So, so very exhausted with increased level of pain today. Yet I must overcome "self." I have the little chart in which I mark how many times I get up, beside me on the bed amidst Breviary, two books by and about St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and a book on the Holy Spirit. I must persevere in faith, hope, and love. I must accept that until further notice, I am an "invalid."
I did not choose to be an invalid. Being an invalid is my current status and has been for awhile; God has allowed this bodily, temporal situation. In fact, God likely wills and ordains this point of suffering and disability in which the body's pain level increases beyond what the mind and medication can cope--and still remain awake and alert even if mobility very much limited.
Perhaps sometime in future, the Lord will allow a return to semi-invalid status for my body. And, of course, my mind and heart and thus my soul, are each and all participate with the body's state of present undoing. While the more non-temporal, bodily aspects of my "self" are participants with the pain and spine issues, my mind, heart, and soul have not "chosen" this to be my body's status. Yet it is, and God allows this status for, actually, quite marvelous and spiritual reasons and benefits.
I mention the reality that I have not chosen to be an invalid--nor semi-invalid when that was more the case than now--because a couple or so weeks ago, a parishioner called. She'd been told of my spine surgery situation by the parish nurse and thought there was part-time employment for her here in this hermitage, working for me. While I did not at all need nor could begin to afford hiring someone part-time as all I needed was someone to provide for me an occasional errand, the parishioner did ask a very good question.
"Why did you choose to become a hermit?"
My simple answer, immediately, was that I did not "choose" to become a hermit. God chose me to be His hermit. God called me to this vocation. God calls certain people in His Church to certain forms of religious and consecrated life in the Church. God chose me to be His hermit, and I agreed to and accepted learning and living out this vocation for now over 20 years.
I may have mentioned to her some or all of these additional facts. After my period of learning and testing my living the life, I made my profession of the evangelical counsels and offered my vows, have a rule of life, and strive to live a life of prayer, penance, praise of God, in stricter separation from the world....
I did not go into further explanation with her of the reality of an eremitic vocation in the Consecrated Life of the Catholic Church. However, that reality includes that, again, a person does not choose the hermit vocation; God chooses the person and the vocation, for that person, to live that vocation.
God prepared me in advance, prior to my even being Catholic and knowing about a religious vocation such as eremitic life; He indicated to me that this would be my vocation in an early on and rather major, corporeal vision and locution back in late 1985 or early 1986. (I'd have to go back in old journals to specify the exact date.)
I could expand upon how God chooses us by more examples and details. But this is surely clear enough and as well to leave it simply put.
Of course, regarding my not choosing my current, temporal, physical situation as an invalid. But God chooses and wills in allowing this invalidism for me because He is creator and sovereign, loving Lord of my existence, always. I yet hope in God that at some point He will choose for me more mobility even to point of being a semi-invalid, or for a lesser level of pain and/or His grace that I better bear it.
In the meantime, a couple from the parish, a family member, and a neighbor and his wife overcoming cancer have run my infrequent errands. I gift them monetarily and with prayers and gratitude; and with hope in God that I can also do for them sometime as they do for me. These aspects of Christian charity are without our "choosing." We can choose or not choose to help one another, pray for one another, love one another.
These examples are quite distinct and different from God choosing us for a religious (having to do with religion and the Church) vocation and our agreeing to accept His will in choosing us such as for the eremitic (hermit) life.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
