Yesterday was Easter.
This nothing consecrated Catholic hermit spent the bulk of the day on sleeping bag in tiny room now completed. The couple who usually brings the Eucharist to Te Deum Hermitage was away visiting their family. Mystical communion is more this hermit's custom over the past few years and increasingly precious indeed.
The silence of solitude assists spiritual reception of Christ's real Body and Blood take on added depth and presence. Easter thus became all the more glorious in a realistic and tangible sense. Of the joy in celebrating Christ's resurrection, of the Scriptures for Easter Mass celebrated around the globe, this simple excerpt from 2 Colossians (Chapter 3) touched me.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Not only have I died further, in various ways during Lent, yesterday it was as if my bodily energy had died. While my body lay on the floor in this tomb-sized room, my thoughts considered resurrection of various types.
One rising was shortly after noon in which I decided to at least sand and prime a handful of trim boards awaiting me on sawhorses set up inside the hermitage. That bit of manual effort was my "sprint" toward realizing the tomb is empty and Christ's Word being always true even if I do not always grasp the facets of His meaning.
Another tangible rising was to stand in kitchen and prepare a simple salad. Yet two other risings were to respond to the ring tone of phone. Listen and share--converse--with two people who wished to discuss their thoughts, feelings, and prayer intentions on Easter Day.
The intangible risings floated in and out of the conscious from subconscious, placed within by the Holy Spirit of Whom Christ promised would come after He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. So we now exist in the essence of celebratory remembrance of and renewing the joyous expectancy of Ascension and Pentecost.
I considered that there will be a personal resurrection from this particular temporal abode at some point fairly soon, God willing and this wear hermit's body able. And while I dare not make too many set-in-time plans, for the Lord desires me to learn well to live in the Order of the Present Moment, I considered that Our Lord lived also with some timely plans that the Father willed, such as the Son's crucifixion and death, and then resurrection of His Body, and then ascending into Heaven, and the bequeathing of the Holy Spirit.
It is not so easy to think not of what is on earth when we have earthly responsibilities. On Saturday I utilized a phone to reserve a storage unit for some earthly possessions; I called and reserved a moving truck. I used the laptop to reserve a one-way airline ticket so that in two weeks I can load and drive a truck to another location, to place in storage and return to this hermitage to finish work for completion and sale to whomever will abide in here next.
I thought some of what is on earth when viewing the weather forecast for the upcoming days. I must work outside (as much as the pained body can do so and God-given energy allows) when there is no rain; and I must continue efforts on finishing the hermitage interior on days when rain showers the outer vicinity. Thus my thoughts in these matters are of earth.
However, can one be at one level thinking on that which is of earth while at another level thinking of what is above? Or is it more that we may exist in what is above, as when we have died--that is, died to earthly attachments and desire to live in the love and abiding presence of Christ--we exist furthermore as eternal souls hidden with Christ, in God.
This form of existence re-enacts the life, death, and resurrection of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We cannot force such an existence; we must desire it, though. We pray and ask God for the grace to die over and over, of which celebrating Holy Week and Easter becomes a recycling metamorphosis in our earthly present moments, breathing us through this temporal life into that blessed hiddenness with Christ, in God.
For a Catholic hermit--consecrated in the life of the Church--living more tangibly in a hidden manner help the body and mind to be and think increasingly not of earth but of that which is above. Our hearts increasingly desire and are born into this hiddenness that evolves from temporal to mystical hiddenness--a form of union with God. Our life with Christ can form union with God while we yet exist temporally even if the depth and breadth of such union varies can come and go, while we are in our bodies.
When we desire and strive all the more for life hidden with Christ, the graces God bestows upon our hearts, minds, and souls flow without our fully understanding how. God even bestows temporal means to bodily hiddenness which assists our grasp of being with Christ in God. For hermits, it is quite the blessing in how God arranges our very existences in every present moment and by the nature of our vocation, to have access to temporal hiddenness that also very much allows for mystical hiddenness with Christ.
Praying for such a gift as well as agreeing to align our wills with God's desire for us to die to ourselves and to rise with Christ to be in union with Him in God--our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls have little to "do" other than to rest in His Real Presence when rest is His will, and to do in His Real Presence when He wills some form of interior or exterior movement.
How blessed are hermits when we hermits agree to and desire to live our lives according to God's graces and allowances of more hiddenness, for increased silence of solitude, for an existence of prayer and praise amidst what temporal modes of present moment tasks. Our bodies as if dead to so many distractions of the secular, temporal world--our minds, hearts and souls can breathe, think, and be in that which is above, with Christ and in God.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Remain in His Love!
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