Catholic Hermit: Seems Synonymous with "Hermit"

Noticed this morning while reading a selection from The Catechism of the Catholic Church that in a deep and sacred way, "prayer" is synonymous with the hermit vocation.

Consider the following:

2727  We must also face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of "this present world" can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant.  For example, some would have it that only that is true which can be verified by reason and science; yet prayer is a mystery that overflows both our conscious and unconscious lives.  Others, overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless.  Still others exalt sensuality  and comfort as the criteria of the true, the good, and the beautiful; whereas prayer, the "love of beauty" (philokalia) is caught up in the glory of the living and true God.  Finally, some see prayer as a flight from the world in reaction against activism; but in fact, Christian prayer is neither an escape from reality nor a divorce from life.

I find uncanny similarities with this present world of the hermit vocation, of how we hermits exist in this consecrated eremitic life of either privately professed (traditional) or publicly professed (CL603) hermits, or the rare few who in religious orders are inculcated into the hermit vocation by their abbots or abbesses, priors or prioresses.

There is the aspect of those who would have it that only the hermit vocation is consecrated if publicly professed via canon law; yet the hermit vocation overflows in both a recently written Church law as well as the true call of God to the individual soul.  

The eremitic call and the soul's acceptance has been validated through the centuries even back in the ancient lives of hermit prophets--that call and even silently professed avowal which permeates the conscious and unconscious and is.  This form of hermit, traditional, is in the Church's earliest history, made valid and real by God's law, and has always been recognized by the Church and her ordained priests and laity innately, mystically, by means of call and acceptance and vocation lived and as if breathed, consciously and unconsciously--as is prayer.

It is as if the one form, as if needing validation by visible production of vows, publicly noted, requiring a bishop to approve and receive and announce, is that of production and profit.  And, like prayer, the hermit vocation that is not visible, not noted by external garment, title, and public avowal and reception by a bishop, seems not productive, licit, nor consecrated in these current times.

Then one considers that those who overly prize the public profession of vows, may consider the privately, hidden profession of vows to be, even if declare not so, deep down hold fast to demeaning the traditional hermits, privately professed, as not consecrated in the life of the church, and as like the hidden mystery of prayer, not visibly valid or en par with the visible.

This comparison is not true of all hermits who choose the public profession route.  But it is amazing to realize that the hermit vocation, like prayer, can slip into the division and misconceptions that many hold of prayer--that the visible product, the external approval is in effect, consecrated in the Church, whereas like prayer, the actuality and beauty of the hermit vocation, a human hermit's very life has always been poured out through living holy vows professed to God through the centuries through the very Sacred Heart of Christ.

This is not to say that a hermit in this century who now may choose to have a bishop be the mediator, of sorts, receiving the vows the hermit professes and whose intentions are to live the vocation as vows in essence poured out to God.   Yet there has always been the consecration by Christ, and Christ as Head of the Body, His Church, available to any soul who avows him- or herself in various ways, means, and vocations, to invisibly live out as a prayer, "the love of beauty--caught up in the glory of the living and true God."

As to the hermit vocation in general, be it traditional private vows or more recent canonical public vows, the similarity to what is stated about prayer rings true.  In prayer some see it as a "flight from the world, against activism;" so also some see the hermit vocation as an escape from the world, a misanthropic response to an active and productive life.  

But so to is the life of a consecrated Catholic hermit--private or publicly professed--like Christian prayer.  The Catholic hermit life "is neither an escape from reality or a divorce from life."  

And why is the Christian, Catholic hermit life uncannily interchangeable with what The Catechism so rightly states about Christian prayer?  It is because the life of a hermit is that of prayer, of prayer which is caught up in the beauty of love of God, in the glory of the living and true God!

This is the important point to be made.  The hermit vocation, regardless which type of profession of vows, is that of deep and holy communing with His Real Presence in the intimacy and union of soul and God through the "seemingly" invisible action of prayer.  Pray in Christ; pray with faith, hope, and love.

God bless His Real Presence in us!