Catholic Hermit: Hermit Judging

Some personal reflections of immense gratitude:

During this lengthy, post-spine-surgery recovery, I've been reminiscing of the back-to-back surgeries in 1987 that left my body racked with constant pain.  A rare condition called Arachnoiditis occurred as a result of the rushed, emergency surgery after I flat-lined in recovery.  Rods were too distended, causing cardiac arrests.

At the time my children were ages 4, 9, and 11.  A woman who God brought at a time I needed someone, drove the children to the San Diego airport, got them boarded, and off they flew to Indianapolis, IN, where my parents drove to pick them up from the summer house on Lake Wawasee.  

As a single parent, custodial, I didn't want the children at our house in the three days prior to my surgery or during, or immediately after.  My pain was so great it was deleterious for them to  experience it from me, raw; and even though I did not then recall the waking vision three months earlier which foretold of trouble coming, I wanted my children to be where they would be extra loved and protected but also in a dream-vacation for children to be experience all that the lovely lake house and lake front had to offer them.

They had to fly back, the three of them on their own but with each other at such young ages, for the non-custodial parent insisted on not letting them miss the summer visitation, even though that parent put them in day care and day camp due to work conflict.  Aside from that and other evilry on that front, I have been thanking God for my loving parents, as they then closed up the lake home early and drove out to live with us for three months after I was allowed home from the hospital.  By then we knew I'd need help not just for a week or two, post-op.

I have gone over all the aspects that my parents sacrifice in order to help me, their adult child who'd gone against their advice in a major decision earlier on, but yet they loved me and my children with unconditional love.  I won't detail all the ways in which they sacrificed and suffered along with me and in many ways, far more, as the pain I bore and the reality of my life altered physically forever, started to sink in with each passing week I was in that hospital bed in our scrunched little family room--six of us in a tiny ranch house, 1240 sq. feet.  It could have been far worse, of course!

My parents at that time had two lovely homes in lovely settings in Indiana and Arizona, and their friends and activities, interests and hobbies, volunteer work and their church involvements.  It had been less than a year than my most painful and challenging divorce was finalized, and that situation had devastated my parents well enough.  

So anyway, I've been considering the tremendous sacrifices amid deep sorrows and grief my parents endured in the framework of their child's suddenly-calamitous life.  They were bulwarks of strength, generosity, love, and sacrifice all through even beyond their passings when my children were out of and nearly through college.

Thoughts on Hermit Judging:

But aside from those thoughts, I've been considering the topic of "hermit judging."  I have come across it in the past nearly 19 years since my profession and vows.  I admit that I have dabbled in hermit judging, myself.  But most definitely I've been a recipient of hermit judging from lay persons, non-hermit vocation-knowledgable priests, as well as from consecrated Catholic hermits themselves.  

Sometimes the hermit judging is not as vile, such as when a consecrated hermit reads about an historical or also contemporary hermits, and agrees or disagrees with aspects of those hermits' lives.  If done with the reasonable intention and outcome of making the judgment as in critical thinking type, and in order to make improvements or make changes in one's hermit life, the hermit judging can be beneficial.

If to justify oneself as a hermit and be like little Jack Horner in the corner saying what a good hermit a I, then no, it is a nasty and sinful hermit judging.  If the judging is of the hermit of oneself, that is like a hermit self-examen, and it is a marvelous exercise to be done frequently in prayerful and honest self-scrutiny as well as with gaining input in the process by one's spiritual father or confessor, and also to ask our spiritual friend/s to weigh in with their "takes" on how we are doing.

We hermits can benefit from reading about other hermits in that we can gain inspiration and ideas and reminders for our vocational improvement.  We can do a pick-sort-and-toss method of prayerfully gleaning what the Holy Spirit desires for us or even what we ourselves think might be something we could utilize or improve in.  (If we try some aspect of improving our lives based on something another hermit is doing, and if it does not prove beneficial for us, or the Holy Spirit and/or our directors point out the additive is not for the best, we can toss the inclusion.)

I've done my share of wrongful hermit-judging, or even if there were valid points I was making, what I'd do with the judgments could make or break whether there was redemption close at hand.  Thankfully, my guardian angel is marvelous at not taking long to have me see the error of my ways.  There really is no good need for a consecrated Catholic hermit to judge and put down another.  It is not our place to point out the other's ways of doing and being with which we disagree.  Just pray, and in time, the Holy Spirit or their angels or their directors will help them self-correct, if indeed they need to on some point of how they are living their vocations.

I've heard lay persons, though, and on occasion a priest or more, pass judgment on hermits.  Sometimes it is valid, or at least causes one to wonder and to desire to not be or do likewise as a hermit.  But for the most part it really does nothing positive unless we keep it to ourselves and determine not to do or be likewise or to determine that we are not tempted nor have been, to do or be likewise.

The other evening, a lay person was asking how on earth could such and so think that is any way that a hermit would live?  The person on the hermit-judging seat had a very active life and a paid job that put the hermit interacting with various people, and in leadership positions in public settings, plus went out and about as if any lay person would, other than the hermit wore a habit and had a religious name.  I think the person commenting or asking the question, had read or heard about the hermit.

I've been on the receiving end, myself.  When I was for about a year in the Community of Hermits of St. Bruno, prior to its being disbanded (but after I removed myself due to realizing it was not viable nor did God will this type of hermit life for me), in the four months I was to wear the novice habit, a very close friend's parent was having an 80th birthday at the parish across the street from my hermitage.  They wanted me to come even if briefly.  I chose charity; I went for about five minutes, wishing the mother well, and thanking her adult children for inviting me, and how lovely their honoring their mother, for it was.

But it was not before long when I had the attacks come.  People were hermit-judging because they felt a "real" hermit would NOT attend an 80th birthday celebration.  Ironically, at the same celebration and for quite awhile, was a priest who had years early been released from the diocese to become a hermit in Canada, at the late Katherine de Hoeuk Doherty's "Madonna House".  He wore no hermit habit, of course; he had his clerical garb on.

There have been so many times I've been hermit-judged, it is not worth mentioning the details.  I hermit-judge myself plenty, and that is a good thing as long as it does not go on and on with my making necessary changes and improvements.

One of my self-hermit-judging's is to catch myself if tempted to judge, and to be more careful to not hermit-judge others, and also to not lay-person-judge or priest-judge or anyone-judge.  This will be a life-long effort on my part, and perhaps well into purgatory.

One self-hermit-judging I have considered lately, is that of which I've written of the backsliding I've felt in my passion, perhaps, in my verve and discipline and determination to --now I can express it best:  devoting my life to the praise of God and the salvation of the world.  While I may do and be this in my hermit life, there are degrees of which I do it and be it.  It is all right to see the phases in which we back slide or tread water or also swim forward with winning strokes.  There is most always a reason we can discern, and once that reason is brought forth, we can see it is acceptable or understandable, or that it needs to be corrected as and when we are able.

We consecrated hermits are very human.  In this unique vocation, we are allowed some diversity in the externals as well as to feel our way some with our earthly spiritual director, our angel, and the Holy Spirit.  We are allowed to try some aspect, discard it, take on another aspect, or even go back and pick up the aspect we discarded.  (I'm thinking of mostly externals, but this is also for the interior more spiritual life aspects of our eremitic vocation.)

I'll let you think of the many examples and possibilities in all these thoughts.  Please pray for me and for all of us hermits, and for lay persons and religious order persons, for priests and bishops, that we are very watchful over and limit our hermit-judging, with the exception of the good examining, purposeful hermit-judging of ourselves.  As for judging other hermits, it suffices to make observations that inform us of what we might find beneficial or in what we would not do or be likewise.

God bless His Real Presence in us!