Thomas Merton, thoughts on solitude...
"The solitary life is full of paradoxes, the solitary is at peace, but not as the world understands peace, happy but not in the worldly sense of a good time, going but unsure of the way, not knowing the way but arriving, arriving but likewise departing. The solitary possess all riches but of emptiness, embracing interior poverty but not of any possession. The solitary has so many riches he cannot see God, so close to God that there is no perspective or object, so swallowed up in God that there is nothing left to see." "There have always been solitaries who, by virtue of a special purity, and simplicity of heart, have been destined from their earliest youth to an eremitical and contemplative life, in some official form." "His solitude is neither an argument, an accusation, a reproach or a sermon. It is simply life itself. It is...it not only does not attract attention, or desire it, but remains, for the most part, completely invisible." "Do not flee to solitude from the community, find God first in community then He will lead you to solitude." "The great work of the solitary life is gratitude. The hermit is one who knows the mercy of God better than others because one's whole life is one of complete dependence, in silence and in hope upon the hidden mercy of our heavenly Father." Returning to the fundamentals of the spiritual life: the supreme dominion of God, existing for him, realizing that He is everything, and that my life has no other reason than to proclaim that fact. What other possible importance can life have than to belong entirely to Him Whose will is life, and to belong to Whom is life most perfectly, if we only give Him everything. For he is the life of everything that he entirely possesses. Therefore, I give Him my freedom. ~ T. Merton
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
~ Thomas Merton
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Hermits Defined...
Anchorite http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorite http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01462b.htm Hermit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit Ascetic - One who dedicates every aspect of his/her life to contemplation and union with God. The ascetic often lives in austere conditions of self denial, prayer, and fasting. Monk - From the Greek monos, meaning one or solitary, a man or woman living in a monastery. Apatheia - An intense purity of passion directed toward God
Caution* Doing "good things or deeds" to relieve pressure or to justify a lapse from our contemplative practice can lead us down the proverbial road that is paved with good intentions. For people who are not hermits but living in the world, these can also happen to those enticed into speaking more and more about contemplative prayer to others, to suddenly entertaining groupies and finally to the total collapse of their contemplative life. Russell quotes Aelred of Rievaulx, "When you are pressured to get involved: Tu sede, tu tace, tu sustine. Sit still, keep quiet, and stick to it!" * Solitude, not playing an active part, even for a short time, on the busy stage of life can makes us "vulnerable to the imagination's readiness to reassert our right to a place in the world."
HERMITS
(<Eremites>, "inhabitants of a desert", from the Greek <eremos>), also called
anchorites, were men who fled the society of their fellow-men to dwell alone in
retirement. Not all of them, however, sought so complete a solitude as to avoid
absolutely any intercourse with their fellow-men. Some took a companion with them,
generally a disciple; others remained close to inhabited places, from which they
procured their food. This kind of religious life preceded the community life of the
cenobites. Elias is considered the precursor of the hermits in the Old Testament. St.
John the Baptist lived like them in the desert. Christ, too, led this kind of life when he
retired into the mountains. But the eremitic life proper really begins only in the time of
the persecutions. The first known example is that of St. Paul, whose biography was
written by St. Jerome. He began about the year 250. There were others in Egypt; St.
Athanasius, who speaks of them in his life of St. Anthony, does not mention their
names. Nor were they the only ones. These first solitaries, few in number, selected this
mode of living on their own initiative. It was St. Anthony who brought this kind of life
into vogue at the beginning of the fourth century. After the persecutions the number of
hermits increased greatly in Egypt, then in Palestine, then in the Sinaitic peninsula,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor. Cenobitic communities sprang up among them,
but did not become so important as to extinguish the eremitic life. They continued to
flourish in the Egyptian deserts, not to speak of other localities. Discussions arose in
Egypt as to the respective merits of the cenobitic and the eremitic style of life. Which
was the better? Cassian, who voices the common opinion, believed that the cenobitic
life offered more advantages and less inconveniences than the eremitic life. The Syrian
hermits, in addition to their solitude, were accustomed to subject themselves to great
bodily austerities. Some passed years on the top of a pillar (stylites); others condemned
themselves to remain standing, in open air (stationaries); others shut themselves up in a
cell so that they could not come out (recluses).
Not all these hermits were models of piety. History points out many abuses
among them; but, considering everything, they remain one of the noblest examples of
heroic asceticism the world has ever seen. Very many of them were saints. Doctors of
the Church, like St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome,
belonged to their number; and we might also mention Sts. Epiphanius, Ephraem,
Hilarion, Nilus, Isidore of Pelusium. We have no rule giving an account of their mode
of life, though we may form an idea of it from their biographies, which are to be found
in Palladius, "Historia Lausiaca", P. L., XXXIV, 901-1262; Rufinus, "Historia
Monachorum", P. L., XXI, 387-461; Cassian, "Collationes Patrum; De Institutis
coenobitarum", P. L., IV; Theodoret, "Historia religiosa", P. G., LXXXII, 1279-1497; and
also in the "Verba Seniorum", P. L., LXXIV, 381-843, and the "Apophthegmata Patrum",
P. G., LXV, 71-442.
The eremitic life spread to the West in the fourth century, and flourished
especially in the next two centuries, that is to say, till experience had shown by its
results the advantages of the cenobitic organization. St. Gregory the Great, in his
"Dialogues", gives an account of the best-known solitaries of central Italy (P. L.,
LXXVII, 149-430). St. Gregory of Tours does the same for a part of France (Vitae
Patrum), P. L. LXXI, 1009-97). Oftentimes those who helped most to spread the
cenobitic ideal were originally solitaries themselves, for instance, St. Severinus of
Norica and St. Benedict of Nursia. Monasteries frequently, though by no means always,
sprang from the cell of a hermit, who drew a band of disciples around him. From the
beginning of the seventh century, we meet with instances of monks who at intervals led
an eremitic life. As an example we may cite St. Columbanus, St. Riquier, and St.
Germer. Some monasteries had isolated cells close by, where those religious who were
judged capable of living in solitude might retire. Such was especially the case at the
monastery of Cassiodorus, at Viviers in Calabria, and the Abbey of Fontenelles, in the
Diocese of Rouen. Those who felt the want of solitude were advised to reside near an
oratory or a monastic church. The councils and the monastic rules did not encourage
those who were desirous of leading an eremitic life.
The widespread relaxation of monastic discipline drove St. Odo, the great apostle
of reform in the sixth century, into the solitude of the forest. The religious fervour of
the succeeding age produced many hermits. But to guard against the serious dangers of
this kind of life, monastic institutes were founded that combined the advantages of
solitude with the guidance of a superior and the protection of a rule. Thus, for
example, we had the Carthusians and the Camaldolese at Vallombrosa and Monte
Vergine. Nevertheless there still continued to be a large number of isolated hermits,
and an attempt was made to form them into congregations having a fixed rule and a
responsible superior. Italy especially was the home of these congregations at the
beginning of the thirteenth century. Some drew up an entirely new rule for themselves;
others adapted the Rule of St. Benedict to meet their wants; while others again
preferred to base their rule on that of St. Augustine. Pope Alexander IV united the last
into one order, under the name of the Hermits of St. Augustine (1256). Three
congregations of hermits were called after St. Paul, one formed in 1250 in Hungary,
another in Portugal, founded by Mendo Gomez de Simbria, who died in 1481, and the
third in France, established by Guillaume Callier (1620); these last hermits were known
also by the name of the Brothers of Death. Eugene IV formed into a congregation, to be
called after St. Ambrose, the hermits who dwelt in a forest near Milan (1441). We may
mention also the Brothers of the Apostle (1484), the Colorites (1530), the Hermits of
Monte Senario (1593), and those of Monte Luco, who were in Italy; those of Mont-
Voiron, whose constitutions were drawn up by St. Francis de Sales; those of St-Sever, in
Normandy, founded by Guillaume, who had previously been a Camaldolese; those of
St. John the Baptist, in Navarre, approved by Gregory XIII; the hermits of the same
name, founded in France by Michel by Michel de Sainte-Sabine (1630); those of Mont-
Valérien, near Paris (seventeenth century); those of Bavaria, established in the
Diocese of Ratisbon (1769). The Venerable Joseph Cottolengo founded a congregation
of hermits in Lombardy in the middle of the nineteenth century. Some Benedictine
monasteries had hermitages depending on them. Thus we have the case of St. William
of the Desert (1330) and the hermits of Our Lady of Montserrat, in Spain. The latter
were well known from the sixteenth century, from their connexion with García
de Cisneris. They disappeared in the eighteenth century. At the present time there
exists a body of hermits on a mountain near Cordova.
We see, therefore, that the Church has always been anxious to form the hermits
into communities. Nevertheless, many preferred their independence and their
solitude. They were numerous in Italy, Spain, France, and Flanders in the seventeenth
century. Benedict XIII and Urban VIII took measures to prevent the abuses likely to
arise from too great independence. Since then the eremitic life has been gradually
abandoned, and the attempts made to revive it in the last century have had no success.
(See AUGUSTINE, RULE OF SAINT; CAMALDOLESE; CARMELITE ORDER;
CARTHUSIAN ORDER; HIERONYMITES; also under GREEK CHURCH, Vol. VI, p.
761.)
J. M. BESSE
Transcribed by Janet Grayson
We are only just at the beginning of breaking away from the monastic traditions of the past thousand years to find out what twentieth-century people need...It is an exciting time. Why is God asking people to devote their lives to prayer, to dwell in solitude, to become places where Christ confronts evil and reconciles us to God? Why is God asking some to be solitaries, others to be hermits, a few to be anchorites? Because, I believe, of the terrible plight of the world, because no amount of good works or good living has been sufficient to halt our lemming-like rush towards the precipice of destruction, because if there is to be justice in our world it can now only come about by repentance on a large scale. Hermits exist not for their salvation but because Christ wants to save the whole world. Hermits cannot accomplish this by themselves, so they have to point us in the right direction and help us all to give more of our time than in the past to prayer, solitude and spiritual warfare. ~ Una Krull The hermit vocation is universal, passing through every socio-economic group, the whole of society. We make our vows (public/private) to God, not a hierarchy. We stand just outside the walls of the church universal calling for the church to be all it was meant to be, through unceasing prayer for all of God's creation.
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