Christian Catholic Mystic Hermit: Words, His Mystical Church, Bread, Love as God Loves

On occasion I read some blogs of others striving in this hermit vocation.  My main take away is that there are many words, exhausting, and many words laborious to grapple with, plod through.  So much so are the words, that the content loses meaning, the effect is, again, exhausting and empty, devoid of other than multiplicity of words.

I consider this reality and effect per my own blog and writings.  Mine fare often the same, especially when the realities of the temporal church and those ensconced in the temporal, have flared briefly and then sizzled; the effect, also, exhausting and empty, devoid other than words--and painful the loss of the ideal of Christ and His Church.

Recently I found comfort in an early saint, mystic, and I believe Doctor of the Church (these labels that have been created and affixed in later centuries by humankind), for he struggled with the ways in which the Church, by the mid-to-late second century and early third century, in his estimation with cited reasons--the temporal Church had already begun to lose Her way.  Well, the people, the body within the Church, the humankind leaders of the body, had done so--not Christ nor His Ideal of His Church.

Christ and the Ideal of His Church, with Christ as Head and all those who love and believe and follow Christ, who uphold His Word and strive to love as God Loves--the greatest command according to Jesus--Christ and the Ideal of His Church can remain intact today.  Yet one must recognize what is His Church, the ideal of His Church, and this is His Mystical Church--for means of delineating that of the temporal Church which has lost the way in various ways, off the narrow path and too much created by humankind over the centuries.

What His Mystical Church is and means in such as this Christian Catholic Mystic Hermit's every-day life, is that of progressive learning and understanding.  I must wait and be strong in order to learn and understand; and faith is required, plus picking up the cues and messages from His Living Word, such as a couple weeks ago noticing a profound description of His Mystical Church given by John the Apostle, in his Revelations.  He was shown and pointed out the lack of temporal building for His [Mystical] Church, for the temple is God Himself!

Oh, my, the suffering of this body here, this temporal, physical body. And the emotional and mental suffering that accompany severe physical suffering, continues on and on as if world without end.  But of course, there will be an end to my bodily and emotional and mental suffering.  I can find the strength and patience to wait by continuing the open awareness to learning about and experiencing here and now, His Mystical Church.

Today in the Gospel, Jesus explains how we are to pray, about the bread of life, and of our being fed the bread, His Body, and of course many of us recognize that Jesus speaks metaphorically and on varying levels in His Living Word.  I appreciated reading the thoughts on the topic, shared below by early 3rd century Cyprian, saint, Bishop of Carthage, and martyr.  God Bless His Real Presence in us, and Love in His Love!

"Our daily bread"

“Give us this day our daily bread.” This can be understood both spiritually and materially, because either understanding is of profit in divine usefulness for salvation. For Christ is the bread of life and the bread here is not for all, but is ours. And as we say “Our Father” because he is the Father of those who understand and believe, so too we say “our bread” because Christ is the bread of those of us who attain to his body. Moreover, we ask that this bread be given daily, lest (...) by the intervention of some grievous sin (...) we be separated from the body of Christ, as he himself declares, saying: “I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of my bread he shall live forever. Moreover, the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51) (...) The Lord himself warns us, saying: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you” (Jn 6:53). And so we petition that our bread, that is Christ, be given us daily, so that we, who abide and live in Christ, may not withdraw from His sanctification and body. But it can also be understood that we who have renounced the world and have cast aside its wealth and pomp in the faith given by spiritual grace seek only food and sustenance for ourselves (...). Moreover, those who have begun to be disciples of Christ according to their Master's words, renouncing all things, should ask for bread daily and not put off their petition and its desires, as the Lord himself again prescribes in these words: “Be not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will have anxieties of its own. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Mt 6:34). Worthily then does the disciple of Christ ask for sustenance for the day, since he is forbidden to worry about the morrow.

Catholic Hermit: Eucharist and Hermit

A consecrated Catholic hermit has a fascinating consideration when it comes to the reception of the Eucharist, of His Real Presence.  Being traditionally one who has stricter separation from the world (and from minor to major external and interior separation) and being less or more "hidden from the eyes of men," a hermit may not be in a position to attend the celebration of daily Mass, thus not partake of the tangible, consecrated Host.

I've come across yet again, in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in section 2837, more discussion of "daily"--temporally is repetitious of "this day" [see previous post "This Day"].  "Daily" and "this day" are to "confirm us in trust "without reservation."  "Daily" or epiousios (super-essential) "signifies what is necessary for life..." and including what is good for us to survive, to subsist.  Literally, "daily" (epiousios) "refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us.

Further in section 2837, we are reminded that "'this day' is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come.  For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day."

I appreciate what is less pedagogical in this following explanation from The Catechism as to the breadth of "this day" or "daily," as we consecrated hermits (and any of us in the Church) can discern the various ways, dependent upon our vocational conditions, we may and can receive our daily bread.

"The Eucharist is our daily bread.  The power belonging to this divine food makes it a bond of union.  Its effect is then understood as unity, so that, gathered into his Body and made members of him, we may become what we receive.... This also is our daily bread:  the readings you hear [or read] each day in church and the hymns you hear and sing.  All these are necessities for our pilgrimage.

"The Father in heaven urges us, as children of heaven, to ask for the bread of heaven.  [Christ] himself is the bread who, sown in the Virgin, raised up in the flesh, kneaded in the Passion, baked in the oven of the tomb, reserved in churches, brought to altars, furnishes the faithful each day with food from heaven."

We as hermits can inform in various ways our daily and nightly vocational life to the reception, in substance and essence, of our daily bread.  In centuries past, hermits were less likely to have access to daily Mass in a parish or even in a monastery.  Those religious brothers and sisters who have requested of their superior to become a hermit after years of being in a religious order, tend to go and live apart from the group monastic existence.  Of hermits who are priests dispensed from their diocese or monastic duties, they, also, tend to live apart, in solitude, but can request (as did Bl. Charles de Foucald) permission to celebrate by themselves, Mass.  

In contemporary times, hermits may have locational access and physical means to attend Mass at least weekly if not daily.  Yet they certainly are not required to do so, and in fact might, as their vocation grows, deepens, enriches and extends over the months and years, discern God's will in increasing, stricter separation from the world (including the world of the parish or monastery), in greater silence of solitude, and in being more truly and fully "hidden from the eyes of men."

(Here, I am reminded of a confessor I had for several years, a older monsignor and rector, who told me he only knew of one hermit in his life, and that was back when he himself was in a monastery seminary.  The hermit was a Benedictine monk, allowed to enter the hermit vocation by the abbot, and who lived out in a cabin in the woods of monastery grounds, and would come in to the monastery once a week for Mass and what provisions he might need before returning to solitude.  I realize now, several years later, that my confessor was suggesting that to me, as well; and yet I was not ready to enter into that level of solitude and of faith in the ways and means of receiving His Real Presence.)

Before continuing with pondering aspects of "daily" as it pertains to the Eucharist and the living bread of life and how we as hermits discern living our eremitic vocations, I want to share what Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the Eucharist in his Apostolic exhortation Sacramentum caritatis 77. (I insert "hermit" now and then to remind us to reflect upon how it is we as hermits may be called by God and guided by the Holy Spirit to re-form our individual hermit lives in accordance with what the Church also asks of us as members of the Body of Christ, living the hermit vocation.)

"It must be acknowledged that one of the most serious effects of the secularization... [hermits may consider aspects of our eremitic, daily lives in which we become, as it were, "secularized", weakened, by our own undoing and deception] is that it has relegated the Christian faith to the margins of life as it if were irrelevant to everyday affairs.  The futility of this way of living...is now evident to everyone.  Today there is a need to rediscover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person, whose becoming part of human history is capable of renewing the life of every man and woman [or hermit].

"Hence the Eucharist, as the source and summit of the Church's life and mission, must be translated into spirituality, into a [hermit] life lived 'according to the Spirit' (Rom 8:4ff.; cf. Gal 5:16, 25).  It is significant that Saint Paul, in the passage of the Letter to the Romans where he invites his hearers to offer the new spiritual worship, also speaks of the need for a change in their way of living and thinking:  'Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect' (12:2).  

"In this way the Apostle of the Gentiles emphasizes the link between true spiritual worship and the need for a new way of understanding and living one's [hermit] life. An integral part of the eucharistic form of the Christian life is a new way of thinking, 'so that we may no longer be children [hermits] tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine' (Eph 4:14).

In my own reflections upon the living out of my daily hermit life, in context of the life of the Church and the Body of Christ, in consideration of my eremitic vocation in the consecrated life of the Church, I all the more seriously pray for God's wisdom and will in what He desires of me, His Catholic hermit, down to the every temporal and spiritual detail of living in His Real Presence.

For me, now, from these holy selections as well as from His Living Word, the Holy Scriptures, I am discerning ways to re-form my daily life as a consecrated Catholic hermit.  With my physical incapacitation, I cannot go into Mass at the parish (no monastery nearby) even weekly.  The parish visitor who had been bringing me the Eucharist in the form of the consecrated Host, has been away for 8 weeks or so.  I have been sustained by His Living Word daily, but I have considered the hermits of yore who, far out in the literal, actual desert, subsisted in spiritual communion in Christ, the Bread of Life, in the Body of Christ.

The other day I used my grabber-reacher tool to pick up from where I could not bend, a few booklets of hymns of Mass and special liturgical celebrations (ordination Mass, solemnities, Christmas, Easter, etc.).  While I cannot sit yet, not even for a short while without too much pain, to more ably hold my Celtic harp, the physical therapist set it up on my counter-height table.  I stood and ineptly plucked out one hymn, just the melody; and a second attempt included trying to recall how to formulate chords.  I'm rusty after the harp being packed away over six years!  

After reading the above citations, I realize that playing and singing (my voice untrained, vocal chords aged and unused in most days of total silence)-- this also is my--our--daily bread.  I plan to incorporate the CD's of Bach's and Mozart's Masses; I have yet to re-figure how to use the unpacked CD music player and hook up the speakers.  But I will!  This will create some "noise" in Solus Deus hermitage, but the good of this form of this daily bread is holy. 

The reality of Christ, of His Real Presence in me and me in Him and His being in this hermitage with me, all the more imbues a glorious participation in His life, death, and resurrection, in His sacrifice in the Mass and in His going forth among all peoples, our Savior, and in my also being sent forth without even leaving my hermitage other than to try to walk back and forth past a handful of houses or being taken to a rare medical appointment in this my time of slow surgery recovery.

Christ is His Real Presence in the consecrated Host; He is the Eucharist, and as Pope Benedict XVI states, the Eucharist must be translated into spirituality of a life lived according to the Spirit.  The reality of this Communion in Christ in the eucharistic form of living such a life, inspires me in this transitional period of my own hermit life, with openness and receptivity of the ways in which the Holy Spirit will reform my externals so as to heighten the interior of my mind, heart, and soul.

God bless His Real Presence in us!