Holy Father, I Agree, but Have You Experienced Such Solitude?

Well, perhaps he has. I don't know. He has written about the role of Mary in Mary: the Church at the Source.

In the first chapter, Pope Benedict XVI warms this hermit's heart, for he (or should I write "They"?) espouses the good of the contemplative life. He speaks of the "age of activism" which has come to an extreme in the Western world. He comments, "...that means doing, achieiving results, actively planning and producing the world oneself...."

The Holy Father continues, "It is, I believe, given our Western masculine mentality, that we have increasingly separated Christ from His Mother, without grasping that Mary's motherhood might have some significance for theology and faith. This attitude characterizes our whole approach to the Church. We treat the Church almost like some technological device that we plan and make with enormous and clever expenditure of energy. Then we are surprised when we experience the truth of what Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort once remarked, paraphrasing the words of the prophet Haggai, when he said, 'You do much, but nothing comes of it!'"

"There can be fruitfulness in the Church only when She has this character ['when the Church herself is a Marian mystery'], when she becomes holy soil for the Word. We must retrieve the symbol of the fruitful soil; we must once more become waiting, inwardly recollected people who in the depth of prayer, longing, and faith give the Word room to grow" [Bold-face added].

Earlier in this chapter, Pope Benedict writes of Isaiah's prophecy regarding the Word: My word shall not return to me empty! (Isaiah 55:10-11). Then he instructs on Mark 4:1-9, of the seed that falls on varying ground, with the fruit coming from the seed in fertile soil. He says that these words are a promise to us from Jesus! Jesus is the seed that bears fruit for all eternity, and very much in this world. The seed assimilates with the soil, absorbs the maternity of the soil, and then fuses with the soil of the whole humanity, returns to God in a new form.

This seed-hermit, not yet in soil deep, nor crushed in order to germinate, wonders if the Holy Father has been a seed buried alive--for seeds are mysteriously alive until dead from disuse--and has he been shut away from the action-oriented Church? I wonder, for he seems thrust into the age of activity, whether or not he desires this. When is a Pope allowed time to be a seed that falls to the ground and dies?

Being a seed takes some pondering. What is it like to truly be a seed as yet unplanted? And then to be one that is placed into fertile soil--in darkness, alone, with moisture and chill at night and warmth if the sun shines. But the seed, from being placed in loam, never sees sunlight again. The seed waits in solitude and silence, for dirt is mute. There is no movement until days and nights pass, and the outer skin of the seed begins to tear from a force within. Is this tearing painful? Is the unknown frightening? What transpires within the seed's dark interior of slow but steady movement, of slight shiftings until the end that is to push growth up is in position, and the end that is to push growth down is in place? Absorption of nutrients takes place in mystery, unseen except by scientific means. Much is taken for granted except by those few who stop to contemplate, perhaps an insightfulfarmer or a mystic back-yard gardener.

So this is the life of a seed, and a seed planted. Eventually there are roots that go down or spread out; shoots go up and out and about. If proper elements come from God alone (for Who provides sun and rain?), the seed's growth produces fruit in flowering, in food, until it is pruned and snipped, the fruit harvested, or the elements change and the plant dies. The seed, its sheathing perhaps still visible, perhaps not, is long forgotten, now part of the soil, decayed.

What is noticed? Not the seed, but the outer appearance of the plant above ground is noticed, utilized, and appreciated by some, not all, maybe not even many.

So this is the way of the hermit-seed. It is hard to fathom that a Holy Father would be allowed the luxury of such hiddenness, of such Mary-like holy soil in which to hide, to split open, to be in darkness for a long time, and then bear fruit while the seed diminishes into unseen molecules.

But perhaps the Pope has been a seed, has been tucked deep into the soil, and has died, and what we see now is the plant above ground bearing much fruit.

Now, this gives hope to all hermit-seeds, to allow their seeds to be buried alive, in darkness of moist soil, to weather the chill of night and heat of day, never seeing but only existing in order to produce fruit it will never see or know about, and to remain underground unto death.