The Complete Hermit Cries

This misty moisty morning the fog hovered over Lake Immaculata. The complete hermit awoke, in pain, as usual, and thought through aspects of life, praying for various people, situations, and self.

There is much evil in the world.

There is much sorrow, and I looked to the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows on the table next to the bed. I placed my special, bed-rosary, Connemara marble, on my wounded heart.

Thoughts turned again to the reality of lost and distanced friendships, of the huge gap between one who is not in the world and thus through the on-going ordeal with physical suffering, of the suffering from obstacles and persecutions from some parts of the Body in the Church, of how on earth would I handle the job, of how on earth I will handle the rejection of the job, of my mentally ill friend and her pale and thin husband, of if I can or should make it to a Protestant friend's wedding to a fallen-away Catholic this evening in a nearby town and if I even want to deal with all the people and sitting and chatting, of what I need to plant and where in the Mary Garden--and then great sobs erupted, breaking the morning reverie and parting the mist on the pond.

I sobbed only for a minute or less, crying out, "O Lord, I am so depressed, so depressed. Help me endure." Then I thought about what the priest from Goa told me in confession yesterday. He said to tell Jesus to cover me in His precious blood, to help me not despair. So I got up and said I must simply keep going, and then aloud asked Jesus to cover me in His precious blood.

There is no use for anti-depressants, for these do not block the realities and the situations, the physical pain that reduces a person's life to that of existing inbetween worlds. There is nothing but death that is going to separate the body from the pain that the Lord has given as my constant companion while on earth, for He has spoken: While on earth she will know earthly pain.

There is no use for therapists, for if I shared the pain and abuse and assaults from my fellow Catholics over the past 12 years, I would be told to get out of such an ordeal. But we are to imitate the saints, and to be crucified with Christ, and St. John the Baptisti, St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi and St. Padre Pio would say, along with my Irish Spiritual Da, "It is your cross. Pick it up! PICK IT UP!"

There is only use for complete reliance upon God, to live the Psalms of Friday Night Prayer of the Divine Office.

Now the complete hermit has eaten some toast, drunk coffee, and paid some bills on-line, written a couple of e-mails of encouragement to people. Next to don the gray jumper and head out to the Mary Garden, water, plant, and praise God for the start of another day at Agnus Dei.

This is the real life of a real hermit in a real place as a really rather dismembered member of the real Catholic Church, praying to be a real child of God.