Wednesday, September 8, 2021

ORDINATION

 By the Grace of God, I will be ordained a hermit priest on October 23rd, 2021.

Thursday, July 1, 2021

Letter to my Archbishop.

 My Archbishop asked me to write a letter that he could take to the Council of Priest in our Diocese as a final act of deciding to ordain me. Here it is:

Peace and joy to you Your Grace;

Over time in my vocational journey with you, we have shared much material addressing my hermit’s vocation and also of a hermit priest. Although some of this material shared between us may be reflected here, my purpose, as best I can, is to share more of a personal aspect of my vocation.

Early in my life as a hermit, I found that it is not about receiving praise and notoriety. It involves accepting one’s poverty of one’s own heart and allowing oneself to be led by Jesus. It is a call to deeper self-discovery and embracing who you really think you are in the light of the Father’s healing love. I believe that in embracing this healing love it allows a person to be a conduit of God’s universal love for all. As Bishop Delaquis wrote: “This is a special way to ‘be Christ’, taking on the sin of the world on the cross, (which calls for suffering and dying to oneself and to sin) and calling on the mercy of God to transform sin into grace, new Life, for the greatest Glory of God.

In my years of reflecting on a hermit vocation, my experience has led me to believe that a journey through the desert of self is also a journey to the foundation of mankind itself and here unity of mankind is also a part of the Body of Christ. Here is Christ with his love available for all. And the hermit brings to the Church, indeed the world, the sense of transcendence in a world that tends to live and organize itself without any reference to the divine or accepting God’s Revelation or understanding His presence in this world. I find that there has been much thought and innovation given to mankind’s well-being over human history, but in recent times little depth of thought is given to who he really is, and by my life of silence and solitude I find opportunities are there for Christ’s action to open up new vistas on the understanding of mankind; I believe that mankind needs this contemplative service of love: a renewed sense of transcendence. And the hermit is transformed by the Word in order to preach by his life.

In part, I have also found that learning to live in the present through silence and solitude, opens up new opportunities for the action of Grace. Though God did not come to solve all our problems we would probably have fewer problems if God were more present in our thinking and living. A hermit is a ‘conduit’ to that source of Wisdom and Life as a desert intercessor for all. And a life lived in a desert is an environment that can be very fruitful for finding the necessary life of prayer:

He found them in a wilderness, *

a wasteland of howling desert.

He shielded them and cared for them, *

guarding them as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle incites its nestlings forth *

by hovering over its brood,

so he spread his wings to receive them *

and bore them up on his pinions.

The Lord alone was their leader, *

no strange god was with him.

Deuteronomy 32

The call to priesthood ordination has always been a part of me and has deeply matured in my years as a hermit, and in order to obey this call, I have submitted my belief in this call to your pastoral discernment Archbishop Albert. I found that living a life of silence and solitude needs a foundation of Liturgy, the necessary environment to support self-understanding and the spiritual connection with the Body of Christ. Here is the reality in which we all live and move. And Liturgy is formative: lex orandi, lex credendi – the law of praying is the law of believing:

“Worship, that is, the right kind of cult, of relationship with God, is essential for the right kind of human existence in the world. It is so precisely because it reaches beyond everyday life. Worship gives us a share in heaven’s mode of existence, in the world of God, and allows light to fall from that divine world into ours. In this sense, worship…has the character of anticipation” Ratzinger

I note with joy that during this time of the pandemic that priests of this diocese, for the most part, are celebrating Mass ‘in private’, alone, and those celebrations are meaningful and important. Although the people of God are not in the same location as the celebration, the spiritual efficacy, indeed the actualization of Christ’s salvific work and His love for the Father and the good of all is present. As a hermit-priest, I would be celebrating this same Mass and for the same reasons as noted above. As Pope St. Paul VI has written in support of this vocational understanding:

“…A sound perspective of the fitting relationship between both consecrations, that proper to the priest, and that proper to the hermit/monk. Indeed, solitude, the absolute loss of the goods of the world, the abnegation of one’s own will: things that are undertaken by those who enclose themselves within the bounds of a monastery/hermitage, most singularly prepare the soul of the priest to be devoutly and ardently offered up for the Eucharistic sacrifice which is the source and summit of the whole Christian life.”

I believe that serving God as a hermit-priest in obedience to you, Archbishop Albert, is to serve the whole Body of Christ and reaches out to all beyond committees, programs and ministries and makes merciful Love possible for all. Celebrating the Eucharist opens me to be open to and founded on God’s action and expressing that great love for His creation through celebrating the Eucharist. This reality moves beyond the natural limitations of myself.

Your obedient servant;

Br. Brian <><, er dio.