I suspected I would have much laughter today! The one who could be described as Pharisaical cannot help but try to spin my spiritual life and my temporal life as sad or pathetic, or unwell, or whatever in negative terms may be suggested.
It does not take but a quick scan to recognize this one's reaction to whatever I write; I used to not even scan it and likely will cease doing so for it is predictably negatively slanted, not in my favor. But rather than as the person projects, I have been quite joyful over being to some or all as well as to myself now: an "illegal" Catholic hermit.
Yes, I could be what may be preferred terminology in current secular terms, an "undocumented Catholic hermit." (I do have a sense of humor which seems lost on pharisaical mindsets.) I also realize with the passage of time since 1983, there is increasing use of CL603 for hermits. It will prevail. I am not nor ever have been "recognized" per that canon. I may be sooner or later. Or I may not be. Bishop can decide his preferences of which canon law is likely.
But as to being a lay hermit, no, and I trust St. Pope John Paul II on this reality. Until I would renounce my profession of the three evangelical counsels, at least to a holy priest or bishop and that ordained person receive my renunciation (or whatever process they develop for such renouncement) as well as renunciation of my hermit vow and rule of life, I am not by the Church's own designations, part of the laity or lay state. That is why the term "lay hermit" is a misnomer, not factually nor literally possible for even an illegal Catholic hermit.
I yet remain God's hermit until no longer. My literal, factual, actual situation is by God's choosing, not mine, in that He chose me for the hermit life. My guardian angel in a reality greater than this temporal world stated even if in a chastising reminder 13 years ago, per my explicitly stated hermit life, "...thatGod chose for you and honors very much!"
I'm presume that my bishop, or new spiritual father, or my priest confessor, can assist me in some sort of legal renunciation or nullification per church way, of my profession, vow, and rule of life--if the Lord Himself no longer wants me to be His hermit, or if the Bishop does not want me to be a diocese CL603 hermit. This is all yet TBD: to be determined. Fluid and motile situation as are all of us and our situations in this temporal realm. Yet God's realm remains constant.
Thus Jesus says it best in today's Mass Gospel: Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition.' He went on to say, 'How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!.... You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things" (Mk 7:6-8, 13).
Others have questioned the validity of some CL603 person/s lived hermits lives, suggesting more like a religious order person yet even more in active life than most religious nuns or monks would be. Since my guardian angel gave my most humbling and even rather scary (my insides were shaken as my angel told me those 13 years ago that I'd not been living nor honoring the hermit life that God had chosen for me and values very much), I am the last person to criticize others' ways of adhering to what the Church states in description of how Catholic hermits are to be living our lives.
I still cringe, though, when people (Catholics many of them) refer to the late Thomas Merton as having lived as a "hermit for the last several years of his life." I have spent, in the past, quite a bit of time at the Abbey of Gethsemane where is buried Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis)--ironically as some Trappists comment, beside the remains of the Abbot, Dom Fox, with whom Thomas Merton had quite a contentious relationship while both priests were alive. While I credit in part, the earlier writings of Thomas Merton with my conversion to Catholicism, by God's grace I did not read his later writings in which he was veering off course himself, into fascination with Buddhism and got very involved in the anti-Vietnam War protests and movement, Merton's hermit couple or so years had undertones rather shocking.
The abbey has posthumously published Merton's private journals, and they have not tried to mask (which is how I like to write of my own life experiences) the reality of Merton's human and errant side. We are all sinners! Part of Merton's desire and motivation to want to be a hermit, rests in his desire to be free from Dom Fox and their contentious relationship, as Fox was Merton's abbot and Superior. Not good to have one's superior be a person one does not at all get along with, to state it mildly. The other underlying reason Merton had in wanting to live apart from the monastery, out in the woods in a small house they fixed up for him for his hermitage, is that he had met a very young woman, a student nurse, when he was in a Louisville hospital, briefly, for a hernia surgery.
Merton was about 55 or 56 years old at the time; the young woman in early 20's. In effect, he seduced her, they fell romantically in love. When Merton was released from hospital and back in his hermitage in the monastery woods, he continued the romantic relationship with the young woman through letters, phone calls, and secretive meetings with her. He had a friend or two from outside the monastery, who would pick him up on a road to which Merton would walk from his hermitage, and drive him to meet his young lover. A monk who was assigned to the abbey phone switchboard, noticed the high number of phone calls Merton would make from his hermitage and became suspicious.
Perhaps not "right" in some aspects for the young monk to listen in, the younger monk did so, finally, on one of the phone calls. He discovered with some shock but suspicions confirmed, what Merton was up to, reported the affair to Dom Fox, and Merton was called in from his "hermitage" to be given an ultimatum: break off the romantic (became actively sexual) relationship with the woman half-and-more less his age and of course not in keeping with his vow as celibacy as not only a priest but a hermit, or leave the priesthood and monastery. Of course, the abbey did not want to lose Fr. Louis not only due to his priesthood, but also due to his having become for years a most famous and outstanding writer with tremendous amounts of royalties from his books and articles, coming into the abbey. Thus, Merton was in a good position to negotiate, and did so, with his arch rival, Dom Fox.
The Abbot agreed that Merton could continue to publish, travel, and speak (which he'd continued 5o even under the (guise?) of being a hermit, and that active, public life included trips to Tibet and Thailand where Merton was exploring Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and met and spoke with the Dalai Llama. Merton also negotiated that upon his return from a forthcoming speaking engagement in Thailand, an international conference on peace and relating to the controversial Vietnam war, Merton would relocate to a new Trappist (Cistercian) foundation being developed in Redlands, CA. However, the Lord had other plans for Fr. Louis, and he was shockingly electrocuted just prior to his speaking at the international peace gathering in Bankok, Thailand, in early December--I believe it was the 8th--1968.
So while I love and massively appreciate Merton's writings, especially the earlier ones pre-mid 1960's, his hermit couple of years toward the end of his shockingly truncated life, are realistically portrayed in the type of honesty which I prefer such as in my own nondescript and insignificant life journey. I love journalistic honesty and in-process "case studies," and the monks at Gethsemane in these post-Merton years make no excuses for Merton, and do not consider him material for canonization. Yet, all the good in his writings up to when he veered off, of which many of us have found tremendous edification and will continue to, may also find good as I do, from his human capacity to sin and be deceptive of which sin is so clever.
We all can relate with Thomas Merton, and we can learn from his earthly major stumble and fall from grace. Some have considered that his death by electrocution to be prescient of sorts. I have no idea; none of us do. We are not God! Jesus is merciful! King David certainly sinned in the sin of the flesh. Some may even consider that Merton was used by the Cistercians for his talent as a writer, of which his writing and fame resulting, would have been a tremendous temptation to pride and also drew him out of what otherwise--the Cistercians--is known as a cloistered and observant of rule of silence and humility--religious order begun in the 11th century by St. Bernard.
I myself, in an early and youthful phase of my life, Thomas Merton's later writings badly influenced me. His temptation and fall from grace regarding his vows and in the seduction of an older man, a priest, who certainly knew better morally, of a quite young woman barely out of her teens, affected me, confused and upset me, and for a short while weakened and caused questions as to the sins of the flesh. But the Lord prevailed, and I learned much of how the devil can twist and use someone so influential in his writings, to lead also in later writings, people along the trail that leads off the ledge from right into wrong.
(I have read all of Merton's books, and still have the ones on my shelves with content specifically beneficial to silence and solitude. I even read, after I was Catholic, his later books in which he was perhaps, we could say, interested and fascinated in what he could glean from Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. I have read his private journals (now perhaps in the general market) in the Gethsemane library. I yet love and appreciate Thomas Merton--yet of course was disappointed that he fell to the sin of the flesh and was distracted, but perhaps more so his animosity with Dom Fox and the way in which Merton lived his hermit life. History and hermits can learn and determine if that was a hermit vocation well lived or not, or even properly discerned to begin with. Too many variables may have interfered with the motives to begin with. God only knows and Jesus is Judge of us all.)
I actually am accepted as a victim soul, for the Abbey of Gethsemane. The abbot at the time in which the two of us were alone in chapel, when the Lord suggested to me that I offer to the abbot, my suffering as I was then also a victim soul of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for the benefit of the abbey. The abbot, in the silence of the chapel, was pleased to accept my offer. A holy brother monk, no longer on this earth, wrote me later of the then abbot having discussed my offering and his acceptance, in Chapter, and there was much joy in all this offering of my suffering and their acceptance.
While that abbot is no longer Dom, and I'm not even sure if he is yet alive, my offering of my constant suffering remains as officially accepted as I suppose a victim soul offering can be, and I think of the Abbey of Gethsemane and my pain prayers and painful life, being intrinsically linked with all their intentions and needs. It is quite profound, in actuality. May God be praised!
I also have stood and prayed at the graves of Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis) and of Dom Fox, and I had a little talk with Thomas Merton as to the confusion his later writings and fall to temptation, caused me personally, but of course I forgave him, and I rejoiced that the two souls, their bodies lying in Kentucky soil in simply marked graves no different than all the other graves including the holy Bro. Rene, are no on good terms with one another. So be it! God bless us all and protect us from temptation, and lead us from sin in to grace and His loving mercy. We are forgiven when we confess our sins, do penance, and amend our lives! Rejoice!
Yet, as to who is a hermit and who is not, we have examples of approved hermits and certainly of such as me, a currently illegal hermit in the eyes of the Church, who may or may not be living the hermit life nor of honoring the hermit life, in ways that we ought be. It is a process, as I've written of many times. A legal CL603 hermit may veer off track and be deceived. A priest hermit approved by his religious Order Superior may veer off track and be living quite a dissolute life of deception and immorality.
Yet a hermit such as I who have striven to live the hermit life increasingly in the stated ways the Church describes and of how the saint hermits of yore lived their lives, am technically and thus in temporal fact, illegal. And I am delighted with this illegal status! I will before long learn what my diocese Superior decides per his wishes for my status. Life unfolds; I write honestly of my temporal and spiritual life progression. Of course in these contemporary, earthly times we have various factors that the traditional hermits did not have to contend with; but I am all the same chosen by God for this hermit life which God values very much; but I am quite illegal at this point, per the canons of the Church. Be joyful, hermit!
I suppose like other mystics, what God speaks, and God's law, will always take higher place than temporal. I find it most interesting, this juxtaposition of the CL603 hermit designation and of God's choosing. I assume in some way they both will meld, or else I will need to be God's hermit but illegal by man's law, even if Holy Mother Church law. In that case, I will be very clear that I am illegal of temporal Church but chosen by God as His hermit. I find it all fascinating and very positive. St. Joan of Arc notably chose to adhere to what God told her. We know the outcome: burned at the stake as a heretic. Yet soon after declared a saint by the populace and eventually the Church followed suit.
It is truth time and again, that mystics tend to be eaten up and spit out by others, Catholic others, in particular. It is all part of the Lord conforming these temporal anomalies to Himself in the path of suffering and crucifixion.
What I'm discovering--awoke with this reality--is just how much in the over 20 years since beginning the hermit vocation discernment process (that "God chose for" me "and values very much") just how much my identity as a person and soul has become as one with the hermit vocation and way of life. I question if this is good? I rather think that the Lord in this current situation and realistic temporal process, of which the spiritual is always a significant if not predominate part, that He is pointing out to me that my identity has become too much wrapped up in hermit vocation, which is only a temporal vocation, at that.
Have I been too much of my body, mind, heart, and soul identified and enmeshed in the temporal vocation of Catholic hermit--whether illegally so or to be a hermit recognized by Church law? Perhaps, for the thought of being not a Catholic hermit by Church law, and in essence an "illegal Catholic hermit" felt as if a large chunk of my interior was being torn or excised. I consider thus, that hermit identity can be in God's sight too dominate? Is that what He wants me to grasp and adjust whether am to be a by canon, legal hermit or not?
I will pray and listen and ponder this real possibility, that hermits (legal and illegal) can identify too much with their hermit vocation--approved by the Church or approved by God, either way or both). Perhaps too much emphasis on hermit vocation and life rather than on the soul's progress to union with God, which is the point and purpose of our human journeys and soul's progression in His Real Presence. Our true identity is to be in Christ. That may already be God's answer.
And, of course, per usual, I will write and share honestly of what I hear and discern, of what Scriptures and various other ways the Lord speaks to us.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Little children, let os love God above all things and love others as God loves us all!
