A little more about the hermit life.
God has allowed me to have amazing experiences and be involved with many incredible things in my life. But the many years I spent in and out of hermitages was by far the greatest gift He gave to me. Circumstances caused for me to not be able to permanently continue in that life for the time being, but I am sure in my heart that God eventually can find people to support me in living (at the very least -half of my time) in prayer with Him as I did years before. With (hopefully) the other half of my life back in full-time ministry/apostolate. I had a sister who once told me that she was more than happy to 'pay me' to pray for everyone like I was doing. :) She truly understood the great 'work' that God can do in the world through souls seeped in prayer. And I am sure that there are other people like her who 'get it' out there.
Yet this is not saying that I regret where I am now.
God is perfect and His plans for us are perfect.
He even perfectly uses other's sins and mistakes in order to make sure His perfect will is done in our lives.
When we live that sort of trust, we never have to fear that we are on the wrong path... all God expects from us is a 'Fiat' from one moment to the next.
And as a very close priest friend often reminds me, 'God is creative.' He somehow gets His will done if we continue to surrender.
Part of the reason I believe that God allowed for me to be thrust from my hermit life was so that I could teach the world about that life and share a little piece of it with them. Its like offering the world an island of peace in the midst of chaos. And so I share... and I hope one day to be able to swing much more of a contemplative life than I am living right now working 80 hours a week. Yet what is funny is that as a hermit I 'worked' just as much as I do now -it is just that the work was more interior, a 'work' of prayer. The hermit life is by no means a lazy life, nor a selfish life. For a real hermit is never a hermit for themselves. They are a hermit for the whole world.
You see here a picture of the wall of my hermitage. Several years back I decided to break my general love of simplicity and to plaster the wall of my hermitage with pictures of everyone I ever had as a spiritual child in my entire life. When persevering in my vocation was difficult, I could look at the wall and remember that I was doing this all 'for them.'
Catherine Doherty beautifully explains this 'communal' aspect of a hermit's life in her book 'Poustinia' (meaning 'hermitage' in Russian). Take a few moments to read these -and remember them in your own lives... at those moments you 'sneak' for prayer, never doubt that you are helping your children, spouses, etc., more than you could by physically being available. Yes, daily duty comes first and you should never neglect your vocational responsibilities in order to pray... but when you are able to find those 20 minutes during naps or on lunch break to sit before a crucifix or tabernacle and pray, remember that you are giving a cosmic gift to those who you love.
"Who were these men and women of Russia and why did they go into 'the desert,' into the poustinia?... They were people who craved in their hearts to be alone with God and his immense silence. Why did they crave that silence, that solitude? For themselves? No. A hermit of this type, according to the Eastern spirituality, went into the poustinia for others. He offered himself as a holocaust, a victim for others..." (page 21)
"They went forth alone... They emptied their minds and their souls of all their relationships because from now on they would be with all their loved ones in a new relationship, in a deeper dimension of love. ... The poustiniki (hermits) would carry in their hearts all those whom they had left behind in the great silence of God...From the moment their poustinia was built, from the moment of their closing its door upon themselves, not only they but the whole of humanity entered into that cabin with them. It was for all mankind that the poustinik was to pray, to weep, and to endure all the temptations that come to him who lives in the desert. It was FOR THEM that he was to mortify his flesh, for THEM that he accepted the loneliness that transcends our understanding, and which as the same time, once accepted, is no real loneliness at all..." (pg 22-23)
"We need people who will stay in the silence of God and not be distracted by a thousand noises within themselves or by demands made upon them -not entirely wrong demands, but not entirely right ones either. These silent ones, the ones that will really pray, will have all of humanity in their poustinias. They will do spiritual direction and write letters, but slowly, thoughtfully, in the secret silence between them and God. They will be spiritual directors from a distance. Directees will also come and knock at their door..." (pg 42)
"I believe there will be people who realize that it is through being this personal holocaust for humanity that they can bring back to the world, with childlike simplicity, the words of God which they hear in his great silence." (pg 44)
"I think that God calls the poustinik to a total purgation, a total self-emptying. In the Gospel of the Passion we see how Christ is silent before the authorities. Imagine, God is silent! He asks for nothing, and he gives himself. If you want to see what a 'contribution' really is, look at the Man on the Cross. That's a contribution. When you are hanging on a cross you can't do anything because you are crucified. That is the essence of a poustinik. That is his or her contribution. .. The poustinik's loneliness is of slavific and cosmic proportions. This is his contribution... By hanging on his cross of loneliness, his healing rays, like the rays of the sun, will penetrate the earth... No one can tell how far the healing rays from a poustinik's loneliness, united with God, penetrate into the world. The world is cold. Someone must be on fire so that people can come and put their cold hands and feet against that fire. If anyone allows this to happen, but especially the poustinik, then he will become a fireplace at which men can warm themselves. His rays will go out to the ends of the earth...
"The English word 'zeal' usually means intensity of action... But real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you. It is not very easy to have God's fire within you! Only if you are possessed of true zeal will you be able to contain God's bonfire..." ((pg 48-49)
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