Catholic Hermit: St. Mary of Egypt, Hermit and Penitent

While the Roman calendar lists St. Mary of Egypt as commemorated on April, 3, the Greek Church celebrates her today, April 1--what is left of "today."  The Roman Martyrology celebrates her on April 2--which is already "today" for many of you dear readers of this blog.  

St. Mary of Egypt is probably the most meaningful of the female hermits to whom I'm "attached" at this point--holy attachment I hope in God and pray!  I also consider her a mentor and guide from the other side, as for whatever reasons, there are sorrows and regrets in my existence, and I appreciate St. Mary of Egypt's penitent life history after what seems to be terrible and shameful sins she regretted and did penance. 

While I do not ascribe to dwelling on the past--the Order of the Present Moment is the "religious order" in which the Lord placed me over 24 years ago (vivid locution/vision while at Mass)--in the present moments as life progresses, the Lord, also, through the Holy Spirit and my angel, continues to show me my flaws and sins.  

Just this morning, very early morning, I realized I have not individuated out from an adult child, while I have considered that the adult child was succeeding in individuating out from me.  The Holy Spirit reminded me, yet again, to view matters from the other person's perspective, and not my own.  

I realized I had been intrusive and insulting, in a way, of concern and caring.  Became concerned for their health; not hearing, the concern grew.  I'd even offered to be the one to go out for groceries rather than they risk themselves with virus exposure, or that I'd include them in a Costco (bulk warehouse store) order if they needed.  My concerns which grew in my mind as some hours passed, were eventually met with humor, even some ridicule. 

The adult child has been on own for many years, including 9-11 crisis military intelligence stint as Arabic linguist, and then years with family of own.  The last thing they need is old-parent concern and reaching in to their capable and responsible lives!  But I reacted wrongly to their reaction of my heightened concerns--until I saw my own wrong in reaching in with over-concern when that is not what they need or desire.  

Old-parent parenting is not at all needed! Only what others really need of me are my understanding, respect, bits of temporal support (when and if asked), prayers, and love from my hermitage mode of silence, solitude, and stricter separation.  Even in this time period of the COVID-19 pandemic and the alarming increase of positive cases, the hermit's adult children are that--adults. 

Their handling of their lives and their children's lives is with far more aptitude of the outer world and its temporal risks than this old hermit who does not go out but rarely.  They have three other sets of parents/grandparents who are "with it," relevant and active, in the temporal world.  Yes, three sets (the other divorced parents all remarried) of parents/grandparents: a God to physically disabled hermit reality check!)  

Years ago I'd taken seriously and to heart and mind, my late spiritual father's admonition to me the day after my hermit profession and avowal (over 19 years past), today the Holy Spirit reminds the adult children were barely adults back then.  He advised me that charity first is in order, especially when it comes to the three children.  Back then, while out on their own for most part, they were yet to marry and be into careers, relationships, and having families and homes of their own.

So in addition to my always seeking God's will and guidance in my life, amidst my trying to be ever-available to my adult children and grandchildren, the Lord answers through the adult children's not needing my reaching in and added concerns.  The adult children prefer of me an as-needed basis of which they will be in contact when and if they have a desire or a specific need.  Otherwise, my situation and presence is actually more a concern, if not mostly a burden, to them!  This reality uncovers a type of pride, for the Lord humbles me in my nothingness!  I'm laughing now with the irony!

This old hermit's above digression is an example, though, of what might seem minor transgressions or sins, of which my reaction, though, to their reaction yesterday, was not a virtuous reaction on my part.  When  shown the others' perspective I could text an apology, expressing that I had been intrusive and insulting without meaning to, but bottom line--my concern and escalating concern was impinging and misplaced--about 20 years or more out-of-place!

My laziness and love of staying in bed is another sin of sorts.  Sloth it is; and today I had a not-oft call from someone who also is feeling stagnant with too much sitting at kitchen table in a comfortable chair, with the hours passing listening to news of the coronavirus crisis and in making calls to people to chat. So we agreed to pray for one another, as my upper respiratory infection is gone about as good as it will be, after four weeks of mostly blurry recall. 

By the grace of God and the prayers of others, I got up, dressed, and did for first-time, a drive-through to pharmacy then back to Solus Deus Hermitage. With purpose of reducing allergies, I proceeded to cut out three portions of bedroom carpet and pad, stuff it into three trash containers, and away it will go in next morning's refuse pick-up.  I had to rest (in bed!) between each removal of smallish piece of carpet and pad--that's just how de-conditioned this body.  

Yet I'm "back in the saddle" as far as offering the physical effort as praise of God and for the salvation of the world (all souls therein).  And while I'm not "doing" anything out in the world and far from the "front lines" of this war against the invisible enemy of COVID-19, I've begun again the ora et labora --pray and work.  The pain praying melds with the work-praying, and is my offering and effort along with so many others who are unable to contribute in actively relevant and heroic ways.

Compared to Mary of Egypt, my life physical, mindful, heart-full and soulful is not the arduous and austere and penitential as was hers.  It's a wonder that she would even be pleased with my looking to her for guidance and mentorship.  In faith, I continue to be fascinated by her life, all the same.  My sins while not all identical to hers in her youth, are still sinful and plenty of them, on-going.  I've backslid in the zeal I used to have as well as in austerity.  (Loving the comfort of a bed is a small part of many such temporal comforts, privileges, and securities-- health insurance and medication also a major benefit and gift!)

But I go forth in faith and hope in God that St. Mary of Egypt continue mentoring, inspiring, and chastening me in all the ways my own hermit vocation might be useful and good to God's glory and of benefit in whatever ways God wills, to others.  Given the global pandemic, the tremendous suffering of now increasingly numbers of younger people and even youth, the painful, suffocating deaths up-ticking daily, and the threat to world-wide economic calamity, as well, all the more I pray that my life, such as it is, might be a relevant and vital help at least spiritually in ways unseen and unknown.  

Ours is a most serious and dire time, greater than my nearly 69 years have witnessed.  Faith and hope in God, love of others, sacrifice, and praise of God for all the good ways in which humanity is trying to help one another in the various ways we truly can help--this is for all of us to participate no matter how small or insignificant our attempts to help.  God knows our hearts!  Mary of Egypt would seem to most people, not to have made much contribution in her lifetime.  Yet God knew her then and now.  His will is fulfilled in many ways.

"At the tender age of twelve, Mary left her father's house that she might sin without restraint, and for seventeen years she lived in shame at Alexandria. Then she accompanied a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and entangled many in grievous sin.

"She was in that city on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and went with the crowd to the church which contained the precious wood.  The rest entered and adored; but Mary was invisibly held back.  In that instant her misery and pollution burst upon her.  Turning to the Immaculate Mother, whose picture faced her in the porch, she vowed thenceforth to do penance if she might if she might enter and stand like Magdalen beside the Cross.  Then she entered in.  As she knelt before Our Lady on leaving the church, a voice came to her which said, 'Pass over Jordan, and thou shalt find rest.'

"She went into the wilderness, and there, in 420, forty-seven years after, the Abbot Zosimus met her.  She told him that for seventeen years the old songs and scenes had haunted her; ever since, she had had perfect peace.  At her request he brought her on Holy Thursday the sacred body of Christ [in form of Holy Communion].

"She bade him return again after a year, and this time he found her corpse upon the sand, with an inscription saying, 'Bury here the body of Mary the sinner.'

"The Bollandists [17th c. association of scholars, historians, etc. who studied hagiography of saints] place her death on April 1, 421...."  

St. Mary of Egypt:  344-421

Catholic Hermit: Blessed Christ the King!

It's taken the usual morning and into afternoon to get a grip on pain, but the time has been spent as well as I hope in God possible--a phone call from an elderly friend whose son not much younger than I, had a golf ball-size tumor removed a week ago tomorrow.  Benign is the word from test results just in!  Praise God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and all creatures therein!

Then a greeting from an eldest sister who is on a cruise with her husband, wishing me well in recovery and Happy Thanksgiving.  Very kind; they were in port for a couple hours with internet service.  I returned a greeting and thanks, and also that this morning I thought of  her and our other sister, next elder one, and that 46 years ago today we were all together, as they were in my late morning wedding at the Methodist Church in which we were brought up those many years ago.

This morning I had prayed another forgiveness of the ex-spouse, and thought briefly--enforced briefly--of the ten years of marriage and of the infidelity and other life the spouse was living for all of it.  Forgiveness was given immediately all those years ago, yet I did factor that had the spouse not left after the accident, or had I heeded reality checks along the way, there'd not have been an accident had I heeded some situations, or had I not had to exert so much after the spouse left and divorced, I'd likely not needed the back surgery in which the mistakes were made, causing this Adhesive Arachnoiditis and life of suffering and increasingly so.

However, of course I stopped those realities and replaced with the realities of the greatest treasures of my earthly existence in the form of three beautiful, accomplished, and beloved children--now all adults with significant others and two with families of their own.  They each are past age 33, the age in which my life was drastically altered, painfully so, and for that I am extra grateful to God.  They had various other sufferings to endure from early ages, their childhoods hindered and difficult in contending with a single parent with chronic pain and limited resources.  

I do hope in God that they will realize, perhaps after we are all passed from this temporal earth, just how much I love and treasure them and thank God for them; they were the precious jewels God gave me for the best portions of the temporal.

But not to dwell on all that past, other than in my current effort in acceptance of this highest level of pain consistently, to date, and of a thankfully greater understanding, on my part, as to what these three beloved persons, now adults, experienced.  To their credit and the glory of God, they succeeded in trooping through those years, through college, through their adult lives thus far.  None of it is easy for anyone--simply living in the temporal world, everyone with their own sufferings of various types, their challenges, and much hard work.

Thus this day commemorating Christ the King is extra meaningful to me as a human, a parent, a child of God, a victim soul of Jesus, a consecrated Catholic hermit, a friend to those who can cope with the effects of what I can somewhat explain of Adhesive Arachnoiditis, and also to express their prayer needs, for I do sometimes think that the Lord answers my prayers in an added blessing of ways unknown and unseen.

Some others, mostly the handful of Catholic friends who remain in contact over the years, think so, also.  Somehow the Lord is very linked to those of us who suffer and who offer ourselves fully to Christ our King.  We remain more on the cross with Him than anywhere other.  We scan the daily news for bits of details and persons and entire situations for which we pray.  Our lives become a prayer of pain, the pain praying as much or more than words or thoughts in our minds or feelings in our hearts.

And the more I consider what I wrote last evening of the intrinsic qualities of love and pain being bound as if one, or at least interchangeable in some aspects and references, we embrace the cross as love, and we suffer pain as love.  We come to love to suffer and suffer to love.  We find Christ the King in our pain.

We do not glorify pain, of course; we glorify Christ the King, our Savior, our Lord of Lords!  Yet He is to Whom we cling in our suffering, constantly in some of our cases, and we accept that others may not possibly be able to understand that need, that essential aspect of our lives--to cling to Jesus on the cross, for we cannot manage without Him, without what others might find extreme clasping, extreme focus, extreme love of Christ, the Son of God to Whom we go, and the Holy Spirit, likewise, to Whom we grasp in the desperation of such suffering, of pain that has become love, and love that is pain.

There is glory in such love, glory in Christ our King, victory through and of and from His salvific suffering and redeeming all of us humans--those who seek Him in whatever degrees of seeking and even clutching, clinging--and those who have gotten busy in other things, who have minds elsewhere, who have grown distant or not ever really been that close.  Those of us who suffer enough to love so much and need Him in every breath to hold us tight--we include in our pain and love, all others.

That is the least we can do and be and pray.  And to be praise of His glory, to be living, suffering praise of God through sickness and health, through good times and bad; and in Christ, not even death will we part.

God bless Christ the King present within us!