Catholic Christian Hermit: LIfe-changing words from Origen

 I found these words to be inspirational plus practically helpful in making changes in my own life.  Perhaps they will be profoundly changing for others, as well.  I realize to no let my own attitudes enslave me, nor the attitudes, moods of others or to let situations enslave me, as well.  Jesus is my Master; I must follow Him as best I can, and not droop with whatever is going on around me.

Origen (c.185-253)

priest and theologian

Homilies on Exodus, no. 12, 4

"If you remain in my word (…) the truth will set you free"

“The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17) (…) But how can we find this freedom who are slaves of this world, slaves of money, slaves of fleshly desires? It is true that I strive to amend and judge myself; I condemn my faults. And on their part, let those who hear me examine the thoughts of their own hearts. But let me mention that, insofar as I am bound by one of these attachments, I have not been converted to the Lord nor attained true freedom, since such matters and preoccupations still have power to hold me (…). As we know, it is written that: “A person is a slave of whatever overcomes him” (2 Pt 2:19). Now, even if I am not overcome by love of money, even if I am not bound by concern for possessions and riches, yet I am hungry for acclaim and anxious for human glory when I take account of the regard shown me by others and of what they say about me, when I worry about what someone thinks of me, about someone else's estimation, when I am afraid to displease one and want to please another. So long as I have these preoccupations, I am their slave. Yet I should like to make an effort to set myself free from them and try to break free from the yoke of this shameful slavery and attain the liberty Saint Paul tells us about: “You were called for freedom; do not become slaves to human beings” (Gal 5:13; 1 Cor 7:23). But who will gain this freedom for me? Who will deliver me from this shameful slavery if not he who said: “If the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed” (…) So let us faithfully serve and “love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength” (Mk 12:30), so that we may merit to receive the gift of freedom from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Catholic Hermit: Knowing Jesus

Still considering how it is that there is divergence in Christianity and why some depart.  Or, also, why some are prone to legalism, to laws of minds, functional as they may seem--I wonder.  

I appreciate what The Catechism explains of the "old law" being a first stage of revealed law, of moral prescriptions, and why the law of Moses was necessary.  It does make sense of matters even in the early church when some (personality tendency?) even then remained occupied with needing externals to form or uphold their ability to have faith.

"1980 The Old Law is the first stage of revealed law.  Its moral prescriptions are summed up in the Ten Commandments."

"1981 The Law of Moses contains many truths naturally accessible to reason.  God has revealed them because men did not read them in their hearts."

If we do not have truths--Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life--in our hearts, we may then turn to or actually need a first stage, such as the old law, moral prescriptions or externals such as what food to eat or not eat, or what various laws of minds are then created to give security to some or many.

In our lives and moral and spiritual development, we do seem to progress through phases.  As St. Paul put it, we needed milk when young but later ought to live on pure spiritual food.

Perhaps, I do think, the divergences come when some progress to knowing Jesus, of having God's law of love and the ability to "read" the law of love in our hearts.  Or, there are those who have not progressed to knowing either the Father or Jesus, who have not God's law, the greatest commandment, nor ability to read God's law of love in our hearts.

It thus seems crucial that we desire and pray to know Jesus and the Father or either One, and to be open and accepting to the Holy Spirit in our hearts, our inner sanctum of our souls.  It is crucial to grasp with great faith, hope, and love, that we are within the Trinity and the Trinity is within us, always and everywhere.

Jesus gives us the prescription of spiritual life, as quoted in the Gospel of John.

"I have told you this so that you may not fall away.
They will expel you from the synagogues;
In fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you
will think he is offering worship to God.
They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me."

So today, this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit and child of God, lover of Christ my Spouse, will ask anew that I know deeply and truly, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  I pray to love God with all my body, mind, heart, and spirit.  I pray to love God in Himself, above all things, and to love others as God loves.  

To know Jesus, to truly know Him, is to know the Father.  To have love of Jesus in the depths of our beings, to know with assurance that He is in us and we are in Him--this is truth and eternal life.  

I wonder if I know Jesus to the degree that I desire, or if I desire to know Jesus in the fullness of love of God in Himself?  I suppose I would not know, nor is it necessary to know.  What is needful is to simply keep loving, keep asking to love Him more and more, and to desire with fullness of body, mind, and heart, that His love will infuse love all the more in my soul.

This will be my hope, in faith, of holy charity, while I get up on the ladder that I will pull up onto the scaffolding, while I paint the stairwell trim, way up high, for the final effort before installing the stairs.  Yes, in many ways literal and spiritual, the result may then be the stairway to heavenly love. 
  

Catholic Hermit: Remain in Jesus' Love

My spiritual father wrote again.  I so cherish his letters; it takes a great deal of physical effort on his part to write due to health considerations.  The content is always rich and deep, speckled with humor, as well.

He wonders about what it is that priests have done or not done, for he grieves the people leaving the Catholic Church.  He takes this upon himself, being a priest--and a holy one at that.

I have pondered his comments and concerns, and I responded to his letter the other day.

It is not on the priests, although many have not been screened by bishops, perhaps, so well before entering seminary.  The decline in membership and also those attending Mass is also not a new sorrow for the Church, yet it does seem to be increasingly so.

Much has to do with all of us Catholics, whether those of us in the consecrated life of the Church or those who are in married or single vocations.  

The problem seems to be within ourselves, and it has to do with following and immersing ourselves in the laws of mind or the law of God: the law of love.  Love God above all things and love others as God loves.  This is the law of God, Jesus' greatest commandment, and it is verily how Jesus taught and more so, how He lived His earthly life as an example for us all.

Another way to view the dispersion of people to other faiths or no faith at all, has to do perhaps with the externals.  It does seem to me--this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit who is old, worn from suffering but praying while doing a great deal of manual labor and learning a bit to remain in Christ's love--that some are drawn to the Church and exist in the Church due to a need or attraction to externals.

Someone wrote to me recently with an article attached, about a US bishop who was convinced the decline in Catholics is due to not receiving Communion properly.  He had a call for Catholics to receive Communion on the tongue and not in the hand, and in a kneeling position.

The person who sent me the article found this to be just the answer to our Catholic Church's membership woes and why such persons as our Vice President and newest Supreme Court justice left the Catholic Church and attend other--such as evangelical or Episcopalian.  Well, we all known those who have left the Catholic Church over the years, and there are many factors involved in the persons' reasons and choice.

Even trying to figure it out can bring us to dwell upon the externals.  Yet there is a reality occurring, and whether in the time of John of the Cross or of the early Church or of our time period now, it seems to come down to love.  Love in His Love, or not so much love in His Love.

We are in love of Christ or not so much, and we love God in Himself or love a bit more the temporal aspects of the Church, and in some cases love the temporal aspects of the world.  And there are gradations of these aspects of love.  

But love of God in Himself, loving God above all else and loving others as God loves--remaining in His love: this is the command of Jesus, given to us to follow and live, always, in all circumstances.

We do love aspects of the world, but it is through the love of God that this is possible and keeps the love as outflow of God's love, not our notion or expression of love--but a love that flows from God.  We are in God, and He is in us.  Jesus says in so many ways:  Remain in My love.

Remaining in His love includes remaining in His Living Word.  It includes remaining in His Real Presence, also, and this includes receiving His Body and Blood.  Yet there is the grace of God involved and our own choosing, to love God above all things and to love others as God loves.

We must get ourselves out of the way and cease our desire to live in and place our minds and hearts and bodies into other considerations, the laws of minds which tend to be rooted in the externals.

I suppose some personalities are more inclined to the externals, or it can be a habit or was instilled in childhood or such.  To love God above all things and to love others as God loves is not on the same trajectory as loving laws of minds and being caught up in externals.  Remaining in Christ's love alters a soul's life and existence, here and eternally.

Pray to remain in His Love.  Desire to love God above all things and to love others as God loves.  God loves in and through and with us, thus.  Quite the process, but there is a turning point of grace that He provides once we begin to let go of ourselves.

I suppose, of course, that loving God above all things includes the things that we people have deemed as necessary, such as the early Church began deeming certain rituals or trends as necessary.  Laws of minds develop from minds.  The law of God is of God Who Is Love.

"Remain in My Love" Jesus tells us in His Word and life example.  There are mystics and saints who learned obedience through suffering, to love, to love to learn to love in His love.  We do have many examples, thus.

Jesus Can't Have Expressed It More Clearly....

Yesterday's Gospel in the Mass readings of the Living Word cannot be more explicit.  And this is where and how I, a small dot of a nothing consecrated Catholic hermit, went wrong in my earliest years of tremendous effort trying to fit in and follow all the Catholic laws of minds and created traditions--in a dizzying effect and rather inert outcome.  

See what you think.

"He [Jesus] responded,
'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!'"

Now, I write above that I went wrong in my earliest years in all that effort to do and follow every little rule and tradition that I thought was necessary in order to be a good Catholic.  Yes, I so wanted to fit in, even though St. Catherine of Siena appeared to me in a dream and let me know that the spiritual life and remaining in His Real Presence was "not a formula."

But, the zeal to do well and do all the aspects of externals which seemed to bring the saints their results, brought me not to sanctity.  It brought me to a type of salvation from the entangling nets of human tradition, of human precepts that well-intentioned Catholics over the centuries have developed into taught doctrines.

And some of it is all right, I suppose.  We are a people needing direction and order; and traditions can help warm and uplift our desires for remaining in His Real Presence.  But they are not the Stairway to Heaven.  They are not even the handrail.

The risk of human tradition is that we lose sight and life in living God's commandment.

Love God above all things and love others as ourselves.

I think this is partly the reason why the more I strove to do all that I was reading about and learning as a new Catholic convert, the more I hit obstacles.  Who placed these much-needed, eye-and-soul-opening obstacles in my path--the realization of these doctrines of human precepts?

His Real Presence! Thanks be to God! And I kept hitting the traditions and doctrines of human precepts, much like a rubber toad repeatedly thrown against a wall.

Who can live like that and truly spiritually progress in the spiritual life of which the key, the stairway, the pinnacle is His Real Presence, and the Way and Truth and Life is His Law of Love?

Even when my angel reminded me in firmly chastising terms 9 years ago this month that I was not living nor honoring the hermit life that God had chosen for me and values very much--I turned too much of my focus then on trying to live the hermit life...according to the human precepts of hermit law and hermit tradition.

Thanks be to God that I am not a Catholic hermit by law or human precept!  I am consecrated by His Real Presence, my heart consecrated by and in His Heart.  And I am a hermit by His choosing, not by any other human's precept--not bishop nor canon law--nor by my own precept. And I also am a confirmed Catholic, anointed by the oil of gladness, a forever follower and belover of Christ.

I am simply a soul whose packaging in this world and in the life of the Church is merely hermit-wrapping.  It is how I must proceed in life, honoring, valuing, living the hermit life that God chose for me.  And what is the foundation of hermit life, or of any life, of Catholic life, of Christian life, of soul life?  It is to live the law of God, the law of His Love, the law of God's commandment.

Love God above all things, and love others as yourself.

You know, I rarely "think" about my hermit packaging these days.  The title of this blog is about the only reminder, and I wonder at it sometimes.  Would it be more to Jesus' desire to title it "A Christian Hermit" or "A Hermit Soul" or "A Hermit" or "A Soul of God" or "A Soul" or "His Love's Soul"?  

So far, Jesus has not let me know what He desires in titles.  I think He does not care so much as to the title.  He cares that what I write is from within my soul. In this earthly life I am a hermit; I am a Catholic hermit.  

His Real Presence wants me to be sincere, genuine, loving, truthful, courageous, to be all in for His Real Presence and His Church.  He wants me to live my life according to God's Law and His Law of Love, foremost--not by human precepts taught as doctrines nor by upholding human traditions as law.

He wants me to love God above all things and to love others as myself.  That, in itself, is what can become a soul's doctrine, a soul's precept, a holy soul's holy tradition.  And that, too, is in my case a soul who is all in for His Real Presence, packaged in the this-life wrappings as a hermit, a catholic and Catholic one, truly.  But the Rule of Life is the Word of Life, the Living Word, the Gospel Rule; and this my soul's existence is that of living in and remaining in His Love.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  May we live God's commandment at all times, placing our very souls in His Love and Life and Light!  May we honor God and His Church by living His Law--His law of Love.

Love God above all things, and love others as ourselves.

Hermit Wishes All Much Love and Many Blessings!

While already a month into the new Liturgical Year, this consecrated Christ-following hermit of now 15 years professed, wishes all readers around God's glorious globe, my love and God's blessings upon each of you as we enter the calendar New Year!

God bless His Real Presence in us all! Let us love one another and love God above all things.