The Joke About the Complete Hermit

Snow flies fast and furious at Agnus Dei on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. The complete hermit will need to leave a bit early for quiet reading in the Cathedral, prior to Sacristan duties, prior to Holy Mass.

The joke about the complete hermit is: the hermit is not complete at all. Nope.

Last week, after Mass, the hermit was remaining to to finish a biography of a saint. When the covers were closed, the hermit remained to pray and reflect on this holy woman's life, back in the 1500's, and how it is today, where she is, what she is about. A man and his wife came over to speak, and the man said, "It is all over!" (He meant the Mass, and he spread his arms out and up, as if to say, "Finished--!" with his whole being.)

The hermit smiled and said, "It is never over." The man did not hear, or did not listen.

And that is the way it is with the complete hermit. The hermit is never complete. Can't even imagine that in Heaven the hermit will ever be complete, will ever be over, will be finished. There will always be one more Alleluia or Gloria to sing, one more adoration, one more glorification of God Most High.

Inbetween now and eternity there is much incompletion.

So the hermit wants to remind anyone out there, if there is anyone reading, to read and to comprehend: it is never over. The hermit is never complete. That is the joke.

It only began when a friend a life-long Catholic, as so many Catholics and non-Catholics, did not comprehend what a hermit "is" and said this one could never be a "complete" hermit. So this term has been bandied about off and on. In one sense the hermit is "complete" as far as what is necessary within the Church. The hermit is approved as much as is necessary for this hermit, so that process is complete. The hermit has the rule of life, and that is complete.

Yet the living out of that rule is never over, not in this lifetime, and nesting within the Sacred Heart now, it will never be over. Eternity is like that. Eternity does not have a finish line.

There is no way possible for the hermit to follow just one snowflake whipping by Agnus Dei's windows, and see it to its final resting place. The process of the snowflake is incomplete, although many aspects of the snowflake may seem tangibly complete, whole and perfect--as much as possible for a snowflake. But to run its course--this cannot be complete because it transforms and modifies.

No, the hermit is not whole and perfect, yet in many aspects the hermit is not incomplete, either. Some aspects have been fulfilled, others will be, yet the perfection part of the definition of complete, is incomplete as a specific, solitary snowflake's whereabouts, right now.