystic-victimsoul-hermit taking the time or energy or looking to a parish priest for guidance and direction when a parish priest if not most all priests have distinct purposes and callings, I must not disrupt their efficiency and their necessary focus on all those many to whom they are called to shepherd generally and specifically. The Lord provided priestly guidance for me for 24 years--amazingly and miraculously so.
Unless He specifically and unexpectedly brings another along, the Lord expects of me some maturity in the spiritual life now, and to in forgiveness and love, cast out fears of past persecutions and recognize they were His Real Presence teaching me the way of the mystics, the way of victim souls, the way of mystic-victimsoul-hermit whose hermit vocation remains the God-anointed and consecrated vocational vehicle for this life time.
The Lord expects of me love of Him and of all others, and the offering of myself has been full and complete. There seems not more to offer other than to keep going, to simply keep going, and to love, to keep loving Him in Himself and others as He loves, to love the love with which He loves us. I'm otherwise spent.
And my life as a consecrated Catholic hermit is God's, all for God; and He gifts me not to just one parish or diocese but to the universal Church and to all Christians and to the salvation of all the world. This is true of any hermit chosen by God to this vocation that is but a vehicle for this life's journey. This is true of any soul, any person, any follower of God in whatever vocation they are given as vehicle for this the earthly, temporal-spiritual sojourn.
Butterflying is for all eternity and is not just for me--is for everyone.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
"Beloved: if you invoke as Father Him who judges impartially according to each one's works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb. He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you, who through Him believe in God who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God."
1 comment:
Why on earth are you so obsessed with canon 603. Why can't you just be a lay hermit and stop arguing about c. 603. Do you not know that being a lay hermit is the long tradition accepted by the church? Does it really bother you that somehow you think the diocesan hermit vocation is somehow better than the lay vocation you say you have lived for more than 20 years?
At one point after I was widowed, I felt a call to religious life. I looked for a place for older widowed women, and found nothing really that seemed to be (1) accepting of people my age, (2) had a lifestyle and w way of living that seemed to be what God was calling me to. I was invited to become an associate of a community which did seem right to me. I was originally going ahead with the idea of becoming an associate, but as I completed the formation process to be accepted as an associate, I discovered that I still thought of it as a "fall-back," a second-rate kind of substitute to what I really thought i wanted. My mentor in the associate formation process reminded me that God would never call me to a second-rate, substitute kind of vocation and that I'd better think twice before I went ahead. To do otherwise, would be a sin. I spent some time in serious self-reflection on this. And when I had come to the conclusion that being an associate member was actually what God was calling me to, I went ahead -- and now, several years later, I have come to realize that I was never free enough to become a vowed sister. I was still deeply embedded in my family life and my economic entanglements would have made it virtually impossible. But i now rejoice to know that I am exactly where God wanted me to be and I love my life here with the Sisters.
When I read all your convoluted discussions on c603, I wonder why you cannot come to peace with being called to what you 've been living for 20 years. Why would you want to do otherwise? Why do you sow such confusion to your readers about your efforts to be consecrated. No one needs consecration to be fully dedicated to God. No one has to accept or be guided by canon 603 unless they fully embrace the way it really is, which you clearly do not? If there are canonical barriers to being consecrated as a diocesan hermit why do you continue to "kick against the pricks," as Jesus said to St. Paul.
I was not unfairly barred from being a professed Sister. I am not barred from associate life. No one would want to profess a person who writes at such length and such fervor about what is wrong with 603 hermit life to that life. Good grief. Be content with what you have. You don't have to meet any legalistic rules and criteria. You an be entirely free to shape your own hermit life if you just embrace what you have and stop justifying and rejustifying, complaining and griping about what you don't like about vowed hermit life. You don't have to meet any kinds of canonical criteria. Just life with God in silence and pray a lot.
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