This morning I awoke after having slept six hours (a good night!) and in time to drive to morning Mass. In the past few days I've been striving to build stamina by sitting some, on the counter-height wood chair at counter-height dining table where I've written some thank you notes as well as Mary, Mother of God and Epiphany notes.
This was a first Mass since before spine surgery, and then was difficult due to the increasing pain from the severe stenosis. While I'm in bed upon return, it is a major victory and blessing to have been able to manage to sit on the upholstered and padded--but firmer than most padding--pews. I'm in the nausea phase of the resultant pain, but I so appreciated being in secure seclusion of the darkened day chapel with remote TV broadcasting the Mass in the large apse and sanctuary of adjoining, immense, structural worship space.
The ecstasy was lighter than most but per usual, deepened with intensity with the Consecration. The priest's sermon was his usual excellent in spiritual substance and instructive value for the faithful present. Within the mystical ecstasy during Mass, the body is suspended, but the mind, heart, and spirit are as if deeply immersed in the present moment--beyond description or anything of the temporal world.
I am blessed the Lord grants me this sip of passing over, when my temporal body is able to be at Mass. And thankfully, this priest has accommodated my mystical experience by having me safely unnoticed in the small day chapel which is otherwise unused, unneeded as overflow seating in the lesser attended weekday Masses. I am able to come and go unnoticed--save for the church's exterior door "greeter" of whom all those volunteering for these positions are always cheerful and welcoming to all in the Body of Christ who enter for worship.
While Dec. 29th was the 19th anniversary of my hermit profession and vows, I plan to renew my vows as I have done every year except during the 5 1/2 years when living in construction and renovation of Te Deum Hermitage and the deepest aspects of severe physical or temporal stripping the Lord has provided in my life.
I hope in God to renew my eremitic profession and vows tomorrow while before the altar in the day chapel, if solus Deus allows it to be thus. Most years a priest would be in attendance--various different priests; but I have come to appreciate Jesus as High Priest in attendance of my soul and my hermit vocation.
Increasingly, perhaps aided in this by the increasing suffering in my life here on earth, my view and inspiration, my goal or striving in this eremitic vocation as a life vehicle by which my temporal and spiritual life can meld in the living out day by day and night by night--has become a heartfelt desire of holiness and virtue rather than externals of living the vocation, or what contemporaries think it out be.
I have learned over the years and in lived experience, that even priests and bishops have extensive and varying ideas and perceptions in mind of what is a Catholic hermit. It would be impossible to try to meet with the notions or perceptions of hermit vocation and even purpose, of others in our times.
Rather, I consider the best guides and examples to be Christ, of course, and John the Baptist, various of the Old Testament prophets who were essentially also hermits, and the saintly and holy hermits of the past, whose lives live on along with either their own writings or the writings of others describing their lives and wisdoms learned and passed along to others.
Essentially, I desire to familiarize all the more and strive in hermit holiness of soul and spirit, in thought and feeling, and in action (and in my case mostly inaction other than the activity of pain), more than words. The One I seek to please is His Real Presence: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I want to also be pleasing to the Holy Mother of God, Mary, also given the honor of Mother of Hermits. I want to be pleasing to the angels--my guardian angel and the Archangels, and all the choirs of angels.
The encouraging spark has been recently re-ignited within me, and in thinking of the various hermit saints of whom I've read and have been introduced to in little ways and reminders of those I've met in past years, has been augmented by a section I read not long ago, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church. While the suggestion may seem slight in emphasis, the point is firm regarding how ordinary people can desire and strive and hope in God for sanctity despite being imperfect sinners. There is always promise and hope in God's mercy and redemption.
"58 The covenant with Noah remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel. The Bible venerates several great figures among the Gentiles: Abel the just, the king-priest Melchizedek--a figure of Christ--and the upright 'Noah, Daniel, and Job.' Scripture thus expresses the heights of sanctity that can be reached by those who live according to the covenant of Noah, waiting for Christ to 'gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.'"
Holiness, to me, seems a worthwhile desire in that the Lord may be pleased and glorified in ways only the Lord may will and grace within our souls and throughout our existence through, with, and in His Real Presence.
Thus, the distractions that might seem important or tempting as necessary facets of the hermit vocation, the various externals and opinions and notions, one realizes by the grace of the Holy Spirit and in reconnoitering in Scripture and the lives of holy hermits whose lives have been chronicled and proven over the years and centuries, that there is so much more depth and breadth in the spirit of soul than in the external subjectiveness of what even we might think necessary or correct.
I'm praying and praising God for whatever means and ways He may will for the living out of my soul's purpose now and in the unfolding present moments of life lived in this vocation as a Catholic hermit, within the consecrated life of the Church. God's way, God's will, God's desire for my body, mind, heart, and soul must always be the way of this human being who is also His hermit child.
On a light and humorous ending to this post, someone I've known for nearly 50 years, our lives having woven in and out in unique and unexpected points of phases, sent an email capping off her calendar year. The emails always include a quote from some famous person, often a literary figure. This current email's quote struck my funny bone. Humor: usually, if not always, a good reminder not to take the temporal tendencies of our imperfect human egos too seriously.
The quote:
"If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell." ~ Carl Sandburg
God bless His Real Presence in us! Little children, let us love one another, for God Is Love!
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