Catholic Hermit's Challenge Already Challenging

Yesterday a young friend with whom am reading (across the many miles) Pseudo-Dionysius' Complete Works, decided upon a shared challenge.  It is to pray and ask His Real Presence to begin removing our various attachments to temporal loves.  Our goal and hope is to be in His will and have His Perfect Love--not our own wills and our willful attachments to our own temporal loves, good as they might seem from human perspective.  

His Love, His Perfect Love, is perfect love and best.

This morning, awoke at 3 a.m. with the body filled in all limbs with burning, aching pain.  The body is worn out, and the mind struggles to cope with it.  The emotions are holding steady--by the grace of God alone!  It is taking all effort, now later in the morning, to make the body go outside, grab a shovel, and start either shoveling dirt from a pile of sod that has composted for two years or to begin digging around some fruit bushes and working in some fertilizing compost, and then making some "wells" around each to hold water as it is quite dry already despite a little rain the past two days.

Last evening, received an unexpected "message" from a young friend who stated she was in adoration and felt directed by the Lord to send a passage she had just read.  Thought it meant for this hermit at this very point in time.  

And of course, it is!  In fact, as the Holy Spirit works such matters out in our temporal daily lives, just that morning the hermit had been thinking of this young woman:  wife, and mother of three busy boys.  How on earth she had the energy to be late at night in an adoration chapel, astounds.  But then, there is the gentle reminder from the Paraclete that a body without constant pain and 32 years younger than this one, has a bit more energy.  (Thanks be to His Real Presence for such understanding of this hermit's immediate thoughts of regret that it is not "doing" more.)

And that leads right into, once again, the message the young woman felt the Holy Spirit instructing her to send.  Oh, it is so good and right!  You will see once you read it.  Just perfect and pertinent!

Well, what do you think?  The hermit has emailed the sender, asking who it is to whom the Lord spoke these words in 1987.  Always like to know because try to pray and connect with the person as well as His Real Presence; seems to help in the steeping process of what is so apropos to this hermit's challenge.

Already, the hermit realizes the challenge is on this morning:  Attachment to bed and rest when pain is a type of attachment--rather than to get the physical body moving about, working, making progress to improve His soil, seeds, and fruit shrubs...plus praying in silent abandonment to and in His will rather than thinking of burning pain in this hermit's self-will.

Lord, please keep removing whatever attachments to temporal loves in this servant soul of yours--attachments that are hindering it from remaining always in Your Love and from loving You and Your All with Your Perfect Love.

Catholic Hermits and Sunday Obligation: Excellent Blogpost

Just came across for second time, a blog on Unam Sanctam Catholicam, Sunday, November 12, 2012.  How did hermits meet the Sunday obligation?

It is well-documented plus reasonably thought and presented.  This blog is not written by hermit, but the blogger has certainly broached a topic that has been a conundrum and weight on this Catholic hermit's mind, heart and soul for awhile.  In the past three weeks, the answer has been given and validated repeatedly by God through various others.  And, deep peace has settled within.

Now, am offering more to His Real Presence, in whatever ways He wills, as to any aspect of the eremitic vocation, lived out by this "nothing" but very Catholic, avowed and professed, hermit of nearly 14 years.

The past two days, The Lord has allowed the most severest of spinal headaches in recent or distant recall.  Last night, thought perhaps had an artery or vein leak...some aneurism.  Was content and in peace, and the thought of quietly passing all the more seemed a grace.  Yes, the hermit vocation has now become just that accepted and beautiful since the conflict that this hermit had allowed to brew within.  How many ways did The Lord need to tell, to show, to affirm that His ways are not our ways and not even the notions of the very learned priests of His days on earth or of ours?

Considering the history of hermits in the past 2000 years (including John the Baptist and various hermit prophets) and prior, of Old Testament hermits even if not termed thus, it all makes sense now--the judging by others and even by self, and the concerns of this or that way and posture and fitting in or not...not being as others or even as this hermit thought ought be.

Had already come to the understanding that this particular "nothing's" Catholic hermit vocation was following more along the lines of those who were in remote areas, suffered much, and remained quite physically hidden and far from parishes and Mass attendance.

The reality of His Real Presence in Scriptures, as the Sacrament available and accessible day and night to hermits, settled in the other morning.

God provides!

Another devout Catholic friend, across many hundreds of earthly miles, called yesterday.  It all made sense to yet another.  And the less frequency of human contacts via phone is another indication of how God may and can inform our daily living out of the eremitic life.  It all depends upon what He chooses and wills, hermit by hermit.

Odd as it seems, the friend laughed and agreed that it is as if this "nothing" who kept insisting on trying to fulfill what it thought the proper and necessary Catholic obligations, was instead causing Divine intervention in more and more ways to block the doors being pushed.  As a result, the more and increasingly bizarre the events utilized to try to get through to this hermit:  Not what God wants and wills, at least not at this time.

How patient and merciful is His Real Presence with us in our various and individual vocations!  It has been a strange and bumpy road these fourteen years as a Catholic hermit.  May this hermit be far more resilient to future vocational wishes He desires!

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one a other as He has loved us!

Up High, Praying

The back is absolutely having pain fits; the right shoulder is used to needful excess; but painting the exterior of Te Deum House needs to be accomplished, bit by bit.  In house painting, one begins up under the eaves and works down.  Paint can splatter; old paint chips fall to the ground and can be brushed off dry siding far easier than painted surface....

Up high on 24' ladder, rigging a wire to hold the paint bucket, but first do the scraping, then the caulking.  Being a novice, it took two times the length of the highest side of house in order to complete the caulking.  That is because one aspect of the construction only came to mind as needing caulk, after the obvious part was finished, foot by foot, some 36 feet of tight eaves and overhang.

On occasion the "nothing" would pray and then thank the Guardian Angel, Beth.  (Beth is a masculine noun in Hebrew meaning "house of."  I did not name the angel; the name was told in an amazing way--just the right way for I had been skeptical as a convert of Catholics with their named Guardian Angels.  His Real Presence taught me a lesson!  And Beth is the angel's name, and the meaning is significant because of needing help with houses--temporal ones like this consummate fixer-upper but mostly help with the soul abode.

Pray climbing up the ladder; praise God coming down.  While up there, suspended some 20' with face close to the siding, the reminder of the vision of two years ago seems all the more heightened since writing of it a couple days ago.  But the prayers are for the Church, the world, this country, and for a young woman and her husband who lost their first baby girl six weeks prior to the due date.  Baby died in the womb unexpectedly.  

Life is so precious, so fragile, and filled with surprises that go beyond what we can fathom.  For the couple, their friends, and the grandparents, there will be much grieving.  It will take courage in the future, and much prayer, to determine if the couple are willing to be open to another baby or more.

God always has His reasons for everything.  Was pondering this truth when up high, praying.

Catherine of Siena (in the part of the biography am currently reading) learned and reminded those around her that there is nothing more important in life than to desire to please God in everything and also to desire being in His will.  Especially in aspects of life that seem difficult and painful, one is to embrace and accept as coming from God for some reason, some lesson to be learned, and for some good that will evolve.  

(This is especially important to consider and enact even if the evil one has been involved, for there is nothing better than to ascribe to God all matters, and to learn lessons from even the most painful and confusing of situations.  Bring it all to good, hope, faith and love!  Drives the devil away and confounds him, also; and it glorifies God, always.)

Becoming physically pained and weary from the ladder perch and the frequent climbs up and down, decided to rest a bit.  The next decision here is a temporal one, although am praying for some kind of light from His Real Presence as to His choice of paint colors.  The bottom part of Te Deum House is going to be a creamy golden tan color.  Sonlight Halo, it can be called.  

The top, above a "belly band" and for the gables, there is a choice of two greenish blues; one is lighter, the other darker.  The belly band and trim will be, of course, in deference to the Nine S':  Simply White.   The darker of the greenish blues may win out once the body is rested and the mind and soul have pondered what He desires.  There is nothing pale about His Real Presence, or so it seems.  

The darker, the bolder, the richer in green-blue may remind His Real Presence of the sea, or can remind us of His eyes of which the little boy, Colton Brupo, said are the most beautiful shade of greenish blue.  Akiana Karmarik, the child prodigy artist who has seen Jesus and Heaven and paints beyond all earthly means at her age, paints Jesus' eyes such a color--gorgeous sea bluish-green. 

Well, that did not take long.  Some rest, some quiet thoughts, some considering aspects of Jesus in regard to color...and the decision is made!  God is in the details, and pleasing Him is hopefully in paying attention to the details in such a way as always considering His Real Presence no matter how mundane in the temporal, and no matter how elevated in the mystical.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another, for God Is Love!