The Catholic Hermit Speaks with the Bishop

There is such joy and freedom in the blog genre! The Catholic hermit became weary with pondering externals. The anonymity and nothingness of blog-writing verges on the existential supernatural. The Staretz comments upon love, prayer, living, evil and freedom. He wafted with God. He gained knowledge not through the natural externals but through pure prayer. The Holy Spirit bequeathed love so that St. Silouan learned to embrace all in God.

There has been much laughter recently. Blogging brings laughter even though no one hears. The sharing of inner thoughts, unseen, unidentified by any externals, is freeing. The freedom is created by the humility of the soul's being stripped to the perusal of others. Or if not voyeurs, there possibly could be. The blog creates a neighborhood much like the subdivision: all types, various intents, assumptions, judgments, support, insanity, truths, untruths, peeping Toms, unknowns.

An angel accompanied a soul into a large room where a table was set--arrayed with elegance in cuisine, china, linens, goblets. The soul was shown this table, and then told amazing and wondrous--even glorious--words of what awaited that soul. It became too much to bear, and the soul exclaimed this to the angel: This is too much, too good, too glorious to even hear! Then the angel showed the soul more: a white pottery plate, very simple, was placed on the white linen cloth, at the foot of the table. What was on it? A partially nibbled, steamed ear of corn. The angel said, "And this is your place."

There has been much laughter, yes, over the blog writing. It is a gift of humility, for others can read and misread, not read, assume, criticize, agree, disagree. There is no limit to the freedom. It is being exposed without need to cover: vulnerability to the nothingness so humbling. There is a kind of delight in being unwittingly analyzed, or better yet, totally ignored. It is the dead writing to the living dead.

The Catholic hermit, prior to Mass, received humorous little nudges from God. Signal graces. Life is good, the world is beautiful, people are loving! Then the mind was re-minded of how critical it had seemed just six months ago, to have a place in the Church: a category. Was that really the this same nothing who so wanted a place, a designation, a category? How dreadfully opposed to the white pottery plate with the partially eaten ear of corn--could a soul so foolishly tread?

Thoughts then came to rest on Canon 603 for a final glance, notwithstanding the Canon lawyer's final word. What was it that made people, possibly hermits themselves, in the early 1980's, entreat a Church law to designate and recognize a category? That was an interesting decade following upon two previous interesting decades. Laws are made to stop abuses or to introduce something that people want. This is rather simplistic, but the thoughts ran in simple rivulets. In a century of ten decades hence, what will be the result of the introduction of this law? Will it have created better hermits? Will there be more laws made necessary to hinder abuses or to define more options? These thoughts glittered briefly, then sprinkled to the terrazo floor of the Cathedral chapel and went the way of incidentals.

Thoughts turned to St. Antony the Abbot and his peer and lesser known predecessor, St. Paul the Hermit--then to various civil laws yet in unfolding outcomes. The mind drifted like dust particles in snap-shot by angled sunlight transecting the chapel windows. No laws; yes, laws: What's the verdict? To some, it matters greatly. To others, not much if at all.

The Bishop celebrated the noon Mass. He spoke of vocations and freedom within to hear God speaking, to listen if called to a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. We are, in prayer, to listen to God's will. There was no mention of a call to the hermit life as a vocation, although the law creates a legality for hermits who wish, to have entitlement to the title of a religious. Perhaps this is what some had desired: to have a niche as do the nuns and monks and priests, and now, too, consecrated virgins. Laws can further define a category and set precedence for process.

But the Catholic nothing hermit viewed with joy the image of the white porcelain plate at the foot of the table--and the by now cold, half-eaten ear of corn. Laughing without a hint of external expression, the Catholic nothing hermit knew there would be no place now--for none was desired. This is freedom! Humility is freeing. To be accused of certain presumptions whether confronted or assumed is all the more humbling; and to not explain or justify oneself is even yet more humbling, thus freeing!

After Mass, the nothing kissed the Bishop's ring. He had first leaned forward to embrace the nothing, as he does with old friends, but the nothing noticed some others who would notice, and there was no need to be noticed receiving the grace of his Grace's especial loving kindness. (The Immaculate Conception kiss on the cheek by the Church yet foments [in archaic sense] the loving essence of bestowal: a place. It is a hidden gift from God.)

The nothing and the Bishop conversed; and the nothing could have asked about hermit canon laws and such, but legalities pale to supernaturalities, and there was a more exigent matter to share regarding a young, titled man who broke Church law; (sadly) so goes the saying: laws are made to be broken. Still praying with hope beyond hope for the souls involved.

St. Silouan shares thoughts. (The Catholic nothing hermit exalts in these kernels!)

With our minds, we cannot come to know even how the sun was made; and if we beg God to tell us how He made the sun, the answer rings clear in our soul: 'Humble thyself and thou shalt know not only the sun but the Creator of the sun.'

"These almost naive words refer to two different forms of knowledge of being. The usual way to acquire knowledge, the one we all know, consists in the dircting of the intellectual faculty outwards where it meets with phenonmena, sights, forms, in innumerable variety--a differentiation ad infinitum of all that exists.This means that the knowledge thus acquired is never complete and has no real unity....

"The other way to acquire knowledge of being is to turn the spirit in and towards itself and then to God. Here the process is the exact reverse. The mind turns away from the endless plurality and fragmentariness of the world's phenomena, and with all its strength addresses itself to God in prayer and through prayer is directly incorporated in the very Act of Divine Being, and begins to see both itself and the whole world."

I want only one thing: to pray for all men as for myself, wrote the Staretz.

And the Catholic nothing hermit desires this one thing, also.