Hermit Hours

The hermit does not have a set horarium, or hourly schedule, daily. It just doesn't seem to work well, given the Order of the Present Moment. Yet, the hours seem to slide some days, and spontaneity consumes time.

Now that the hermit exists in more peace, has seemingly "crossed over" into deeper conversion to the hermit life (values and honors the hermit life God has chosen), time seems elusive.

This morning the hermit awoke following some messages in the night, of which the hermit will speak to the Spiritual Da and also the confessor. This will take time. The hermit, still battling sinus infection and trying to embrace the pain as always, awoke tired. But off to a medical conference in morning rain, to advocate and take notes for an elderly couple whose adult children are not in this area. It was good the hermit was there; the specialist was not the one they need, and assertive action was taken. Then the hermit returned some items to a store--one of two stores (besides bi-monthly trip to grocery) the hermit patronizes.

Somehow the hermit is disoriented in the world, increasingly so since the "crossing over." Thus, to acclimate to two stores is about all the hermit can tolerate. It simplifies shopping to limit the exposures; it is expedient and efficient. For hermitage maintenance, there is one store only, and the hermit does not have to go there now that the bulk is completed. Thanks be to God!

Then the hermit went into the Cathedral to pray and then to read while awaiting noon Mass. There was no one inside but the custodian, silently dustmopping the marble floors. An hour and half slid by in the silence and stillness; the hermit pondered the messages of the preceding night. Then the hermit read two chapters in The Life, Letters and Community of St. Catherine de Ricci and another day's entry from Ancient Devotions to the Sacred Heart (by Medieval Carthusians).

It seemed the Guardian Angel, Beth, nudged the hermit to float to the chapel for noon Mass, within minutes of commencement. Such serenity gained from the time with Jesus in the Tabernacle--the bulk alone as the custodian finished and departed at some point.

After glorious Mass, the hermit returned to Agnus Dei and attended to lentils and cheese in a small bowl, two pieces of ginger, correspondence, reporting to the daughter of the elderly couple the results of the doctor's visit, and a call from an adult daughter. This was the second call, as the hermit received the typical daily contact from a cousin who calls from a nearby town. What used to seem a needed contact by the hermit, is now only a needed contact by the cousin. However, the hermit is called to hospitality, and in our time, dropping what we are doing for a phone call is hospitality, odd as that seems. The task, as in days of yore when hermits dropped their basket weaving when a pilgrim stood at the door to their hut, is to funnel the conversation into the spiritual. So the hermit does this with the cousin, and with any other phone calls or e-mails (which also function as a form of cyber-hospitality).

Next the hermit must do some editing of consumer complaints, and pray the while for the people cheated by companies out there in our greedy world--and pray for consumers who ought not consume so much, or some types, of temporal objects. Then there will be some hermitage tidying tasks, and more reading, and more editing, and if God allows His time to be used thus, to watch once more the Carthusian film: Into Great Silence.

Or, the hermit might write another blog--one on what constitutes a mystic and the mystical life, as adroitly written by Fr. Bertrand Wilberforce, OP in his introduction to the St. Catherine de Ricci book. This entry may come under a different blog, as it has more to do with living all for God.

Anyway, the hermit has come to such a deep peace, and the time melts moment into moment, and the moments evaporate into Christ's side wound, and then flow back into His Sacred Heart, where therein the hermit praises God for the burning love of His Precious Blood, and praises God for the purifying waters which cleanse the hermit's stains of years of time not spent in union with His will.

The hermit is going to go to Mass quite early each day in order to spend time alone with the Beloved, in the Cathedral alone in God's time.

Would the hermit want a tabernacle in the hermitage? No. Why? The hermit prefers to be the least, to be low, to be unworthy--as the hermit is unworthy for such. Besides, while God grants the hermit the grace to be in such glorious encounter in a Cathedral, to absorb the souls who've prayed in those pews, to thank the souls who paid for the beauteous edifice--why think a Tabernacle necessary in the hermitage?

Pride would think so, this hermit thinks. It is an effort to get up, get out, drive to the Cathedral: an opportunity to be like everyone else in this small, hidden sacrifice--one that meets its return in beauty and the silent surroundings of souls seen and unseen, present and past.