Comprehending what makes up the "complete hermit" takes me to Fr. Louis Bouyer's book, The Meaning of the Monastic Life.
Pere Bouyer treats fully of the monastic journey, but I discover tenets pertinent to the complete hermit's life in his thorough examination.
In discussing the oldest systematic form of monastic spirituality, he reviews that finding God is to seek Him unceasingly and that the reward of the search is to go on searching. Taking inspiration from St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Word's drawing the soul to share in His transcendent beauty by renunciation, Bouyer writes:
We can see that this Word who seeks us and find us, that we may make response to him by seeking him in our turn, is the whole essence of the Gospel and the whole of Christianity. And in its turn monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it. It is a Christian life which is completely open, without refusal or delay, to the Word, which opens itself and abandons itself to it. This is the response that the Word expects--expects and elicits, for it is the creating and re-creating word.
Bouyer also iterates St. Augustine's image of the movement of the monastic life, as it is not a "state."
He comments that the monk is one who seeks God. 'To seek God,' to seek him as a person, as the Person par excellence, and not only as the 'Thou' to whom all our love should be addressed, but as the 'I' who has first approached us, whose word of love, addressed to the primeval chaos, drew us forth from it in the first place, and, spoken to us in our sin, draws us forth from it again: to be a monk is nothing else than this. To be a monk, then, is simply to be an integral Christian.
To be a hermit, is all this, as well. And more: ...the Christian himself is simply the man restored by the Word of the Gospel to the vocation which the creative Word destined for him: to respond to the Word of Agape by the word of faith, in order eventually to meet God face to face.
So, too, it could be said that the hermit is (submitting to Bouyer's words) one who does not limit himself to accepting the transition to God passively but responds with all his heart to the call which he realizes comes from the heart of God. He does not allow the divine Kingdom to fall upon him unawares but who takes it by storm in advance. He has staked his all, burned his boats. He knows that being is greater than having, and that being which is of value is not that which passes but which endures.
For man [monk,hermit, Christian] is born only as subject to the divine Word and he will only be fully himself the day when, freed from the nothingness which holds him prisoner, fully surrendered to the Word which calls him, he will at last come to discover the Face which promised him being in promising him His own image.
Quoting Newman, Pere Bouyer reminds us: "They think that they regret the past when they are but longing after the future. It is not that they would be children again but that they would be Angels and would see God...."
If we wish fully to understand the meaning of Christian life, and therefore of monastic life [of complete hermit life], we cannot attribute too much importance to this theme, to this ascensional motif, which we find in ancient spirituality. Any view of man's vocation which, in the last analysis, tied him down to earth would of necessity mean a disastrous mutilation of Christianity. Man is what God wills him to be only when he accepts and more than accepts--when he desires with all his heart, to advance beyond himself. But such an overstepping of self presupposes and involves a swift and glorious flight beyond the confines of this world. The only life which is worthy of man, the life that God, if one may dare to say so, expects of him, is not merely a human, but an angelic life.
The monk [the hermit] lives in the monastery [hermitage] which is or becomes the tabernacle, placed at the summit of the mount of contemplation, close to the everlasting dwellings. Within develops the heavenly character of life in the presence of God, wholly consecrated to the glorifying of that presence. For this to occur, there must be virginal purity and angelic liturgy. In the monastic society (and for the hermit) as in the incorporeal society described in the Apocolypse, the divine presence remains the one and only centre. Praying the Office and praise either alone or in a union of virgin souls joins with the angels present at the altar. The monastery, the hermitage, should be the earthly representation of the heavenly love and praise that the angel choir reflects from the Holy Trinity. Praise must be the basis of fraternity, as the monk or hermit's bond with others is not natural but rather is sacred, proceeding from the Father. The common prayer is the Eucharist and then the Office, the psalmody of praise throughout the day. The monk [hermit] must develop continual prayer: the Name of Jesus on the lips.
Is the monk [hermit] separated from humanity? The monk [hermit] is in statu angelorum; in place of angels; and like angels is guardian of the brethren in all truth, to love others in all humanity with the most effective of loves. Yes, the monk [hermit] must perform certain earthly obligations; but these services are not the real, indispensible work. God alone knows, the angels perhaps know along with him, what is done for the world by this society [this hermit] which in the midst of the world is no longer of the world. God alone knows the manifold richness, the supernatural protection brought into the world through these openings into heaven.
Pere Bouyer treats fully of the monastic journey, but I discover tenets pertinent to the complete hermit's life in his thorough examination.
In discussing the oldest systematic form of monastic spirituality, he reviews that finding God is to seek Him unceasingly and that the reward of the search is to go on searching. Taking inspiration from St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Word's drawing the soul to share in His transcendent beauty by renunciation, Bouyer writes:
We can see that this Word who seeks us and find us, that we may make response to him by seeking him in our turn, is the whole essence of the Gospel and the whole of Christianity. And in its turn monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it. It is a Christian life which is completely open, without refusal or delay, to the Word, which opens itself and abandons itself to it. This is the response that the Word expects--expects and elicits, for it is the creating and re-creating word.
Bouyer also iterates St. Augustine's image of the movement of the monastic life, as it is not a "state."
He comments that the monk is one who seeks God. 'To seek God,' to seek him as a person, as the Person par excellence, and not only as the 'Thou' to whom all our love should be addressed, but as the 'I' who has first approached us, whose word of love, addressed to the primeval chaos, drew us forth from it in the first place, and, spoken to us in our sin, draws us forth from it again: to be a monk is nothing else than this. To be a monk, then, is simply to be an integral Christian.
To be a hermit, is all this, as well. And more: ...the Christian himself is simply the man restored by the Word of the Gospel to the vocation which the creative Word destined for him: to respond to the Word of Agape by the word of faith, in order eventually to meet God face to face.
So, too, it could be said that the hermit is (submitting to Bouyer's words) one who does not limit himself to accepting the transition to God passively but responds with all his heart to the call which he realizes comes from the heart of God. He does not allow the divine Kingdom to fall upon him unawares but who takes it by storm in advance. He has staked his all, burned his boats. He knows that being is greater than having, and that being which is of value is not that which passes but which endures.
For man [monk,hermit, Christian] is born only as subject to the divine Word and he will only be fully himself the day when, freed from the nothingness which holds him prisoner, fully surrendered to the Word which calls him, he will at last come to discover the Face which promised him being in promising him His own image.
Quoting Newman, Pere Bouyer reminds us: "They think that they regret the past when they are but longing after the future. It is not that they would be children again but that they would be Angels and would see God...."
If we wish fully to understand the meaning of Christian life, and therefore of monastic life [of complete hermit life], we cannot attribute too much importance to this theme, to this ascensional motif, which we find in ancient spirituality. Any view of man's vocation which, in the last analysis, tied him down to earth would of necessity mean a disastrous mutilation of Christianity. Man is what God wills him to be only when he accepts and more than accepts--when he desires with all his heart, to advance beyond himself. But such an overstepping of self presupposes and involves a swift and glorious flight beyond the confines of this world. The only life which is worthy of man, the life that God, if one may dare to say so, expects of him, is not merely a human, but an angelic life.
The monk [the hermit] lives in the monastery [hermitage] which is or becomes the tabernacle, placed at the summit of the mount of contemplation, close to the everlasting dwellings. Within develops the heavenly character of life in the presence of God, wholly consecrated to the glorifying of that presence. For this to occur, there must be virginal purity and angelic liturgy. In the monastic society (and for the hermit) as in the incorporeal society described in the Apocolypse, the divine presence remains the one and only centre. Praying the Office and praise either alone or in a union of virgin souls joins with the angels present at the altar. The monastery, the hermitage, should be the earthly representation of the heavenly love and praise that the angel choir reflects from the Holy Trinity. Praise must be the basis of fraternity, as the monk or hermit's bond with others is not natural but rather is sacred, proceeding from the Father. The common prayer is the Eucharist and then the Office, the psalmody of praise throughout the day. The monk [hermit] must develop continual prayer: the Name of Jesus on the lips.
Is the monk [hermit] separated from humanity? The monk [hermit] is in statu angelorum; in place of angels; and like angels is guardian of the brethren in all truth, to love others in all humanity with the most effective of loves. Yes, the monk [hermit] must perform certain earthly obligations; but these services are not the real, indispensible work. God alone knows, the angels perhaps know along with him, what is done for the world by this society [this hermit] which in the midst of the world is no longer of the world. God alone knows the manifold richness, the supernatural protection brought into the world through these openings into heaven.
