Catholic Hermit: A Hermit's Confession

This old consecrated Catholic hermit used to go to confession frequently--when able to be at daily Mass and weekend Masses.  What a marvelous Sacrament!  Such clearing out, clarity, forgiveness, resolve to make amends, and strength poured--in graces from the Lord!

Increased disability, weariness, and distance to drive (driving and worsening spine are not buddies right now) plus previous location being quite a long distance to a parish--well, now I can avail myself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation more often.  That is what I did this past Saturday: headed to the confessional at the nearest parish where I'm registered (and where I remain anonymous in my vocation).

Such a joy to see so many lined up even as I arrive forty minutes before the priest is scheduled to arrive.  All the better to silence oneself while waiting, the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle; all is quiet and stilled.  The Lord is listening, the Holy Spirit helping the mind sort through all the more in a hoped-for, honest, succinct confession.  Out of charity to those waiting in line, it is best to be ready.

Of course, the Lord knows all the thoughts, the memories of wrongs, the struggles with them over time--if not sins of the type that are black-or-white sins of immorality, for example, of the flesh, or such as breaking a commandment in obvious way or example.  Thus, the Lord knew my confession in great detail as it had been flailing about in me for awhile; my own efforts attempting to change my flaws--sins, offenses against God and thus others in the Body of Christ--not quite cutting it.

Yes, the power of the Sacrament can break through, can give the added strength--or so it sure seems to me, time and again.  Still there is a willful effort  and desire needed to cooperate with the grace God bestows in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I briefly shared my sin, my issue of failing in fulfilling God's will, His will for what I'm to be doing for Him, and my failure in suffering well as a victim soul, also.  My resolve is weak--slipshod, falling away it does seem to me, in various parts of my vocation and the ancillary aspects included.  I've been "a jerk" to God, again it seems; and I have factual evidence in what some might consider minor: choices I make as to how to distract from pain.  It goes deeper than that, of course.  Do I choose what and how my Spouse prefers me to distract from pain?  Is the distraction in a way that yet is resting in the suffering--hanging with Jesus on the Cross--or it is more a distraction that is basically fleeing, in my mind, from Him--and His suffering, also?

The priest spoke of St. Julian of Norwich's understanding of the linkage of love with suffering.  Yes.  But still I've been a jerk, my attitude lousy, and practically with an in-Your-Face rebellion, or so it seems to me.  I'm guilty!  Mea culpa!  But the priest persisted, and he decided then and there to anoint with the Chrism oils.  So I received also the Sacrament of the Sick.

How astute of the priest! Yes, indeed I was sorely in need of this Sacrament's graces, as well.  Perhaps the anointing took priority just then, than how much I also needed to confess my sins and receive God's forgiveness in the Reconciliation Sacrament of the Church.

Since then I've not made massive headway in knocking off what I've come to term "drivel distractions", but there is some headway made, daily.  I'm a;sp making progress in renewing passion for and understanding in deeper ways, the flow of a maturing vocation such as the eremite (hermit) in the consecrated life of the Church.  And in order to grasp the flow and the sense of what is lacking or goes maybe seemingly stale over the years, the awareness has come to me through being privy to three friends' correspondence which are giving me insights into their married vocations.

The analogy of their marriages after many years passing, is increasingly pronounced in that their marriages show me what may be transpiring in my vocation as a type or form of marriage to Christ and His Church, within the hermit vows and profession of the three evangelical counsels.  We all are going through phases, growing in our vocations as we live through the years.  We must flow with the marriages, so to speak, grow with our significant others--and for me this is the Church and Christ Himself; and we must experience maturation and deeper conversion--yet with increasing determination in vibrancy of mature, more profound, forms and degrees of love.

I'd like to continue this topic in another post.  The revelation of similarities in my current phase of vocation and why I was privy to as an observer to what are frustrating and sad plights of marriages--has come to me in ways that I can only attribute to the Holy Spirit.  He has kindly responded to my pleas for help in what I confessed I felt lacking in my own love relationship with my Spouse.  What better way to show me my lacking than to demonstrate by what can occur in marriages over time?  

It is painful to see what has devolved from what once was zeal and love in marriages of those I have known for years and love dearly.  I can relate with the pain I am feeling of knowing that the hardships of surviving some temporal life situations that can befall a hermit as well as anyone--has wearied my zeal, depleted my discipline, and perhaps caused me to take my vows to my Spouse and His Church, for granted.

This hermit might be back in the confessional before long.  Often there can be more sin gurgle to the surface once God's grace enters in, and the more so when a soul has great desire to have the eyes opened, the scales removed.  This eye-opening of the mind, heart, and soul frequently is accomplished by means of temporal example in the lives and situations around us if we cannot at first see matters in ourselves.  

If we learn to recognize that there is a message (or several) for ourselves in what we are shown or come to see in others' struggles or simply their relationships and experiences--then all the more God can work His power in us to teach, guide, and heal our flaws.  We can continue on in our earthly progression, in our vocations, in our spiritual missions willed for us by His Real Presence.

Yes, God bless His Real Presence in us!

Catholic Hermit Shares Pseudo-Macarius: On Earthly Loves

May is the month of Mary, Mother of God.  In this country (USA), Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May.  In June, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday.  In the history of the Church, the hermit vocation is one in which many hermits had been married and were parents to children.  So it is that this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit has been considering how it was and is to be a parent and yet a hermit in the Consecrated Life of the Church.

Historically, in some cases, the Catholic hermits of yore who were also spouses and parents, professed the hermit vows after receiving permission from their spouses and children, and with approval of their priest or other such spiritual advisor.  In most incidents of hermits who also were married and had children, life situations played out first, prior to their answering God's call to the hermit life.

In this very first week of May, we find hermits on the saint calendar whose spouses had died and their children old enough to either enter monasteries themselves, or were otherwise on their own by then, so that the parent professed the hermit vows and entered into the hermit life.

One woman had eight children, was widowed, and each child was of age to enter monasteries which at that time often took in children to rear in the absence of parents (and also took them much younger than now, to educate them or as potentially remaining in their orders, when the children expressed desire to be a religious brother or sister).  The patron saint of Switzerland received permission from his wife and his yet-at-home children, to live in a hermit hut in the Alps and fulfill a call he received to the hermit life.

Yet we do not have many specific details of how the parents-to-be-hermits or the younger or adult children of hermit-parents, lived out this shift in parental vocation.  So this nothing Catholic hermit of today, has been pondering what it may have been for the adolescent and mostly adult children of the hermits of yore who were widowed, abandoned by an errant spouse, or whose children had grown to an age of leaving the nest to live out their adult lives.

Perhaps due to lesser modes of communication and also difficulty in traveling, the hermits of yore may not have faced the dilemma of hermits today who have been spouses and parents previous to the call by God to the hermit vocation.  

From personal experience, having been a spouse to a spouse who no longer wished to remain married and left, as well as a parent to three children, the call to the hermit life came in gradual stages and with other terms used.  The word "hermit" was not introduced until a few years beyond conversion to Catholicism and as the youngest child was readying to leave home for college.

Frankly, being a single parent of adult children, two married and one nearly so, and two with children themselves, is awkward.  Part of the awkwardness is having a chronic disability [pain] and part is being single and part is being a consecrated hermit in the Catholic Church when none of the children are practicing Catholics, and two do not claim Christ.  If there were an earthly spouse, there might be stronger boundaries as to expected temporal roles and interactions.  There might be a greater or more acceptable sense of the single parent having a "life" of his or her "own."

As it is now, the prayer time, spiritual reading, writing, book discussion, and spiritual correspondence are virtually unknown or at least unrecognized by the adult children. Thus, it may be thought that the single parent [this hermit!] does not have its own life and thus is kind of out there, as a dangling responsibility or frustration or problem to be looked after and resolved.  One of the three has accepted the task of keeping in contact and interacting.  

However, the entire aspect of the spiritual life as a consecrated hermit does not seem to resonate, or is not understood, perhaps, by the adult child and her family.  This is possibly due to their not being Catholics and partly because when the hermit does interact with them, it is as a single parent and grandparent--a person in physical pain and rather limited in active ways--and not as consecrated Catholic hermit.  The hermit has only recently admitted to the adult child that its main offering and gift to share with others are the spiritual and helping with gardening or other simple, manual labor pursuits.

Perhaps a habit worn or some sort of public recognition might remind that this hermit does have a life of its own, a life of spiritual value with its own rule and way of being?  But this hermit is not called to justify or make credible its hermit vocation through externals.  This hermit is called to live its vocation in the silence of solitude, in praise and prayer and penance, in stricter separation from the world and hidden from the eyes of men.  Yet charity is pivotal in the Gospel Rule of Life--the perfect rule.

Regardless, being a single parent of adult children, especially when the other spouse is physically active, financially well-off, and remarried as are both the divorced parents of the adult child's spouse, makes this phase of parent-child relationships awkward for this consecrated hermit who is also a single parent of adult children.  His Real Presence has figured it out according to His perfect will.  This hermit has not and maybe ought not--just trust His Real Presence and go with God's flow.

When reading a section in the fourth homily of Pseudo-Macarius, the content struck a soul-chord. The elderly friend with whom this hermit is across-the-miles reading the book and e-discussing it, concurred that it did fit well the hermit's unfolding and altering relationship and love of adult children and other family members, the more the hermit steeps in its vocation and is brought to full flavor by His Real Presence, over the present moment spiritual passages of temporal time and experiences.

Whether or not other consecrated Catholic hermits (publicly or privately professed) who are single parents of adult children (and toss in the factor of the children not being Catholics) experience the awkwardness of parent-family expectations of adult children and (hermit) parent, the thoughts of Pseudo-Macarius help this hermit understand better the progression in both "roles".  (Perhaps a hermit priest might also grasp the situation, with previous parishioners not quite understanding the shifted role and life of the priest-called-to-and-living the hermit life.)

"Just as iron or lead or gold or silver, if thrown into fire, will melt and be transformed from its natural hardness to a soft substance, and as long as it remains in the fire becomes all the more a molten liquid, losing its natural hardness because of the powerful heat of the fire, the same is true for the soul that has turned away from the world in its desire for the Lord alone.  It awaits god, unflagging in hope and faith.  It has then truly freed from all attachment to the world....It considers all other things superfluous compared to the heavenly Bridegroom alone.  It rests in his fervent and ineffable love.

"I tell you that even those brothers, loved in God, whom the soul thinks so highly of, if they are a source of leading it away from that love for God, it, I would say, would reject such.  For that is its life and rest, namely, the mystical and ineffable participation of the heavenly kingdom.  For if an earthly, loving participation of spouses can separate the pair from their fathers, brothers, mothers, and all other things become for them rather extrinsic in their way because of their deep conjugal love for each other--for it is said:  'For this reason, let a man leave his father and mother and adhere to his wife and they will be two in one flesh' (Gn 2:24)--if, therefore, I say, earthly love can detach one from all other loves, how much more in the case of those who have been made worthy to enter into a true fellowship with that holy Spirit, the heavenly and loving Spirit?  They shall be freed from all worldly love.  All other things will seem indifferent to them since they have been conquered by a heavenly yearning and have become totally one in that surrendered state."

Pseudo-Macarious continues the Scriptural and holy insights, but we get the flow.  

It seems that the situation at hand for this consecrated Catholic hermit who has adult children and some grandchildren, and various relatives not Catholic and not viewing the hermit as a hermit and part of the Consecrated Life of the Catholic Church but rather from their perspective as a parent, sibling, relative, friend--the best avenue remains this awkward one.  

In charity, this hermit must continue to strive to remove awkwardness from the relationships and simply be what the others perceive, yet at the same time, interiorly be very much living the rule of life, the Gospel Rule, and do so with the platform of the Nine S'* as modality of that rule.  The hermit vocation at this phase is the vocation; the parental-sibling-cousin-relative-friend role is superseded other than in the others' perceptions and needs.

Then, in the vast majority of time and place, the hermit pursues that true fellowship with the Holy Spirit, freed of all worldly love.  The hermit enters into the consuming fire of God-Is-Love.  And, admittedly, some of the awkwardness has resided with the hermit in not grasping God's game plan for this phase of life as a consecrated Catholic hermit, a nothing to all but God's All, though it be.  The hermit has waffled at times in thinking it should enter more into the familial world, or should have specific family love and attachments.  

But no, this is not at all to be.  To love, yes, but in God Is Love--no longer as active, involved, responsible parent-love.  God rights the situation according to His Word.  The adult children are to cleave unto each other and live their married vocations.  If the hermit had a son who was called into Holy Orders, would it not expect that son to live his priestly vocation?  

This consecrated Catholic hermit is, also, to live its vocation in the Order of the Present Moment, which for the past 14 years has been as consecrated Catholic hermit.  The parent role remains in charity of charity, on an as-requested- and as-needed-by-adult-children basis.  And that is not often, if truth be told.  God rights all matters according to His Word and Will in the Order of the Present Moment.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another for Love is of God! Remain in His Love, and all will be as He wills.

*Nine S':  Silence, Solitude, Slowness, Suffering, Selflessness, Simplicity, Stillness, Stability, Serenity