Not using the "H" word

The Bishop seems unlikely to approve canonical consecration for the eremitic life. This is for several reasons, and the best is because Jesus may not decide He wants this for me at this time. No doubt, from the past several weeks' events, I am not at all ready.

There are chinks in my armor, weaknesses, doubts, tempations to despair. The intense sense of isolation in this vocation is something to accept, and no easy something at that. Yet, the life continues on, without any breakthrough in any other direction.

So I will not use the "h" word. I will not refer to myself as a hermit, complete or incomplete, or refer to Agnus Dei as a hermitage.

The Bishop also has changed his affect toward me. For a lovely year, he was quite warm, pleased to see me and exchange some interesting thoughts. Now he is chilled, says little, except one day he did say, "Being close to God is enough." He also says rotely: Pray for your Bishop! Of course I do!

I suspect what caused the turn of affect, and it is my own fault. But I had no other options, really. I needed to ask him to reconsecrate a parish that is infested. It is a nasty situation there, and I know in faith that something could be done, at least attempted, through reconsecration. The Catholic Church does have the means, after all, to send the devils off. I did not use the word "infested" in my request; I was at least not that dumb. Yet, I knew it could likely change our relationship and tweak him. Such matters as the paranormal are not a comfortable fit in most people. But, how could I not request this? If something more happens there, I'd have a hard time not feeling--and being--culpable. So, I delivered the request and face the consequences.

I flipped out at first. I do not handle rejection well at all. And this is no doubt something Jesus needs me to handle before I could be any good as a hermit. Hermits must take to rejection like the Japanese Beetles are taking to my rose blossoms and leaves. They just eat them up as if first nature.

Then, I had a huge despair and felt as if I was in hell and couldn't get out. When I'd think of not being Catholic (the hardships have been a bit tough at times), I'd grow even worse in despair. Then, it would grow dark and empty and hopeless. Finally it all got worked out when my confessor had a little talk on the phone when he returned. But by then I 'd determined to battle the attack by fighting back through the Sacraments and with sacramentals. It is working well.

But in all, I realize that I am far too impure, am maybe not deeply accepting yet of the solitude that goes with the consecration, and yet, here I am in more solitude and aloneness than ever. God is evidently giving me more practice and training.

Now, what to be called? What place or category do I have in the Catholic Church? None, really. I could be called a good-for-nothing, but that sounds self-pitying even though it is simply a truism and not a bad thing, sort of like being a bauble. I could be a mystic, but that raises far too many questions among the faithful, and sends them leaping to wrong assumptions and uneasiness. Mystics are not automatically saints, and I am no saint.

But I consider a good definition of a mystic, by virtue of the Bishop telling me that being close to God, is this: A mystic is one who knows that being close to God is enough. How's that?

Something else happened today, but it is of a different category so perhaps later I will write about it, and try to sort out the temptations to doubt, on my other blog for victim souls of the Sacred Heart.