I'm finishing up this recent exploration of what the Catholic Church asks of her consecrated hermits. This includes those of us who either by public or private profession of the evangelical counsels, and after having discerned the call from God to this vocation, have been living out the aspects according to the basics as set forth by the Church in Sections 920, 921 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
We tend to be guided by a holy priest or if publicly professed, by a diocese bishop or his appointed delegate, as our superior; but the onus of our daily lives rests between ourselves and the Lord, the Superior of Whom we have dedicated our lives, as is so eloquently expressed by the Church in the provided sections. In summation, from section 921, this concluding statement seems sublimely appropriate in these last few days of Ordinary Time, with Advent four days hence.
"Here is a particular call to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified one."
For me, personally, as a Catholic hermit, living out what will be the finality of my earthly days as within and with others in the consecrated life of the Church, this call has been supernally particular. The more I continue, soon into my 20th year of being privately professed and already into the 21st year of postulant and novitiate practicum in living the Church's hermit life, the more I am in gratitude and awe of God's prescient and providential calling me into this vocation.
I could never have anticipated, yet in September, 1999, there it was--set before me. Off and on over the earlier years, the Lord would reinforce His particular call, as I have mentioned in previous posts, in visions, locutions, and vision-dreams. I am most fortunate other than the reality that He went to such measures, or so it seems to me, due to my needing His direct intervention to help guide, encourage, remind, instruct and explain when I would wonder why this or not that in regard to how the vocation was unfolding, or when I would wander off the narrow path He chose for me, His Catholic hermit.
And I came to understand what He chose for me in this particular call, was as particular as to what He chose for others in this particular call to hermit life. Thus I came to understand and appreciate the unique aspects of this vocation, with no one hermit in any set pattern or form, even within the long-held private or more recently the option of public, profession in the hermit vocation. We eremites are united in the reality of the particular call; how blessed are we Catholic hermits all!
We all are to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified one. Finding Christ's glory as the Crucified one, God's only Son Who sacrificed His life for our salvation, is the glory to which we hope in God and pray to come to union through, with, and in Him.
To this end, so to speak (although it is truly the beginning of glorious eternal life, fully unified in all ways fathomable and unfathomable), we are called. And we are shown through the history and tradition of the Church and before and beyond, the mysterious surety of the desert as our "place" of seeking and finding this glory of the Crucified one.
And this finding of in the desert--yea, the desert not only of our external exigencies but the desert of our minds, hearts, and souls--after whatever hours, days, months, and years in the thick of spiritual battle, we become One with Christ Crucified.
I cannot explain or express other than perhaps in what I have been graced to experience in snippets of union with Christ--of which I really cannot describe in words that provide other than external-type aspects and interior feelings of intangible bliss--and even that word "bliss" is inadequate. Others of you hermits can or could express and describe far better and more adequately.
But we know there is no point to attempting, not much, in describing what is not possible for words to convey--or at least not needfully so, as those before us--saintly hermits and holy mystics have described enough for us to seek what they sought, and find what they found.
Union through, with, and in His Real Presence--and union that is not a glimpse or glimmer but eternal union--this union is God's will for us and our yearning desire for Him: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It is for and to the desire, no matter the silence, solitude, and sacrifices of the temporal and spiritual desert, despite the arduous and sometimes frighteningly emptying-out of ourselves through one spiritual battle after another, that we simple human beings called "hermits" or "eremites", perdure until we find the glory of the Crucified Christ.
I find it significant that we find the glory of Christ--but of the crucified Christ.
Honestly, I cannot yet, but do admit, that I beg the infusion of inspiration of the Holy Spirit to help me understand, to know, to absorb and incorporate into the core of mind, heart, and soul of which God created--what this truly means, or perhaps more, the specificity as such: the glory of the Crucified one.
Perhaps I am not ready to fully grasp; perhaps the Holy Trinity--His Real Presence--must keep from me the fullness of grasping such glory and the true depth and mystical comprehension of Christ crucified--as opposed to our theological understanding of which I could write words, descriptions, examples, and theological discourse from great minds of the Church Fathers and saints.
Perhaps the Holy Trinity is explaining to me the glory of the Crucified slowly, in the on-going ebb and tide of my life of imperfect suffering, in the gradually increasing love-pain, prolonged in and by my struggling, my plaints caught somewhere twixt my human selfishness and my holy desired, spiritual selflessness.
In the meantime, I keep to my best hope-in-God striving: praising, as in praise of God's glory, praying as for the salvation of the world, of souls, and in the silence of anonymous writing and the living out of my life, most all in the silence of solitude, and all as my way of being, albeit yet imperfectly, a silent preaching of the Lord to whom I've surrendered my life and to Him who means everything to me.
To all this, and all that I cannot explain in words or feelings, I've been called, particularly so, by God.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Let us love God in Himself above all things, and love one another as God loves.
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