Summer improvements

The walls are all covered with osb now.

There is now a partial wall on the open side of the loft, for safety.

A fire in the hearth.

Ships ladder added; much safer than an ordinary ladder.

“The Church Cannot Paper Over Sin Under the Guise of Mercy”

SNIP: 

Proposals that the church should invite those in irregular marriages to receive Communion, even after some act of penance or discussion with a priest in the “internal forum,” would dismiss the needs of children in order to satisfy the desires of adults. It confuses the little souls that the church is responsible for forming…

…What children need is for the church to stand with them and to speak the truth about what their parent or parents have done. As Catholics, we understand that God’s judgment is a sign of his mercy and love, especially the judgment of those actions that have destructive consequences for the people we love. Lest we forget, encouraging repentance and reparation for our wrongs toward others is for the good of our souls and for the well being of those around us.

And this brings us to our main concern. We are not bitter young people who fear change or want to see parents in irregular unions punished. On the contrary, we love our parents and want them to go to heaven. As the church is the instrument of healing for broken and wounded souls, we pray that by being excluded from the Eucharist they will recognize the gravity of their sins and seek repentance.

We do not believe, however, the church can fulfill this responsibility by papering over sin under the guise of mercy. Mercy and love must be lived in truth. If they are not, they become merely patronizing sentiments and ultimately do not have the effect of bringing people closer to Christ. To be a true field hospital in battle, we must come with medicine, not just bandages.

Based on our own experience, as well as observing our peers of all stripes and backgrounds, we have found the clarity of the church’s witness on questions of marriage and sexuality, including the theology of the body, to be transformative, life giving and healing. From those with same-sex attraction to those caught up in the hook-up culture, the splendor of the truth—coupled with friendships and relationships that help people live this truth and explore paths of healing—can give new life.

Link

Suppressing Awareness Regarding Breast Cancer

 The late 19th and early 20th century Italian doctor and saint, Joseph Moscati, knew what it was like to live a life of science as a man of faith in a hostile culture. His counsel should be broadcast widely today as it applies to those from all walks of life:

Love the truth, show yourself as you are, without pretenses and fears. . .and if the truth causes you persecution, accept it, and if it causes you some torment, bear it. And if for the sake of truth you should sacrifice yourself and your life, be strong in your sacrifice.

That timeless pearl of wisdom is really the only way to proceed, given that some interpret the truth as an attack on their very dignity, or what they hold dear. They may not be prepared to budge, even if they hear it said that moral truth is essential to finding real happiness and peace.

Matthew Hanley

A Move.

Because my main hermitage is inaccessible during the harsher winter months I also have a place apart from it. These picture document a move from the farmhouse to a smaller place on the edge of a very small village in Manitoba. Here is a picture of the main hermitage:

Main Hermitage

Sunrise on the farm hermitage

More sunrise

Getting set to move

Farm view

Farm view

New cell.

View from new cell

View from new cell

On Solitude.

Saint Bruno at the Cinema 

Curiously, Saint Bruno, the father of those who love solitude, found himself very much in the media over the past decade. And where? In the literary and film worlds! A film on the Carthusian life, shaped by Saint Bruno fourteen centuries ago, drew crowds of movie-goers. The film, produced by German cinematographer, Philip Groening, is a three-hour documentary with no spoken words. Appropriately enough, the film is called Die Grosse Stille, The Great Silence. The only sound in the film is that of daily life in the Charterhouse and of the Latin Gregorian Chant of the monks. The astonishing success of the film says, I think, more about the world’s thirst for silence and people’s readiness to accept a radical witness to the primacy of God, than it does about life in the Charterhouse.

Saint Bruno at the Bookstore

At about the same time, a book on Carthusian life appeared in the secular press. Written by Nancy Klein Maguire, a woman married to a former Carthusian, the book is called An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order. The book became hugely popular. Again, this suggests that at very deep level, and not always consciously, people thirst for what is not of this world. “Not as the world gives do I give to you” (Jn 14:27).

Stat Crux Dum Volvitur Orbis

The Order founded by Saint Bruno has never been reformed because it was never deformed. Carthusian observances and customs remain largely unchanged. The motto of the Order is, Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, “The Cross stands still while the world spins.” Precisely because the world is weary of change, it is attracted by what is changeless, timeless, and radically faithful to tradition.

Hidden in the Heart of the Church

The Carthusian vocation is extremely rare. Countless men and women have tried life in a Charterhouse and found themselves, after a few months or, even after several years, like Jonah cast from the belly of the whale, once again on the shore of the world. And yet, from one generation to the next, the Order remains: a living organism, hidden in the heart of the Church, pulsating with the eternal rhythm of a deathless love.

Solitudes

Today’s feast of Saint Bruno obliges us to look more closely at the place of solitude in our own lives. There are different kinds of solitude. There is the elected aloneness of the consecrated solitary: a person’s free and conscious choice to live his life alone with God and for God alone. Sometimes this is lived within the canonical framework of an established Order such as the Carthusians. At other times it is lived outside that framework in obedience to an approved personal rule. Of those who aspire to this choice, a great number fall short of fulfilling it.

The Wounded Heart

The solitary life demands a maturity that comes only from suffering. Sometimes suffering causes one to shut down and close in upon oneself. In such a case, solitude is a particularly dangerous form of self-indulgence. Paradoxically, when suffering breaks one’s heart and opens it to God, it is the best preparation for the solitary life. One who goes into solitude without having had his heart broken, or wounded, or pierced through, cannot remain there, because the transformation of solitude into communion with God passes necessarily, and always, through a heart that has been opened by suffering, through a heart that remains open because it is wounded by love. Perhaps this is why true solitaries find themselves drawn to the mystery of the Heart of Jesus wounded by our sins. The Heart of Christ, once opened by the soldier’s lance, remains eternally open.

Our Lady of Solitude

There is the solitude of the widow. After years of a shared life, this solitude can be a terrible thing. It can also become a tremendous grace. The heart wounded by the loss of a beloved spouse can become a heart wounded by desire for communion with God and open to the sorrows of others. In the solitude of the widow the Virgin Mary holds a special place. Spanish-speaking Catholics have the devotion to Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, Our Lady of Solitude. The widow who acknowledges Mary and welcomes Mary into her aloneness, especially through the prayer of the Rosary, discovers in her company a hidden spring of ceaseless prayer, a source of courage and of hope.

Other Solitudes

There is also the solitude of the person who never quite fits in anywhere. There is the solitude of one repeatedly disappointed in love. There is the solitude of the child who, having suffered rejection or ridicule, knows a terrible loneliness at school and in the midst of his peers. There is the solitude of the person who never feels at home with her co-workers. There is the solitude of the person who, because he or she is afflicted and blessed with too great a sensitivity, cannot live in community without risking serious emotional damage. There is the solitude of one whose physical infirmities oblige him to live outside the arena of normal daily life. There is also solitude within marriages. There is solitude in friendships. There is solitude in community life. There is the solitude of the diocesan priest — of the Parish Priest in his presbytery and of the Curate in his flat — a solitude made all the more terrible that it exists alongside the relentless demands of pastoral service. There is solitude in the marketplace and in the midst of a whirlwind of social activities.

The Aloneness That Poisons

All of these forms of aloneness, especially when they are suffered passively, can cause one to become bitter and cynical. They can lead to a permanent state of anger, manifesting itself in aggressiveness or in depression. They can lead to self-destructive addictions and destructive behaviour.

Solitude Sanctified

When does a solitude marked by absence become a solitude filled with presence? When, instead of suffering it passively, one accepts it consciously and generously and, after having said “Yes” to it, offers it to God as a chalice ready to be filled. Every emptiness, every loneliness, every void has a certain “Eucharistic potential.” There is no void, no emptiness, no absence that God cannot fill with His presence.

Thou Searchest Out My Path

Psalm 138 is the perfect prayer for one experiencing the pain of aloneness. “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways” (Ps 138:1-3). God does not spurn the prayer of one who, with a broken heart, asks Him to reveal Himself as the One who is more present to us than we are to ourselves. It is immensely consoling to know that in the light of the Face of Christ one has nothing to hide.

Marian Solitude

It is not by chance that Saint Bruno’s Carthusians and the other Orders of the Church most marked by solitude are the very ones marked by a strong and tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In a sense, Mary holds the key to every solitude inhabited by God. Mary holds the key to every solitude of adoration. A solitude consecrated to Mary becomes an experience not of absence, but of presence; not of emptiness, but of fullness; not of isolation, but of communion.

Our Lord has entrusted to His Mother the transformation of every loneliness into communion. “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing near, he said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (Jn 19:26-27). Mary will not come into your solitude uninvited, but if you ask her, especially by praying her Rosary, she will be there, filling it with life, sweetness, and hope.

VULTUS CHRISTI

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HERMIT.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HERMIT.

He shall sit alone, and he shall be still; for he raised himself above himself.
Lamentations 3:28.

*    *    *    *    *

Our abiding  presence in the desert is justified only when we are there for Jesus’ sake.

To enter really into the desert where we are called by God, we have a decisive choice to make: everything must be built on the Son of God, who came to put himself under the Father’s guidance in the solitude of the Judean desert.

Jesus is the source of life in the desert by the simple fact that he is, by nature, a luminous beacon, a focus of attraction for those whom the Father has placed in his interior school.

Walking in the desert is to advance in silence behind the Guide. It is to follow Jesus.
Carthusian Matins.

*    *    *    *    *

Although, in retrospect, I have had this calling since I was a little child, it was later in life that I understood and embraced it. Early in the last course of Nathanael (2009-2012) I wrote Archbishop LeGatt telling him of my vocation to silence and solitude and that lead to an opening up of a period of discernment with him. As part of the discernment process I had to write a plan of life which might simply be said to be a defined spirituality and a schedule of activities over a day, week, and year of my prayer life in the context of the Liturgical year in the life of a desert dweller. Although a schedule might be the first thing one might look at for understanding who a hermit is, it is not the core. A hermits primary relationship is with God; from there everything else flows. Silence and solitude, along with the vows one takes, in my case in Archbishop LeGatt’s hands, are means to support and express this relationship.

When all is said and done, with silence and solitude doing its work, what is left of a person is God’s love for everyone in the world; indeed, for His whole creation. A hermit’s Plan of Life is not meant to be the final say in how to approach our Lord but it is a tool to help the hermit keep his eye on the goal in the present moment.

In time the fullness of transcendence is gradually understood to be immersion into the fullness of reality. It is not a floating around in a mystical mist or a “high” of some description. But it is being fully involved in the present moment as it comes and goes. Mystics seek God as He is; most others seek God as they imagine Him to be! A hermit’s job, then, is not to produce anything but be a witness  to the primary relationship in humanity’s life: with God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To move past the understanding part, for in the end, we will never understand God completely, and to grasp in faith God’s invitation to each of us and be willing to loose control in embracing His will.

Simplicity in living one’s life flows from the acceptance the evil in our world. This evil is also present in our own hearts and, allowing God access so that healing, in time, can take place. This detachment and offering of self to God opens up a hermit to be an anonymous conduit for the love of God. It is a reframing of the classic question of WHY, to the answer WHO: our Triune God.

Some Notes

I retired from the working world at the age of 60 to try out the Hermit life style and live on a small pension. I celebrate all of the Liturgical Offices (Breviary) as well as Lectio Divina (reflective reading) including time for various prayer forms. That includes intercessions (send to brunothehermit@gmail.com ) for the Diocese of St. Boniface which I am attached too having taken my vows in Archbishop LeGatt’s hands. As far as I know, I am the only official hermit in Manitoba.

http://www.archsaintboniface.ca/media/A-day-in-the-Life-of-a-Hermitsept-2015FINAL.pdf

Fauna and cabin.

 Honeysuckle near the hermitage

Black Eyed Susans near the hermitage.

Thistle near the hermitage.

Hermitage deck looking South.