Yes, this pained, consecrated, Catholic hermit is coming to acceptance of the Lord's trimming a couple of contacts. Some who do not grasp the Lord working in my personal life experience and who are unfamiliar with how the phases of hermit life evolve and unfold over the years might easily come up with some worldly reason for the trimming off "the fat" of friendships.
I know from knowing the Lord and knowing myself and my spiritual life--how He handles me through the years when it is His will and His timing to prune His hermit mystic. He's carved distractions that no longer need to be thus. The one person has been trimmed back for awhile; the other is more recent and justifiable, I grasp, from the other person's standpoint and mine in a temporal friendship sense. Spiritually, I understand whereas the other might not so much.
The distraction simply had to be trimmed back; that's the best way to express it. Even though the communication was texts, the content became unnecessary. My prayers and my concern for the person and the person's spouse are summed in my love for them both and each. The prayers and love suffice.
As for the other one trimmed back, the trimming was severe four months or so ago. There was not so much growth occurring as a dyad; the other needed growth in ways that I did not. I needed and need growth in the ways the other does not.
When the Lord trims, He does so justly and purposefully. The soul's response to being trimmed is that of acceptance, understanding, and gratitude. When the trimming is perfect in timeliness, there is little grieving. The souls are ready. Even if one or the other does not understand or there is a disagreement by one who does not grasp the timeliness and need for the Lord's trimming out and away, at some point all will be understood by all. Acceptance regardless our feelings during the process is the only response suitable in such a situation. Accept and await what the Lord has next for us.
For a hermit, what is next is a filling in more of His Real Presence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For a lay person, what is next often means some other persons the Lord brings into the space left by the trimming. When the situation involves both a hermit and a lay friend, and the lay friend is not Catholic, there might not be an awareness of why the Lord is trimming and separating the fat and gristle from the meat and bone of a friendship.
This trimming and separating does not mean the two will no longer appreciate even a friendship from childhood. It just means that the Lord has something in addition or "other than" what was or a shift from "what is" to what He wills to be. And while there is acceptance, there also is some sense of the transition.
While a person may not be anticipating or expecting the Lord's trimming, there can be a relief and an anticipation of the Lord's provision and guidance in what He wills for the extra space made as a result of trimming and separating of what no longer necessary or growing in benefit.
I feel all right about it. I am not surprised in a measured sense; I get it, I appreciate it, I am open and willing for what of my mission and purpose in life and as a hermit, is to become in the space and time created by God.
For certain, the Lord does not keep His beloved children stagnant be they linked for years even if of different faiths, vocations, temperaments, through sickness and difficult situations. He does not allow us--bodies, minds, hearts, and souls--to remain stagnant or on a "plateau," resting, for long. The present moments become past, and the future moments become present, over and over and over.
What does remain, however, if the person desires, is love. And we know that love takes on varying forms, degrees, and purposes in any given relationship. As a consecrated Catholic hermit, my vocation evolves and unfolds through, with, and in the praise of God and the salvation of the world. And in my contemplating and praying for insights as to what is the praise of God--what does that mean from God's perspective--increasingly the insight constructs within my mind, heart, and soul of the linkage between the praise of God and the love of God.
My purpose as a consecrated Catholic hermit, in part, is to devote my life to the praise of God--to love God in Himself--and for the salvation of the world. With the added space that remains after the Lord trimmed and separated of that which, to the space and time it filled up, I am opened up to His filling in, Himself, into that space. When the timing and purpose is the Lord's, there is not regret nor misgiving; the transaction involving the trimming, is meant by God and understood as such.
The process is actually quite natural. The acceptance is genuine and within, automatic and grace-filled. It is as it is, as God allows and wills! I am eager to explore in more depth, what the Church intends for her consecrated Catholic hermits in the desire for us to have a "stricter separation from the world."
Certainly the trimming and separating out of aspects in loving (even long-time) friendships qualifies as a stricter separation from the world--the world of temporal relationships, temporal communications. Prayer, always, remains among those persons whom we know, care about, love.
Prayer is an act of loving communication with the Triune God; prayer includes all those we know and love in our lives as well as all people in the Body of Christ on this earth and in process to fullness of love and light as well as those in purity of heaven. Prayer includes communication with God for all souls past, present, future. Praise of God is also a form of communication with God--prayer that extends beyond words and into praise of God as love of God in Himself.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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