Illegal Catholic Hermit: A Hermit's Identity

I suspected I would have much laughter today!  The one who could be described as Pharisaical cannot help but try to spin my spiritual life and my temporal life as sad or pathetic, or unwell, or whatever in negative terms may be suggested.  

It does not take but a quick scan to recognize this one's reaction to whatever I write; I used to not even scan it and likely will cease doing so for it is predictably negatively slanted, not in my favor.  But rather than as the person projects, I have been quite joyful over being to some or all as well as to myself now: an "illegal" Catholic hermit.  

Yes, I could be what may be preferred terminology in current secular terms, an "undocumented Catholic hermit."  (I do have a sense of humor which seems lost on pharisaical mindsets.)  I also realize with the passage of time since 1983, there is increasing use of CL603 for hermits.  It will prevail.   I am not nor ever have been "recognized" per that canon.  I may be sooner or later. Or I may not be.  Bishop can decide his preferences of which canon law is likely.  

But as to being a lay hermit, no, and I trust St. Pope John Paul II on this reality.  Until I would renounce my profession of the three evangelical counsels, at least to a holy priest or bishop and that ordained person receive my renunciation (or whatever process they develop for such renouncement) as well as renunciation of my hermit vow and rule of life, I am not by the Church's own designations, part of the laity or lay state.  That is why the term "lay hermit" is a misnomer, not factually nor literally possible for even an illegal Catholic hermit.  

I yet remain God's hermit until no longer.  My literal, factual, actual situation is by God's choosing, not mine, in that He chose me for the hermit life.  My guardian angel in a reality greater than this temporal world stated even if in a chastising reminder 13 years ago, per my explicitly stated hermit life, "...thatGod chose for you and honors very much!" 

I'm presume that my bishop, or new spiritual father, or my priest confessor, can assist me in some sort of legal renunciation or nullification per church way, of my profession, vow, and rule of life--if the Lord Himself no longer wants me to be His hermit, or if the Bishop does not want me to be a diocese CL603 hermit.  This is all yet TBD:  to be determined.  Fluid and motile situation as are all of us and our situations in this temporal realm.  Yet God's realm remains constant.

Thus Jesus says it best in today's Mass Gospel:  Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.  "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition.'  He went on to say, 'How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!.... You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.  And you do many such things" (Mk 7:6-8, 13).

Others have questioned the validity of some CL603 person/s lived hermits lives, suggesting more like a religious order person yet even more in active life than most religious nuns or monks would be.  Since my guardian angel gave my most humbling and even rather scary (my insides were shaken as my angel told me those 13 years ago that I'd not been living nor honoring the hermit life that God had chosen for me and values very much), I am the last person to criticize others' ways of adhering to what the Church states in description of how Catholic hermits are to be living our lives.

I still cringe, though, when people (Catholics many of them) refer to the late Thomas Merton as having lived as a "hermit for the last several years of his life."  I have spent, in the past, quite a bit of time at the Abbey of Gethsemane where is buried Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis)--ironically as some Trappists comment, beside the remains of the Abbot, Dom Fox, with whom Thomas Merton had quite a contentious relationship while both priests were alive.  While I credit in part, the earlier writings of Thomas Merton with my conversion to Catholicism, by God's grace I did not read his later writings in which he was veering off course himself, into fascination with Buddhism and got very involved in the anti-Vietnam War protests and movement, Merton's hermit couple or so years had undertones rather shocking.  

The abbey has posthumously published Merton's private journals, and they have not tried to mask (which is how I like to write of my own life experiences) the reality of Merton's human and errant side.  We are all sinners!  Part of Merton's desire and motivation to want to be a hermit, rests in his desire to be free from Dom Fox and their contentious relationship, as Fox was Merton's abbot and Superior.  Not good to have one's superior be a person one does not at all get along with, to state it mildly.  The other underlying reason Merton had in wanting to live apart from the monastery, out in the woods in a small house they fixed up for him for his hermitage, is that he had met a very young woman, a student nurse, when he was in a Louisville hospital, briefly, for a hernia surgery.  

Merton was about 55 or 56 years old at the time; the young woman in early 20's.  In effect, he seduced her, they fell romantically in love.  When Merton was released from hospital and back in his hermitage in the monastery woods, he continued the romantic relationship with the young woman through letters, phone calls, and secretive meetings with her.  He had a friend or two from outside the monastery, who would pick him up on a road to which Merton would walk from his hermitage, and drive him to meet his young lover.  A monk who was assigned to the abbey phone switchboard, noticed the high number of phone calls Merton would make from his hermitage and became suspicious.  

Perhaps not "right" in some aspects for the young monk to listen in, the younger monk did so, finally, on one of the phone calls.  He discovered with some shock but suspicions confirmed, what Merton was up to, reported the affair to Dom Fox, and Merton was called in from his "hermitage" to be given an ultimatum:  break off the romantic (became actively sexual) relationship with the woman half-and-more less his age and of course not in keeping with his vow as celibacy as not only a priest but a hermit, or leave the priesthood and monastery.  Of course, the abbey did not want to lose Fr. Louis not only due to his priesthood, but also due to his having become for years a most famous and outstanding writer with tremendous amounts of royalties from his books and articles, coming into the abbey.  Thus, Merton was in a good position to negotiate, and did so, with his arch rival, Dom Fox. 

The Abbot agreed that Merton could continue to publish, travel, and speak (which he'd continued 5o even under the (guise?) of being a hermit, and that active, public life included trips to Tibet and Thailand where Merton was exploring Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and met and spoke with the Dalai Llama.  Merton also negotiated that upon his return from a forthcoming speaking engagement in Thailand, an international conference on peace and relating to the controversial Vietnam war, Merton would relocate to a new Trappist (Cistercian) foundation being developed in Redlands, CA.  However, the Lord had other plans for Fr. Louis, and he was shockingly electrocuted just prior to his speaking at the international peace gathering in Bankok, Thailand, in early December--I believe it was the 8th--1968.  

So while I love and massively appreciate Merton's writings, especially the earlier ones pre-mid 1960's, his hermit couple of years toward the end of his shockingly truncated life, are realistically portrayed in the type of honesty which I prefer such as in my own nondescript and insignificant life journey.  I love journalistic honesty and in-process "case studies," and the monks at Gethsemane in these post-Merton years make no excuses for Merton, and do not consider him material for canonization.  Yet, all the good in his writings up to when he veered off, of which many of us have found tremendous edification and will continue to, may also find good as I do, from his human capacity to sin and be deceptive of which sin is so clever.  

We all can relate with Thomas Merton, and we can learn from his earthly major stumble and fall from grace.  Some have considered that his death by electrocution to be prescient of sorts.  I have no idea; none of us do.  We are not God!  Jesus is merciful!  King David certainly sinned in the sin of the flesh.  Some may even consider that Merton was used by the Cistercians for his talent as a writer, of which his writing and fame resulting, would have been a tremendous temptation to pride and also drew him out of what otherwise--the Cistercians--is known as a cloistered and observant of rule of silence and humility--religious order begun in the 11th century by St. Bernard.

I myself, in an early and youthful phase of my life, Thomas Merton's later writings badly influenced me.  His temptation and fall from grace regarding his vows and in the seduction of an older man, a priest, who certainly knew better morally, of a quite young woman barely out of her teens, affected me, confused and upset me, and for a short while weakened and caused questions as to the sins of the flesh.  But the Lord prevailed, and I learned much of how the devil can twist and use someone so influential in his writings, to lead also in later writings, people along the trail that leads off the ledge from right into wrong.

(I have read all of Merton's books, and still have the ones on my shelves with content specifically beneficial to silence and solitude.  I even read, after I was Catholic, his later books in which he was perhaps, we could say, interested and fascinated in what he could glean from Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. I have read his private journals (now perhaps in the general market) in the Gethsemane library.  I yet love and appreciate Thomas Merton--yet of course was disappointed that he fell to the sin of the flesh and was distracted, but perhaps more so his animosity with Dom Fox and the way in which Merton lived his hermit life.  History and hermits can learn and determine if that was a hermit vocation well lived or not, or even properly discerned to begin with.  Too many variables may have interfered with the motives to begin with.  God only knows and Jesus is Judge of us all.)

I actually am accepted as a victim soul, for the Abbey of Gethsemane.  The abbot at the time in which the two of us were alone in chapel, when the Lord suggested to me that I offer to the abbot, my suffering as I was then also a victim soul of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for the benefit of the abbey.  The abbot, in the silence of the chapel, was pleased to accept my offer.  A holy brother monk, no longer on this earth, wrote me later of the then abbot having discussed my offering and his acceptance, in Chapter, and there was much joy in all this offering of my suffering and their acceptance.  

While that abbot is no longer Dom, and I'm not even sure if he is yet alive, my offering of my constant suffering remains as officially accepted as I suppose a victim soul offering can be, and I think of the Abbey of Gethsemane and my pain prayers and painful life, being intrinsically linked with all their intentions and needs.  It is quite profound, in actuality.  May God be praised!  

I also have stood and prayed at the graves of Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis) and of Dom Fox, and I had a little talk with Thomas Merton as to the confusion his later writings and fall to temptation, caused me personally, but of course I forgave him, and I rejoiced that the two souls, their bodies lying in Kentucky soil in simply marked graves no different than all the other graves including the holy Bro. Rene, are no on good terms with one another.  So be it!  God bless us all and protect us from temptation, and lead us from sin in to grace and His loving mercy.  We are forgiven when we confess our sins, do penance, and amend our lives!  Rejoice!

Yet, as to who is a hermit and who is not, we have examples of approved hermits and certainly of such as me, a currently illegal hermit in the eyes of the Church, who may or may not be living the hermit life nor of honoring the hermit life, in ways that we ought be.  It is a process, as I've written of many times.  A legal CL603 hermit may veer off track and be deceived.  A priest hermit approved by his religious Order Superior may veer off track and be living quite a dissolute life of deception and immorality.  

Yet a hermit such as I who have striven to live the hermit life increasingly in the stated ways the Church describes and of how the saint hermits of yore lived their lives, am technically and thus in temporal fact, illegal.  And I am delighted with this illegal status!  I will before long learn what my diocese Superior decides per his wishes for my status.  Life unfolds; I write honestly of my temporal and spiritual life progression.  Of course in these contemporary, earthly times we have various factors that the traditional hermits did not have to contend with; but I am all the same chosen by God for this hermit life which God values very much; but I am quite illegal at this point, per the canons of the Church.  Be joyful, hermit!  

I suppose like other mystics, what God speaks, and God's law, will always take higher place than temporal.  I find it most interesting, this juxtaposition of the CL603 hermit designation and of God's choosing.  I assume in some way they both will meld, or else I will need to be God's hermit but illegal by man's law, even if Holy Mother Church law.  In that case, I will be very clear that I am illegal of temporal Church but chosen by God as His hermit.  I find it all fascinating and very positive.  St. Joan of Arc notably chose to adhere to what God told her.  We know the outcome:  burned at the stake as a heretic.  Yet soon after declared a saint by the populace and eventually the Church followed suit.

It is truth time and again, that mystics tend to be eaten up and spit out by others, Catholic others, in particular.  It is all part of the Lord conforming these temporal anomalies to Himself in the path of suffering and crucifixion.

What I'm discovering--awoke with this reality--is just how much in the over 20 years since beginning the hermit vocation discernment process (that "God chose for" me "and values very much")  just how much my identity as a person and soul has become as one with  the hermit vocation and way of life.  I question if this is good?  I rather think that the Lord in this current situation and realistic temporal process, of which the spiritual is always a significant if not predominate part, that He is pointing out to me that my identity has become too much wrapped up in hermit vocation, which is only a temporal vocation, at that.  

Have I been too much of my body, mind, heart, and soul identified and enmeshed in the temporal vocation of Catholic hermit--whether illegally so or to be a hermit recognized by Church law?  Perhaps, for the thought of being not a Catholic hermit by Church law, and in essence an "illegal Catholic hermit" felt as if a large chunk of my interior was being torn or excised.  I consider thus, that hermit identity can be in God's sight too dominate?  Is that what He wants me to grasp and adjust whether am to be a by canon, legal hermit or not?

I will pray and listen and ponder this real possibility, that hermits (legal and illegal) can identify too much with their hermit vocation--approved by the Church or approved by God, either way or both).  Perhaps too much emphasis on hermit vocation and life rather than on the soul's progress to union with God, which is the point and purpose of our human journeys and soul's progression in His Real Presence.  Our true identity is to be in Christ.  That may already be God's answer.

And, of course, per usual, I will write and share honestly of what I hear and discern, of what Scriptures and various other ways the Lord speaks to us.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let os love God above all things and love others as God loves us all!

Catholic Hermit: Silence, Solitude--Some Books

I got up a bit ago and quickly jotted down some books I noted from my bookshelves.  Not all my books are unpacked, and various of the old books have sections in them on topics such as silence and solitude pertaining to hermits, prayer, contemplative and monastic life, and the spiritual life.  I might add to this list when I'm feeling better and have more "standing" endurance with the spinal pain, to look through the titles more carefully.  But here's a start of books which focus mainly on the two topics pertinent to hermits:  silence of solitude.  Formative reading material, all!

At One with God,  Leclerc, Jean-Louis

The Contemplative Life,  Leclerc, Jean-Louis

The Call of Silent Love,  A Carthusian

The Way of Silent Love,   A Carthusian

They Speak By Silences,  A Carthusian

Contemplative Life,  A Carthusian

Where Silence is Praise,  A Carthusian

The Prayer of Love and Silence,  A Carthusian

The Hermitage Within,  A Monk

Listening to Silence,  Lockhart, Bruce

Solitude and Communion:  Papers on the Carthusian Life,  Attchil, ed.

The Interior Life,  Tissot, J.

Thoughts in Solitude,  Merton, Thomas

Catholic Hermit: Reader Asks About Solitude

Recently, a reader of this blog inquired about Catholic hermits seeking solitude, and why.  The response right now is not going to be an eloquent essay on solitude.  Rather, am tired out from pain and having to travel for construction supplies, medication, some food staples, and get input on paint colorants....  So writing with eloquence on the topic of solitude, philosophically or poetically, is dashed by physical and temporal limitations today.

However, perhaps this is a good thing.  The late Thomas Merton who attempted the hermit vocation for a couple or so years, rather unsuccessfully as it turned out, wrote eloquently, theologically, spiritually, and philosophically about solitude in a book titled, Thoughts in Solitude.  This Catholic hermit highly recommends the book, incidentally, for anyone as solitude is a gift and blessing to us all at certain times of our lives, including daily doses of it.  

But as for the hermit vocation, Merton struggled with solitude due to his fame as a well-published and reviewed author, an international speaker who traveled quite a bit, and as a man who in his late 50's fell in love with a student nurse less than half his age, whom he met when having a surgery.  The dalliance continued long enough for phone calls and assignations arranged by his friends outside the monastery.  

Thankfully, for everyone involved, a fellow monk became suspicious with the numerous phone calls and overheard the lovers' conversation at one point, and reported it to the monastery abbot.  Merton was given the option of breaking off the heterosexual , slowing down his international travels and speaking engagements, or leave the religious life.

Now, all of the above is public record, detailed in posthumously published journals.  In fact, it is an excellent example of our human condition, of our temptations no matter our age or position in life, and the ever-present opportunity for making choices leading to change and also redemption.  While Merton's choice to remain a priest and Cistercian monk was extremely painful for the young woman who had been swept off her feet by an older man--no less a very famous priest and monk--it was a wise choice for Merton's vocation and reputation as a Catholic priest and monk, as well as for the Church, overall.

By then, the pitfalls of his hermit experiment had overcome him.  He returned to his more public and renowned position as author, poet, speaker, and at that time, interest in Buddhism.  Within months, Merton entered into the profound solitude of sorts that we all will experience when we leave this noisy and busy world.  He was accidentally electrocuted in Bankok, Thailand, after having delivered a speech opposing the war in Viet Nam.

What this discussion hopefully points out, is that solitude for any Catholic hermit is an aspect of the vocation which most likely is undergirded by the very necessary provision in the Church's documents on the eremitic vocation.  To be "hidden from the eyes of men in the silence of solitude" seems integral and key to successfully seeking and finding one's stride in solitude.  

All hermits owe a debt of gratitude for Merton's relatively short-lived hermit experiment, as being a world-famous writer, speaker, monk and priest is unlikely to ever ensure being hidden from the eyes of men, and thus precludes the silence of solitude.  Anonymity seems essential for a hermit seeking solitude.  It seems good to try out vocations or even a few aspects of some vocations to which one may feel called.  Why not?  How else will we discover God's will, for sure? Merton's experience highlights the aspects of hermit life and solitude that any consecrated Catholic hermit faces: Temptations in the adaptation to and within the silence of solitude.

It can be too much silence in solitude too soon--our cutting off from being known or noticed, being interactive socially or communally, facing the demons and ourselves...alone in our abodes, our cells, alone with our bodies, our minds, our emotions and our souls.  Having an experienced spiritual director, adept with the eremitic lifestyle himself but more so the spiritual life with all inherent purgations, is invaluable.  More so, it is key to be malleable, humble, compliant and desirous to seek solitude not for any external motivation, but for the interior one: Union with His Real Presence.

Another aspect of a Catholic hermit's seeking solitude beyond it being requisite in the Church's documents on the Consecrated Life of the Church, the Eremitic Vocation, is that of being called by God to the vocation.  It is God Who calls the hermit to seek Him in solitude; yet it is God Who ultimately offers and paces and governs the amount and depth of solitude in continual flux dependent upon how He wills for the life and soul of the hermit.

In the years Thomas Merton was a monk and priest compared to the couple or so years he experimented with the hermit vocation, the latter was an eye-blink of time in earth hours, and within those hours were many not actually spent in solitude, after all.  However, the attempt is beautiful; it was earnest and heart-felt even if ultimately disrupted and abandoned as not feasible for Merton.  Perhaps the greatest benefit he left for those with hermit vocations are his writings on solitude.

This nothing consecrated Catholic hermit did not set out writing these particular details and thoughts in response to a reader's inquiry on Catholic hermits seeking solitude.  Yet, somehow, it has hopefully helped answer something of what there is about solitude, or especially the silence of solitude, that is worth our seeking and why.  The snares and struggles involved in seeking and hopefully finding ourselves in God, in the silence of solitude, are the bulk of the answer.  They are what brings each of us to face our very own souls in the reflection of God's pure knowledge, power, and eternal light.  The struggles and snares in the silence of solitude bring us to the point of facing what we are not, and Who He Is.

He Is Mercy and Love.  He Is All to our nothing, whether we be hermit or not.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another as God Is Love!

Praying to Be a Better Hermit

Recently offered a heartfelt prayer to at least be a better hermit than have been, and more and more according to God's will, not the notions that come from others or self as far as what is the hermit life unfolding.  It needs to only be as God wills and directs as well as with the general guidance of those of the past centuries who were successful eremitics in their vocation.

And what clarifies as success?  It is those who are close to God, who become one with His Real Presence in this life, during one's life time experience no matter how long or short is that life.

Yesterday was very tired from a long day of work with the electrician who agreed to help with cabinet leveling and finishing the installation other than what this hermit can do alone with God, now.  But drove the distance to the daughter's to help clean in preparation for her in-law's visit.  Also had to get out a St. Bernard Love of God Bourbon Ball order.

All went smoothly until one template would not print out, although three others did, for the tin labels and inserts for the Love Ball order.   No substantial or communicative help was forthcoming.  Today there will be another attempt by driving to a library in hopes of more assistance with the obstacle.  It needs to be overcome in order to ship the order.

Awoke this morning in so much pain after returning late last night to darkness, chill.  But all the same, it is "home" here now, in the Order of the Present Moment.  And, getting up from this twin bed and thankful to have it, this "nothing" Catholic hermit got under the kitchen sink to see in what way possible to further support the sink.  There was a remaining glitch that came to light.  

Yet God has provided options now, and also the option of the printer at the library and maybe people there who might be in a helping mode.  God provides and overcomes all obstacles.  He lifts when we drop. He tosses the ball again when we fail to catch it.  What a gloriously patient and loving Father!

Then there come the thoughts as to what "nothing" would be if without God!  What would we be without Jesus Christ?  What would we be without the Holy Spirit?  How would we get past even one small obstacle?  

It seems as if a consolation comes, and on its heels comes two or three obstacles.  To pray for the grace of a good disposition and to better our attitudes and dispositions, is key.  We need the graces, and it is said that the Virgin Mary dispenses graces.  Include the Mother of God in our requests for more graces, and  pray for the appropriate ones according to God's omniscience. 

God knows what each unique soul needs and how much of it, and when to grant it.  He seems to let us go along for a hunk of earth time before we notice the grace has been granted.  It can happen nearly imperceptibly.  Or, it can happen all at once.  We don't know until we ask and also cooperate with all we can of our wills.

We can learn to overcome ourselves.  We have to desire it, though; and it requires us seeing ourselves and our flaws.  The good Lord has granted the prayer to see the flaws in this soul--the flaws and failures as a mother and wife in those vocations, although tried hard to be successful.  And now to see the lack in the hermit vocation.  It has not been an easy vocation and none that this soul would have selected from the vocations available across the vocational spectrum.

Yet, that can be a very positive reality.  Especially when we consider Jesus Christ, we see that He struggled with His mission, too.  He was tested by trials and obstacles, by every manner of rejection and hurt.  He was not accepted by many at all, and that really has not changed much today--maybe worsened with people not wanting to be His in spirit and truth.

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church, this selection strikes a solid tone:

1009 Death is transformed by Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, also himself suffered the death that is part of the human condition. Yet, despite his anguish as he faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and free submission to his Father's will. The obedience of Jesus has transformed the curse of death into a blessing.

Despite His anguish as He faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and free submission to His Father's will.

So it is with vocations that one might never know about, such as this Catholic hermit was unaware of hermit vocations for 44 years as a Protestant.  Had no idea that God would call it into the Catholic Church.  Then, had no idea of hermits or of the eremitic vocation for another four  years, although was at least introduced to St. Antony of the Desert and a bit of Merton's hermit experiment for a couple of years before his death. 

There have been gradations and levels of dying to the world, dying to others and even this hermit's notions as to what its hermit life would be or should be in the day-to-day experience.  It is increasingly more austere, more solitary, more intense in each of the Nine S'.  More silent, more solitary, more slow.  More suffering and selflessness is asked.  More simplicity, more stillness, more stability, more serenity.

One wonders at how foolish to think that a call to a vocation would be easy or without plenty of anguish along the way.  It is said the hermit life is one of the most challenging of the vocations, and perhaps this is due to its being directly correlated with the amount of dying that is involved--either in slight increments or huge hunks of acceptance.  The hermit must make daily acts of complete and free submission to God's will.  This does not happen only at the time of profession and consecration.

Just recently, nothing Catholic hermit has realized more fully it is a consecrated religious in the Catholic Church.  The somber reality of this fact has helped in appreciating the responsibility to shift into place.  The mind reflects more upon the holiest of hermits of the past, those very successful in dying to the world, including the secular or temporal of the church.  

The stricter separation in praise and prayer of God for the church and for the world and for all souls living and dead, comes with dying to what one might think or become accustomed to in living out this rather mysterious vocation--mysterious to those in the world-at-large and to other Catholics.  

It is also mysterious to the hermit him- or herself, for it is fluid yet pivotal around death of self-will and set-notions and all about obedience even unto death, death on a cross (and whatever all those crosses can be in daily dying in various aspects).  

A hermit must be open to, as Jesus exemplifies, transforming what can seem like a curse of death or many deaths, into a blessing.  Through, with and in Him, we can be given the success of this reality.


It is interesting to meditate upon Jesus as, at various levels, living out the hermit vocation.  He is God and Man.  He is a Priest in the Order of Melchizedek.  He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  He is the Living Word of God.  His Real Presence abounds in all the Sacraments of the Church. 

And yet, in a certain sense, perhaps mostly spiritual but also in practical, temporal aspects, He also lived the life of an eremitic.  Ponder these aspects.  Try, as a hermit, to imitate His life within this perspective.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another, for God Is Love.