Canon 603 Helps Assure Prophetic Life Within the Church

[[Dear Sister, . . . in what you just posted on what is tried and true would you say that keeping a prophetic form of life within the Church rather than leaving it like the Desert Fathers and Mothers did is one of the things canon 603 achieves?]]

That's a great question and it is a point I was making in my last post --- though I admit it was done only implicitly and could have been made more explicitly and clearly. First though, I would correct the notion that the Desert Abbas and Ammas "left the Church". Rules for participating in the Church in a meaningful way were not developed as they are today and the Gospel of Jesus was unique and recognizable amidst the cultures of the time. The Desert Abbas and Ammas lived a radical Christian discipleship and they did so explicitly; they lived lives of prayer rooted in the Scriptures and praying the prayer of the Church. Beyond this they were knowledgeable about Church happenings and concerns and concerned themselves with these as well. (Remember that Anthony, for instance, assisted his friend Athanasius in his battle against Arius, and Anthony was one hermit associated for parts of his eremitical life, with the deepest of deserts.

Today, hermits are called to participate in Church life in more well-defined ways, but again, there is significant freedom so long as the steps hermits take in their solitude are mutually discerned or discerned under appropriate supervision. Lay, priestly, or consecrated hermits are part of the Church. Consecrated hermits live their lives "in the name of" the Church, and traditionally hermits are spoken of as existing in the heart of the Church. Of course, this must be made real in various ways; one's living ecclesial life cannot be merely nominal. We can't effectively leave the church and cover that over with the label "hermit" or "eremitical solitude" or "eremitical hiddenness". Canon 603 is one way of assuring this too.

But back to your question. Yes, the Church in publishing canon 603, not only protects the eremitical life from isolation, eccentricity, and engulfment by "the world" (by values which contrast with and supplant those of the gospel),  but she has brought a prophetic vocation right within her life. She thus assures everyone that folks living lives like those of the Desert Annas and Ammas do so not just within the Church, but in her name as well! Cynics can say she does this to blunt the force or impact of their prophetic quality, but this will not wash. Generally, Hermits today are regarded as incredible or entirely irrelevant. They may be objects of curiosity or interesting matter for a wildlife or psychology journal, but significant lives? Hardly. Had the Church feared the prophetic power of this vocation they could have simply ignored it. Instead she recognizes this life as a vocation and gift of God and composes a canon which defines normative characteristics and makes some instances of it part of the consecrated state! The Church only does this with the things she holds as valuable and even indispensable to her own life.

By the way, this could be said to be another dimension of the way the vocation is ecclesial: it is formally and explicitly (canonically) lived within the Church for the sake of the Church herself! This is an implicit part of the rights and obligations of canonical eremitical life. Thus, those things that protect eremitical life in canon 603 also assures the potential for a vital prophetic presence within the Church --- something which likewise will help to maintain the Church's own prophetic presence in a world so much in need of it.

Eremitical Life as Prophetic: Risking being Fools for Christ

[[Hi Sister, in your post on the hermit life as prophetic you said that the picture of the Carthusian hermit would be absurd if either God did not exist or if God were not a "constitutive part" of our very being but I wasn't sure I got what you were saying. Could you explain some more? Also I wondered if part of being prophetic is being "countercultural"? Does it mean risking being thought of as "absurd" or a "fool for Christ"? Are people we think of as fools for Christ prophetic?]]

When I made that parenthetical comment in Hermit Life as Prophetic, what I was thinking was this was a terrific picture symbolizing the heart of the hermit life. The hermit is praying at a naked prayer desk. He is not reading, studying, relaxing (all ways of justifying solitude), ministering to the poor, preaching, teaching, nursing, nor is he otherwise engaged in active ministry. His life is given over not to the cultivation of self, nor to some vague notion of peace and quiet, nor to a recognizable commitment to individualism. He has come away, embraced eremitical anachoresis (withdrawal) in order to seek God and to come to fullness of life --- a fullness we call holiness. He has relinquished an ordinary life of ordinary commitment (or refusal thereof), turned from family and friends in a significant though not absolute way, set aside any number of personal gifts and talents to embrace the extraordinary commitment of the solitary life of prayer and penance in a Charterhouse structured according to medieval values and customs. Moreover, he has done this first and foremost for God's own sake.

Even for those who believe in God such a choice can seem absurd or a relative waste. (This might be especially true for those who are committed to apostolic life and active ministry.) For those who believe there is no such reality as God (for atheism is indeed a religious belief similar to theism) such a life would be completely absurd, empty of meaning, and, perhaps then, ludicrous. Similarly, for those who believe God is merely remote, external to ourselves, or something other than the very ground and source of being and meaning within and underlying the whole of creation (including our own hearts where we bear witness to that reality), a picture symbolizing not only praying regularly but committing to a life of becoming God's own prayer might be seen as futile, a waste, and absurd. In today's society we might tolerantly allow for this in the name of individual liberty, "So long as s/he doesn't hurt anyone, s/he can do whatever she pleases," but at the root of such an attitude is a view of humanity that suggests that a life, however lived, is of no ultimate worth; anything the person does is acceptable for precisely this reason. A hermit's life in such a case is no more absurd or futile than anyone else's, it is simply more evidently so.

So, the hermit serves in a prophetic way to affirm the foundational relationship between the human person and God. She does so vividly and lives with an incredible clarity the risk Paul spoke of when he said, "If Jesus has not been raised from the dead" --- if, that is, our God does not exist and is not the ground and source of being and meaning who, in the Christ Event, ultimately triumphs over death and senselessness --- "then we are the greatest fools of all." Yes, this is a counter cultural stance. We place our trust in the God who shows us who God is and who we are in the events of the cross. We risk wasting our lives in a fruitless fantasy existence rooted in a non-existent or remote and ultimately powerless or unloving God in the name of the Gospel of the God of Jesus Christ. We embrace the scandal and foolishness of the cross as our greatest hope and norm while we reject so much of what goes on in the name of "success" or "significance" or "wisdom" today. For us, as for Paul, the Cross is the foolishness of God which is wiser than human wisdom. In this sense hermits are very much "fools for Christ."

I think the category "fool for Christ" or "holy foolishness" (what Catherine De Hueck made well known in her book of the same name as "Urodivoi") absolutely refers to a prophetic stance. Such persons not only serve as gadflies to poke fun at our this-worldly pretensions and obsessions as well as taking the wrath and ridicule of this world onto themselves to unmask it, but when truly authentic (and not just run of the mill fools or masochistic nutcases), they proclaim the Word of God and/or Gospel of God in Christ into the present situation with a peculiarly arresting and troubling power. Quintessentially they are truth tellers. That is what prophets always are and do. In the OT it is the very definition of the word. Prophets speak the Word of God into the present situation and do so in a way where the wisdom and power (the Divine foolishness and weakness) of that Word can both 'judge' and transform reality by making it more true and whole.

Hermit Life as Prophetic

[[Hi Sister O'Neal, given that Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter does not even mention canonical hermits and exhorts religious to think of the distinctive characteristic of religious life as prophecy, how does this fit in with your own vocation? I admit I have a very hard time thinking of hermit life as prophetic! It seems selfish and very old-fashioned to me. Prophets always seemed more exciting and into a freshness and newness that challenged those they came to. But hermits sit in their cells and pray. How can that be considered prophetic?]]

This is truly a great set of questions! I am not sure I can do them justice, in fact, but I also look forward to trying. First, though Francis did not mention diocesan hermits explicitly, they are included in the category of consecrated persons to whom the letter is mainly directed. Also, Francis did speak specifically to contemplatives and made suggestions to them regarding ways they could be a prophetic presence in our world. Even so, I believe that my own vocation is profoundly prophetic and I have felt this way for at least the past 25 years or so, and most especially over the past 10 years or so. The key for me is that this vocation is a way of proclaiming the truth, challenge, and promise of the Gospel in and for a world which, at every point, stands for something else entirely.

For instance, my vocation says that we are never truly alone and that God is a constitutive part of our very being. (Consider what a complete absurdity the above picture symbolizing the life of the hermit would represent if neither part of this assertion were true!) We are dialogical events at our very heart and this means that our basic gift and task is our humanity. No matter what else goes on in our lives, no matter what other successes and failures touch or characterize us, this basic charism and challenge is still ours and always something we can, with the grace of God, fulfill. Isn't that the real success of Jesus on the Cross? Namely, that in the midst of abject failure and absolute degradation Jesus remained true to the dialogical reality he was, continued to depend totally on God to make his life (and his failure) meaningful, and remained wholly open to the power of Love-in-Act to transform the world --- even (or especially) the godless realms of sin and death which so condition it at every point. This is indeed a prophetic word our world needs to hear and it is one, I think, hermits can proclaim with their lives precisely because in most every way our world measures success, personal significance, or meaningfulness, the hermit fails to measure up.

Similarly then, the eremitical vocation therefore says that solitude is not the same as isolation. In a world characterized by isolation and, to a tremendous degree, the fear that life is essentially meaningless, especially when we find ourselves alone (Merton used to speak about the terror of boredom and futility), my vocation speaks directly to that and says, "Not so!" In a world where folks seem to feel like exiles and be in search of relationships which allow them to be loved and to feel as though they belong, the hermit reminds us that ultimately speaking, that is beyond any limit or conditioning element, God loves us, holds us to be infinitely precious, and transforms us into persons who CAN love others as well as ourselves. We say with our lives of eremitical solitude that belonging begins with this fundamental relationship and from there extends to family, Church, world at large, and even cosmos. Because we are at home with God and with ourselves, we know that we can be at and make our home anywhere; we can recognize and empathize with others who may feel or be alienated and call them brother or sister precisely because we are in communion with God. One of the reasons I stress the ecclesial nature of the consecrated eremitical vocation in the church is precisely because this stands in such stark and prophetic contrast to more worldly versions of eremitical life which are essentially individualistic and estranged.

Exile is a central category for understanding the eremitical life. In fact, hermits voluntarily embrace exile, a life of distinct alienness and marginality precisely so they can witness to the more profound belonging that characterizes every life in union with God. This dynamic of exile and more profound belonging seems to me to be quintessentially typical of the prophetic life. And of course this is important because life as we know it is a pilgrimage in which we are each exiles to greater and lesser degrees. Whether it is through experiences of acute or chronic illness, betrayal or bereavement, failures in work or studies, loss of friendships or any of the 1000's of things which set us apart from others every day of our lives including, sometimes, our prayer and yearning for God, we know deep down that we are not truly at home and that we are made for something else, something more, something which completes us and gives us (and the rest of creation) rest. Through her voluntary exile and all that characterizes it the hermit witnesses to this something more and to the completion and rest that is ours in God alone. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a prophetic word the world needs to hear.

At the foundation of all of this is the hermit's prayer and penance which she undertakes for God's own sake. God wills to be the answer to the question we are, the completion of a love which seeks fulfillment in another, the rest which comes of truly being heard --- and therefore, truly being precious to and part of God's very life. God seeks through us to transform and bring to completion the creation we are and in which we now live. He seeks to make of it a new creation where heaven and earth entirely interpenetrate one another; He seeks, in other words, to be all in all. If we are aware of the pain, isolation, desperate search for meaning, and struggle of those around us, we must also be aware that our God has revealed himself to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us, but is prevented from realizing this goal at every turn. While Christ was God's unique counterpart, God also seeks in each of us a counterpart to receive and return his love so that he might be Emmanuel more extensively. A hermit gives her life so that she might truly be there for God in at least this small way. She does so so in union with Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit so that one day, there will be a new heaven and new earth whose heart is life in communion-with-God. It seems to me this is and has always been the very essence of the prophet's work and commission.

By the way, your comments on prophets and the freshness, newness, and excitement of the prophet's life deserve some comment too but, unfortunately, I have to stop here. For now let me say that so long as God --- who is always new (God could not be eternal otherwise) --- is at the center of our lives, the freshness, newness and excitement you mentioned will be there too. While we might not commonly associate these words with contemplative lives of prayer and penance, this is the reason such persons are so essentially happy and sort of "unstoppable" if you know what I mean. Contemplative life and (I am bound to say) eremitical life in particular is an adventure --- no doubt about it! I suspect that people are in search of just such an adventure and, as I have already written in Always Beginners, the reason we almost compulsively seek the newest gadget, car, computer, smart phone, or become shopaholics and the like is because most often we have substituted the quest for the novel (Gk. neos or nova, new in time) for that which is always qualitatively new in our lives (Gk. kainotes, kainos), namely a relationship with the creator God in whom all newness is rooted, a communion with that Love-in-Act who makes all things new. In this too hermits (and anyone who makes a vow or embraces the value of evangelical poverty) serve as a prophetic presence and speak a prophetic word to our world.

Please note that I have written about all of these things in the past so I am aware that much of this post is repetitive; I have simply not tended to link them to the word prophetic so, thank you (along with Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter) for providing the opportunity to do that.

Hermit Life as Prophetic

[[Hi Sister O'Neal, given that Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter does not even mention canonical hermits and exhorts religious to think of the distinctive characteristic of religious life as prophecy, how does this fit in with your own vocation? I admit I have a very hard time thinking of hermit life as prophetic! It seems selfish and very old-fashioned to me. Prophets always seemed more exciting and into a freshness and newness that challenged those they came to. But hermits sit in their cells and pray. How can that be considered prophetic?]]

This is truly a great set of questions! I am not sure I can do them justice, in fact, but I also look forward to trying. First, though Francis did not mention diocesan hermits explicitly, they are included in the category of consecrated persons to whom the letter is mainly directed. Also, Francis did speak specifically to contemplatives and made suggestions to them regarding ways they could be a prophetic presence in our world. Even so, I believe that my own vocation is profoundly prophetic and I have felt this way for at least the past 25 years or so, and most especially over the past 10 years or so. The key for me is that this vocation is a way of proclaiming the truth, challenge, and promise of the Gospel in and for a world which, at every point, stands for something else entirely.

For instance, my vocation says that we are never truly alone and that God is a constitutive part of our very being. We are dialogical events at our very heart and this means that our basic gift and task is our humanity. No matter what else goes on in our lives, no matter what other successes and failures touch or characterize us, this basic charism and challenge is still ours and always something we can, with the grace of God, fulfill. Isn't that the real success of Jesus on the Cross? Namely, that in the midst of abject failure and absolute degradation Jesus remained true to the dialogical reality he was, continued to depend totally on God to make his life (and his failure) meaningful, and remained wholly open to the power of Love-in-Act to transform the world --- even the godless realms of sin and death. This is indeed a prophetic word our world needs to hear and it is one, I think, hermits can proclaim with their lives precisely because in most every way our world measures success, personal significance, or meaningfulness, the hermit fails to measure up.

Similarly then, the eremitical vocation therefore says that solitude is not the same as isolation. In a world characterized by isolation and, to a tremendous degree, the fear that life is essentially meaningless, especially when we find ourselves alone (Merton used to speak about the terror of boredom and futility), my vocation speaks directly to that and says, "Not so!" In a world where folks seem to feel like exiles and be in search of relationships which allow them to be loved and to feel as though they belong, the hermit reminds us that God loves us, holds us to be infinitely precious, and transforms us into persons who CAN love others as well as ourselves. We say with our lives of eremitical solitude that belonging begins with this fundamental relationship and from there extends to family, Church, world at large, and even cosmos. Because we are at home with God and with ourselves, we know that we can be at and make our home anywhere; we can recognize and empathize with others who may feel or be alienated and call them brother or sister precisely because we are in communion with God. One of the reasons I stress the ecclesial nature of the consecrated eremitical vocation in the church is precisely because this stands in such stark and prophetic contrast to more worldly versions of eremitical life which are essentially individualistic and estranged.

Exile is a central category for understanding the eremitical life. In fact, hermits voluntarily embrace exile, a life of distinct alienness and marginality precisely so they can witness to the more profound belonging that characterizes every life in union with God. This dynamic of exile and more profound belonging seems to me to be quintessentially typical of the prophetic life. And of course this is important because life as we know it is a pilgrimage in which we are each exiles to greater and lesser degrees. Whether it is through experiences of acute or chronic illness, betrayal or bereavement, failures in work or studies, loss of friendships or any of the 1000's of things which set us apart from others every day of our lives including, sometimes, our prayer and yearning for God, we know deep down that we are not truly at home and that we are made for something else, something more, something which completes us and gives us rest. Through her voluntary exile and all that characterizes it the hermit witnesses to this something more and to the completion and rest that is ours in God alone. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a prophetic word the world needs to hear.

At the foundation of all of this is the hermit's prayer and penance which she undertakes for God's own sake. God wills to be the answer to the question we are, the completion of a love which seeks fulfillment in another, the rest which comes of truly being heard --- and therefore, truly being precious to and part of God's very life. God seeks through us to transform and bring to completion the creation we are and in which we now live. He seeks to make of it a new creation where heaven and earth entirely interpenetrate one another; He seeks, in other words, to be all in all. If we are aware of the pain, isolation, desperate search for meaning, and struggle of those around us, we must also be aware that our God has revealed himself to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us, but is prevented from realizing this goal at every turn. While Christ was God's unique counterpart, God also seeks in each of us a counterpart to receive and return his love so that he might be Emmanuel more extensively. A hermit gives her life so that she might truly be there for God in at least this small way. She does so so in union with Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit so that one day, there will be a new heaven and new earth whose heart is life in communion-with-God. It seems to me this is and has always been the very essence of the prophet's work and commission.

By the way, your comments on prophets and the freshness, newness, and excitement of the prophet's life deserve some comment too but, unfortunately, I have to leave this here. For now let me say that so long as God --- who is always new (God could not be eternal otherwise) --- is at the center of our lives, the freshness, newness and excitement you mentioned will be there too. While we might not commonly associate these words with contemplative lives of prayer and penance, this is the reason such persons are so essentially happy and sort of "unstoppable" if you know what I mean. Contemplative life and (I am bound to say) eremitical life in particular is an adventure --- no doubt about it! I suspect that people are in search of just such an adventure and, as I have already written in Always Beginners, the reason we almost compulsively seek the newest gadget, car, computer, smart phone, or become shopaholics and the like is because most often we have substituted the quest for the novel (Gk. nova, new in time) for that which is always qualitatively new in our lives (Gk. kainotes, kainos), namely a relationship with the creator God in whom all newness is rooted, a communion with that Love-in-Act who makes all things new. In this too hermits (and anyone who makes a vow or embraces the value of evangelical poverty) serve as a prophetic presence and speak a prophetic word to our world.

Please note that I have written about all of these things in the past so I am aware that much of this post is repetitive; I have simply not tended to link them to the word prophetic so, thank you (along with Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter) for providing the opportunity to do that.

Follow up Questions: CMSWR and LCWR

[[Hi Sister Laurel, you wrote about the CMSWR and said.[[. . . they are not pushing the envelope in any way and are more typical of the form of religious life the Vatican approved in 1900 with Conditae a Christo and made canonical in 1917. It is a form of religious life which is definitely less prophetically oriented and more supportive of the institutional status quo. They are involved in corporate apostolates, but generally not on the margins of society with ministries to the disenfranchised where Sisters of the LCWR are often found. This allows them to live community in the sense most of us recognize as common in the early to mid 1900's but in the main not to live where the poorest of the poor actually reside and require help.]] Are you saying that such congregations are not prophetic? Are you saying that only LCWR communities ARE prophetic? Can you clarify this for me because I could not agree if you were drawing such a black and white distinction?]]

Thanks for your questions. I received several of emails on this matter. Yours was the only one that asked me to clarify what I actually said, or, in fact, actually quoted or characterized what I said accurately. For that reason, if you don't mind, I will use your questions to answer all of these. Note well that I used the phrase "less prophetically oriented". I did not say, "not prophetic", "less prophetic", nor did I say they were unfruitful or unimportant for the proclamation of the Gospel. I tried pretty hard NOT to draw things in black and white or either/or terms, and I stayed away from "conservative/ liberal" or "traditionalist/progressive" kinds of distinctions (dichotomies) and labels. That was ONE of the reasons I used only CMSWR and LCWR as designations. (The other was that the questioner used those in his/her question.)

There is no doubt that I find the LCWR group more diverse than the CMSWR, but that is, as I noted in the post you quoted, because the CMSWR itself only recognizes ONE expression of non strictly-cloistered religious life as valid while LCWR does not. Thus, LCWR has Sisters who wear habits and those who do not; they have Sisters in corporate apostolates, and those who are not, Sisters living community in corporate settings, and those who live community in other ways. The CMSWR does not. I do think the LCWR is more helpful in reflecting the nature of ministerial religious life in the US than the CMSWR, because they are more diverse and have adopted a less narrow view of religious life and view of the nature of the church which is more in line with the image emphasized by Vatican II. On the other hand, I noted very explicitly that BOTH leadership conferences are necessary for a complete picture of religious life. I did not say x is right, y is wrong, for instance. (More about this below, however.)

Now, for your specific questions. What do I mean when I say that one leadership conference is more prophetically oriented than another? I mean, as has always been the case with prophets, that they work to proclaim the Gospel or will of God in season and out, whether it is opportune or not, and whether it conflicts with the religious institutions and state which hold power at the time or not. I mean that they stand on the margins, not only with regard to those they minister to, but in terms of the institution precisely because they seek to proclaim a Gospel which threatens those in power and gets real disciples crucified by the religious and political status quo. They proclaim a Gospel which is principally concerned with the Kingdom of God, and therefore, less so with partial and proleptic expressions of that Kingdom or with simple preservation of the status quo. Wherever the Kingdom of God is truly proclaimed, as Mary's Magnificat recounts, religious and political systems are overturned along with the security, power, and insularity they necessarily foster and protect.

I mean too that such groups work for portions of the Gospel that have been forgotten or even forsaken. For instance, one comment I have heard recently decries women religious working for the good of the earth. But in fact, our own stewardship of the earth is part of the most original commission to humanity; it is, simply put, the will of God. In the New Testament, as Paul makes very clear, the message celebrated is that regarding a new Creation, a new heaven and a new earth --- not, pie in the sky by and by, but the re-making of God's creation so that heaven and earth completely interpenetrate one another and God is "All in all." Commitment to follow a God who becomes enfleshed will necessarily mean treating all that he has assumed as holy --- and that does mean the dust of the earth as well as the stuff of heaven. Literally and figuratively it is ALL star stuff.

It will mean recovering ministries and a way of doing ministry which reach(es) the marginalized --- those truly on the margins both politically and ecclesially. This in turn will mean less emphasis on large corporate apostolates and smaller targeted ministries with fewer Sisters -- and those living right with those they serve. To some extent it requires "becoming all things to all people" as Paul himself claimed was necessary to truly follow Christ, and at the same time it will mean, "having no place to lay one's head" in the sense of insulated religious preserves marked by enclosure and some sort of "convent mystique." (Habits might fit here as well.) In other words, it means searching for, finding and proclaiming God right in the midst of the situation in which the person finds him/herself and in the terms the person really NEED to hear because this is CENTRAL to a Gospel which says God came to ALL and made ALL holy in that coming.

These are SOME of the things I mean by being prophetic, and a prophetic orientation means adopting and sacrificing for the sake of this prophetic activity and identity BECAUSE it is what one discerns God is calling one to. Those who do not adopt such a perspective may simply not be called to it. They may (like Jonah) even believe it is wrong-headed and so go the other way. And in this they may be right or wrong. They may still find themselves acting as prophets in other ways, but for them it is not a full-time or overarching perspective to which other things and ways of living are subordinated. So, yes, I am saying that in general, CMSWR institutes are not prophetically oriented, nor can they be given the nature of the ecclesiology and theology of the vows they have adopted. (Other ecclesiologies and/or theologies allow for the prophetic better and sometimes even require it.) But then, there were relatively few Prophets in the OT, and relatively few exercising a formal prophetic role in the NT and subsequent Church history. There are other vocations after all.

I hope this helps. Again, thanks for the questions.