What I've Learned After Two Decades as a Consecrated Catholic Hermit

There's no need to have a label of "hermit."

There's no need in being a "canonically approved hermit."

There's not really even a need for a formal vow, for if God has asked or given you this vocation, it is ordained by God, and you will live it and learn and offer yourself regardless of title or approval by others, including a bishop. 

However, if a written vow helps one feel more committed, or a sign taken such as wearing a crucifix--which really is more a sign of being a Christian, regardless, then write out a vow and tell it to God, for if one cannot keep a vow to God, why would one think one could keep a vow repeated to a person, even if a titled person in a church?  But if one feels there is helpfulness in the accountability factor of such as a spiritual director or some other person knowing one is a hermit, then do so.

A simple, inner assent to God's will what we consider small and large matters, suffices.

I realize after nearly 22 years of this evolving vocation, that my foremost vocation is as a Christian.  Being a Catholic or a hermit are not so much the focus as what earlier on I thought each identity ought to be. I think this is because in seeking God and living the hermit vocation, I have grown more dependent on God than on the temporal church or a style of living such as hermit vocation when it simply is how God has chosen for me for His reasons and not really mine.  

And the Trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are my focus; I have come to recognize and accept God's showing me the other, the temporal aspects such as "hermit" and temporal church more structured aspects, and asked why would I want that when I can have Him more directly now?  And that now was several years ago, but finally, in this now, I have come to realize that God has progressed me through the temporal aspects, helpful and wonderful as they are, but has me all the more conformed to His way of how He wants me to exist and to love and pray and worship and glorify Him.  As St. Paul writes, "to exist in His glory."

So it's more that I've learned and had to let go of what we humans think and prescribe and create and develop in labels of vocations within our signature and main vocation of being Christians--lovers and followers of Christ--and allow God to take us through this corridor or passageway of life, through the temporal Catholic Church or such, and begin to learn to live and love more as a spiritual being, grasping that His Real Presence is in spiritual Communion, the Living Word, and prayer as well as the temporal and tangible Communion, for His Real Presence of Body and Blood, Living Word, and communication with the Living God in prayer--He is in us and we are in Him, as Jesus states in various ways indirectly and directly.

When faith grows, love grows, and body becomes less and less, and the mind and emotions of temporal world ease off their dependency and tethers to the temporal world, we become His more directly, and have Him more directly, and that in all aspects of His Real Presence. We are being prepared for the spiritual, mystical realm of eternity where temporal and tangible signs and helps for our faith will not be needed.  No label of what we are in God will be needed--for all souls will be of God as we already are souls of God here, already, and have been from the beginning.  Those of us who have accepted Christ as our savior and love and know the Three Persons of the Trinity--this is acceptance, love, and dependency on the Godhead is our commitment.  Increasingly as God brings us along through the corridor of our lives and in the Church, the need for touchstones, ritual, and tangibles lessen and we come to grasp His Real Presence in sheer faith.

It can be scary from the human standpoint, to let go the human need for approval, labels, titles, a "place" in which we gain some sort of confidence based on our position among others.  But at some point, which can be during our lives, usually later on, or at death and beyond death, we must let go and not want that other, the temporal aspects good as they may seem, and desire and understand that we can have God more directly now, and actually, on into eternity... now and forever.

Perhaps the Covid Pandemic has helped in some ways, with many realizing through spiritual communion, that can occur any time at all in which we desire, that His Real Presence is in us and we are in Him in actuality, and the tangible Host is not available, so we learn in faith that He is sustaining us in that spiritual communion as well as He is in us in the Living Word we read or have in our thoughts, and when we pray--yes, His Real Presence we are conversing with and glorifying and expressing love, God and us.

I have learned over the last few years that I confess my sins to God in prayer, and He absolves me; and Jesus teaches us to acknowledge to God, ourselves, to others--and ask for forgiveness for our sins.  But God in His Mystery and Power and Grace, in God's Mercy and Love--He forgives me all my sins.

But until we come to this point of faith and understanding and love of God, He in His goodness provides the temporal and tangible touchstones of faith, and that is well and good and what God provides.  But at some point we find we've been led to let go, not have dependency on alter Christi or on holy tangibles, or the beautiful touchstones--but let go, accept God's offer to let God have us more directly.  The process will, like all that is of God, occur according to His will and timing and our dying to self and rising in faith.

(Some will understand what I'm writing; others might not.  May God be praised either way.)

God bless His Real Presence in us.  Yes, His Real Presence abides in us, and we abide in His Real Presence, and this can be always and everywhere, as communion, His Word, and prayer and our love of God become understood as being always.AA