I'm still listening and hoping in God to be aware of insights on what a hermit is to do and be: Devote his life to the praise of God and the salvation of the world. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 920,921)
What does it mean to devote one's life? Being "single-minded of purpose" pops in. And for a hermit, the life is devoted to God but in a way that transcends praising God for this or that blessing or praising Him for His Name or any number of His glorious and divine attributes. The live devoted is to the praise of God. St. Bernard's writings on The Love of God climb to the exultant pinnacle of the highest love, the fourth degree of love as delineated by the saint: love of God in Himself.
To me, this seems to capture the aspect of how a hermit would devote his or her life to the praise of God. To me, it seems akin to, linked with, subsumed in loving God in Himself. So today while I praised God aloud on occasion for some blessing or other, including one time spontaneously saying, "I praise You, God, for helping me to grasp more how others think and feel, how they are affected by situations." Another time I wordlessly praised God for helping me to endure and get pain under control.
But in desiring to understand what it is I'm to be devoting my life to, such as devote my life to the praise of God--I grasp that this is like loving God in Himself. To love God for and Who He Is without bringing in self love to the loving, or in this case, the praising. I am wondering if praising and loving are intertwined, with the praising an action toward effecting the love of God in and for Himself. Seems so.
I'm going to open myself up more, as a result, to a sense of praising, an essence of praising, an undefined and non-orchestrated praising. I'm going to pray, asking and trusting in the the Holy Spirit to create in me this praise of God that transcends myself and my conscious and subconscious attempts at "doing" the praising for any objectified or subjective thought or emotion. May it all be praise of God, as love in Himself.
We'll see what happens.
Then the consideration arises as to hindrances to devoting my life to the praise of God. There are many obvious ones, but St. Teresa of Avila's points in Ch. 24 of The Way of Perfection remind me that being split or divided in purpose, focus--in the quest to be all for God, and for this consecrated Catholic hermit life devoted to praise of God--is a certain, multi-faceted hindrance.
This extract from the saint's own holy-spirit-filled mind presents the thoughts that cause me to love St. Teresa's unique communication style all the more. Please read it while putting your hermit self into the text, and consider it in terms of a hermit's devoting our lives to the praise of God as a form of prayer, for it is. Praise of God, like love of God in Himself, is communication of the soul with God. Praise is reaching into the higher levels of communication, leading with affective love into contemplative love of God in Himself.
"You already know that His Majesty teaches that it [Lord's Prayer] be recited in solitude. This is what He always did when He prayed and not out of any need of His own but for our instruction. It has already been mentioned that one cannot speak simultaneously to God and to the world; this would amount to nothing more than reciting the prayer while listening to what is being said elsewhere or to letting the mind wander and making no effort to control it.
"There can be exceptions at times, either because of bad humors [illness, injury]--especially if the person is melancholic--or because of faint feelings in the head so that all efforts become useless. Or it can happen that God will permit days of severe temptation in his servants for their greater good. And though in their affliction they are striving to be quiet, they cannot even be attentive to what they are saying, no matter how hard they try; nor will the intellect settle down in anything, but by the disordered way it goes about, it will seem to be in a frenzy. Whoever experiences the affliction these distractions cause will see that they are not his fault.... Like a sick person he should strive to bring some relief to his soul; let him occupy himself in other works of virtue. This advice now is for persons who are careful and who have understood that they must not speak simultaneously to both God and the world.
"What we ourselves can do is to strive to be alone; and please God it will suffice, as I say, that we understand to whom we are speaking and the answer the Lord makes to our petitions. Do you think He is silent? Even though we do not hear Him, He speaks well to the heart when we beseech Him from the heart."
All this gives me much to appreciate; am in deep gratitude to the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What opportunity we consecrated Catholic hermits have with the ways in which our vocations facilitate the deepening of our devoting our lives to the praise of God and salvation of the world!
God bless His Real Presence in us! Love in His Love!
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