The Catholic Hermit Can't Wait, but Must

The regular confessor is due back, and the hermit has much contrition of heart. The confessional has been seeing much of the hermit lately. The nothing can't wait to go to confession, but must. Reading St. Silouan today has helped coagulate the regret even beyond this morning's repentance of being such an easy mark for the devil and being so weak.

Now the reality has settled: the hermit was impatient with others, shocked, angered, saddened, and also impatient with self. It has to do with more specifics of what was confessed today, with having not focused enough on God but being distracted and drawn out of the Sacred Heart. There was not possession of self.

Sometimes confessions go like that: first one with outer layers repented and absolved; then shortly after the inner layers may be seen and dealt with. One could use the onion image; but really, with confession, it is like a lovely rose, and removing petal after petal peacefully, gently, and letting them float to the ground of being, leaving the inner while the scent refreshes the soul.

The Catholic hermit has been foolish--again! Each day brings more pop quizzes in soul school. One can be ready to answer for one's own sins--but to answer for another? The hermit first must confess the impatience of self and the reaction in anger and then saddness. It is not pleasant to notice words and actions of self and others that are so disappointing. But reacting only made matters worse. For shame on this nothing. So in this next confession, we will pluck off more petals, revealing the core, and make amendment, do penance.

Despite the upset and frustration, really, of a disappointment in the very humanity this hermit is supposed to be embracing within the Sacred Heart, no matter what, this day has been rather blissful. Even the sad news of a prayer for someone hoping for something, brought the realization that the hermit must go to Adoration and thank God for the answered prayer for this young man--even if the answer was not what we all hoped for. Too often the hermit does not praise God for the answered prayers that go against its personal wants.

The writing has gone well, and the editing and reading and praying and mending and washing. An adult daughter helped with the disenabling process so the hermit could write in total ignorance of any possible readers. Now the hermit writes to God, for God--without distraction other than the ever-hindering self. It is like being able to ignore the next door neighbor again, for all has been peaceful since the detective took action. The neighbor has windows allowing sighting of the hermit, but the hermit cannot see the neighbor. Freedom--at least for the hermit!

What tremendous practice God provides to learn just what this morning's confessor said to do: pay no heed to others' views or opinions of the hermit's life and pay no heed to their lives. Of course, he did not mean to not love, to not pray, to not have compassion--but to not be distracted and not react. Sense God only.

St. Silouan writes relative to this new practice, and the hermit began exercises in placing many people within its heart and then nesting within the Sacred Heart. Also, the hermit practices admitting and answering for its own sins, but also to be willing to embrace as its own, the faults of others. This exercise helps not becoming impatient with others' failings or unexpected behaviors which can be disappointing. We disappoint ourselves, do we not? So, we are called to accept responsibility, in oneness, for our own and others' sins.

"We can all find ways of justifying ourselves on all occasions, but if we really examine our hearts we shall see that in justifying ourselves we are not guiless. Man justifies himself firstly because he does not want to acknowledge that he is even partially guilty o fthe evil in the world, and secondly because he does not realize that he is gifted with godlike freedom: he sees himself merely as part of the world's phenomena and, as such, dependent on the world. Tehre is a considerable element of bondage in this, and self-justification, therefore, is a slavish business unworthy of a son of God."

The Staretz had no sign of self-justification in him. Of course, he was an evolved soul, and he had grown in holiness over the years by grace and through cooperation with God's grace! He possessed the Spirit of Christ in that he could accept the blame for the faults of others; people of the world would consider that subjection. The Staretz could feel all humanity as a single whole to be incorporated in the personal existence of every man.

"According to the second commandment, Love thy neighbour as thyself, each of us must and can comprise all mankind i his own personal being, in the same way as each of the three Persons of the Godhead contains the fullness of Divine Being. Thus we shall accept all the evil in the world not as something extraneous but as evil in which we too have our part, and contend with evil, with cosmic evil, beginning in our own selves."

The hermit is practicing this. Knowing one's own sins is on-going petal-plucking; knowing other's sins is something God allows so that the hermit can learn to love and learn to suffer the consequences of its sins and others' sins; and from suffering, the hermit can love all the more.

"The love of Christ being a Divine force and a gift of the Holy Spirit, the One Spirit acting universally, makes all men ontologically one. Love takes to itself the life of the loved one. The man who loves God is drawn into the Godhead; he who loves his brother draws his brother's life into his own hypostatic being; the man who loves the whole world in spirit will embrace the whole world."

Why is it that God chooses to have some men separated from contact, one with the other, in the temporal realm? Perhaps this is true more for the hermit than others, for the hermit is to have a stricter separation from the world in the tangible effects; but the spiritual love--loving the whole world and all souls in it, in spirit--is the very work of the hermit.

A new phase is beginning! The Catholic hermit is going to write in a new blog. While not a full year from the friend's challenge that the hermit could not be a complete hermit due to externals--the hermit has learned that this is true--but more from truth that one can never be complete this side of the beatific vision! So now the hermit is going to write a blog from the suggestion of the regular confessor, who said, "Refer to yourself as 'the Catholic hermit.'" To commemorate the passageway, tomorrow "The Catholic Hermit" commences.