My Journey to the Hermit Life
“You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.” – John Adams, to Thomas Jefferson, 1813
“I never explain anything!” – Mary Poppins
I don’t remember a voice
On a dark, lonesome road
When I started this journey so long ago
I was only just trying to outrun the noise
There was never a question of having a choice
– Mary-Chapin Carpenter, The Calling
Those first two quotes, even though they seem to be saying opposing things about explanation, both express something true about our experience of faith in general, and about being called by God in particular. On the one hand, we feel a desire to express our experience of faith whenever God blesses us in some way. Recall how the two disciples at Emmaus immediately return to Jerusalem after recognizing the Risen Lord in their midst, so that they can tell the others what they just encountered, and hear from the others their experiences of the Risen Lord as well. Faith seeks to be shared, and yes, explained in some fashion.
Mary Poppins has a point, however. There is something about faith that eludes explanation. Whatever we may say about it – as true as it may be – seems so inadequate compared to what we have been given in Christ. Moreover, not everyone will understand our explanation, no matter how carefully we word it. God always goes beyond our words. To those who understand, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not, no explanation is adequate.
Nevertheless, since this Sunday is also World Day of Prayer for Vocations, and since it is an unusual thing for a diocesan priest to embrace a hermit life, this seems to be as good an occasion as any to attempt a kind of explanation. It may be that some of you are struggling with your own vocation, and might be helped by something I say here. Or, it may be that someone who is trying to discern their vocation will find something helpful here. May the Lord speak to your hearts though these few words.
Yes, it is unusual for a diocesan priest to be led to the hermit life. Still, it is not impossible. The Spirit blows where she will. Searching online, I found references to a few diocesan priests who felt called to the hermit life after they retired from active ministry at the age of 70 or so. There is also the story of Fr. Eugene Romano of the Diocese of Paterson, NJ. He discerned a call to the hermit life and to establish a community (laura) of hermits. In 1975, when Fr. Romano was around 40 (and before there was a canon 603), his bishop acknowledged this calling and formally commissioned him as a hermit. The Hermits of Bethlehem, with Fr. Romano as Desert Father, have blossomed and remain to this day. I mention this to establish a precedent: yes, sometimes diocesan priests do get called to the hermit life.
Moreover, looking around at the priests of my own diocese, I see some who were married at one time and then discerned a calling to the priesthood after their spouses have died. Other priests came to the diocese from religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Trappists and the Salesians. I bring up these examples to establish the basic principle that the Lord does at times lead people from one calling to another, or from one calling to a calling-within-a-calling, which seems to better express my situation.
We have seen that my journey to the hermit life is possible and is in harmony with the experience of the Church. How, then, did it come about in my life?
I will begin by saying a few words about my calling to the priesthood in general, and then move into how my hermit calling began to manifest itself.
If you had known me as a child, you would not have imagined me as an ideal candidate for the diocesan priesthood. No priest – in fact, no one – ever suggested the possibility to me. I was painfully shy, had few friends, and was not involved in Church activities beyond Mass and Catholic school. I read voraciously, learning as much as I could about everything that interested me. My only extracurricular activities were a couple of science fairs and a candlepin bowling league in junior high (even that was a stretch). I was considered brilliant beyond my years, but too quiet for my own good. Maybe even a tad eccentric. I don’t remember a time, though, when faith was absent from my life or when I did not have some sense of the presence of God. My parents always had a strong Catholic faith. As I shared a room with my brother, occasions for physical solitude were rare. I had to withdraw psychologically to find that solitude.
The awakening of a sense of vocation began when I was twelve years old. At the time, my family lived in Old Orchard Beach. The pastor of our parish was Fr. John Clancy, and the parochial vicar was Fr. Roger Bolduc. Fr. Clancy was, even in his sixties, still shy and uncomfortable in public. He was not a particularly good preacher. But yet, I sensed a certain serenity in him and in Fr. Bolduc that appealed to me. There was something here that I wanted. I never had the conscious notion that I wanted to be like either of them, but they were subtle influences on me. It was then that I first felt the sense that I might want to be a priest. I told this to Fr. Bolduc, and he suggested that I become an altar server – which I did. I persisted at it, even though serving Mass felt very difficult for me due to it being so “public”. Somehow, I knew I wanted to be a priest of some kind. But the only priests I knew then were diocesan priests.
A couple of years later, I went to Cheverus High School in Portland. At the time, there were still a good number of Jesuits who taught at the school. When I mentioned to another student that I was considering the priesthood, he asked me if I had ever considered the Jesuits. Although I knew by then that the Jesuits had a certain intellectual focus (which appealed to me), I also knew that they taught in high schools (which definitely did not appeal to me). I sensed, even then, that I did not have the gift of teaching teenagers. That was enough to keep me from inquiring into the Jesuits. I had no firsthand knowledge of any other religious orders then, and I had never heard of hermits (except for Herman’s Hermits, of course – they were okay, but I was decidedly a Beatles fan then).
I wanted to pursue this notion that I was being called to the priesthood, so I chose to go to a seminary college after high school graduation. I went to St. John’s Seminary College in Boston. (A bit of trivia – my faculty advisor there was a young priest by the name of Fr. Richard Malone, whose name might be familiar to a few of you.) Each student had his own room, which felt like an amazing luxury to me. I took a few courses at nearby Boston College as well, and did reasonably well academically. My sense of being called to the priesthood continued. I also began to develop a love for solitude and silent prayer.
The first significant surprise – or shock – in my vocation journey happened in my senior year of college. The diocesan vocation director at the time told me that I needed to have a year away from a school environment before going on to theology studies. The reason I was given was that I was “too close to my parents”. Knowing that many of my classmates saw their families much more than I did, since they lived closer to their families than I did, that reasoning seemed silly to me. What was more significant, however, was that a seminarian (college or otherwise) was asked to take time off only if there was some significant issue or problem – or so we all thought. But if I “had issues”, as they say now, no one told me specifically what the issues were.
In any event, I spent a good part of that year as a volunteer with a little group called Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest, headed by a Jesuit (Fr. Al Fritsch) and based in Lexington, Kentucky. I lived in a back room of the ASPI office, with a foam pad on the floor as my bed. A local rectory let me use their shower and gave me one hot meal a day. The people I met there were fine, but since I felt I was there because of some great unnamed “issue”, it seemed like I was rejected by the diocese. By the time I was finished there, I didn’t look or feel all that great, though I was only 22. I was likely in a depression, though I didn’t know it then. My idea was to hang in there, pray and wait. Patience. One day Fr. Fritsch took me on a day trip with him to the area west of Lexington – which included a too-brief stop at Gethsemani, Thomas Merton’s monastery. Another seed was planted.
My theology studies were at St. Paul’s Seminary in Ottawa. Those were generally good years for me. The evaluations I had from the seminary staff were like those I had in Boston: generally good, with the note that I needed to continue to work on my social skills – something I was well aware of, even then. Eventually, I was called by Bishop O’Leary to the diaconate and then to the priesthood, and was ordained a priest in 1987.
There I was, finally ordained a priest, ten years after I started seminary college in Boston. My vocation journey had reached its ultimate goal. Or had it?
Less than two years after my ordination, I arrived at the next significant bend in my vocational path. One week after my 30th birthday, Bishop Joseph called me – seemingly out of the blue – to say that he wanted me to go to the Catholic University of America in DC and study canon law for two years, obtain a degree, and then work in the diocesan tribunal in Portland once my studies were complete. I had absolutely no clue that this was coming. Moreover, out of all the subjects I studied in seminary, the only one that registered no interest in me was canon law. I can’t say that I hated it or saw no use for it. I understood its role. But, for me, it was like auto repair: something that was needed, but something I felt no interest in learning and no particular skill in doing. I did not say this to Bishop Joseph. I thought that obedience meant saying “yes” without discussion or question. I did not know that it was perfectly fine for me to voice my own thinking or misgivings about it, and then let the bishop make a better-informed decision. So, I said yes, and went.
The two years in canon law studies and my two periods of time in chancery were very difficult ones for me. Not because there was anything “wrong” or “bad” going on around me. Canon law studies were, in most ways, quite like any other. Most professors were competent as teachers; a few were excellent; a few were (to put it bluntly) awful. Lacking much interest, however, I just did the bare minimum. Anyone who saw my grades would not believe that statement, but it is true. I became sick when I went back for that second year of studies – basically for the whole month of September. Some kind of chest infection. I have never felt so sick in my life. Looking back, I am sure I was in a mild depression then, and in a worse one by my second tour in chancery. Nevertheless, some who worked in chancery thought – believe it or not – that I was “bishop material”. The problem was that it is very important to me that there be harmony between my inner life and sense of who I am, and what I do with my outer life. Because I was so lacking in interest in canon law or in tribunal work, that harmony fell short. Something seemed “off”.
Going back into a parish seemed like the solution. However, once I was back in a parish, I became aware of something that seemed new to me. There was this vague sense that I wasn’t doing something that I was supposed to do. It wasn’t a question of whether or not I should be a priest. It was, rather, a question of how. This sense of “not doing something essential” or somehow just “missing the mark” (pun intended), persisted for years. At first, I had no idea what it might be.
After I had been ordained about twelve years, I began to notice something else – or, it seemed like something else at first. I began to feel a growing attraction to solitude and contemplative prayer. At the same time, I was beginning to notice that parish ministry was making me more and more tired – even though I did all the “right” things to take care of myself. I found myself resisting the call to solitude or trying to explain it away. After all, I was a diocesan priest, and surely the need for priests in parishes was great… too great for me to leave full-time parish ministry. However, I was forgetting my need to have my inner and outer lives be in harmony. The sense of calling to solitude persisted, and the fatigue from parish ministry increased. It all came to a head when one parish transfer – fraught with anxieties for me due to the circumstances – proved to be that proverbial “last straw”. I quickly slid into depression, a depression that was diagnosed. I was given antidepressants for a time. This was in 2005.
In a few months, I began to emerge from the depression, but the fatigue from parish ministry was even worse. Moreover, that sense of a calling to solitude persisted. I began to talk to others about it. Abbot Matthew of St. Anselm’s Abbey in Manchester, NH, said that I seemed to have all the signs of a hermit vocation, and that he felt a bit envious of me. Friends and books I was reading encouraged me. Finally, I decided to approach the bishop, not knowing how he would react.
The bishop at the time was Bishop Richard Malone, my old college faculty advisor. He accepted what I told him without casting any doubts on it, which amazed me. Apparently, he knew me well enough to know that I would not lie about something like this, nor would I take such a step without much (maybe too much?) reflection ahead of time. To make a long story short, we worked out the details, and then I was able to begin to live a hermit life. I ended up living in an apartment in the retreat house at Transfiguration Hermitage, where a small community of two hermits live. I did weekend ministry in a nearby parish, but I had weekdays for solitude and prayer, for the most part. The journey continued. Five years later, I moved to a rectory in the cluster where I now do weekend ministry, because the rectory was vacant and the cluster churches were some distance from Transfiguration Hermitage. That is where I live now.
You may note that I didn’t say a word about my Asperger’s Syndrome – until now, of course! That was deliberate on my part. My calling to the hermit life is not a result of my being an “Aspie”. I was diagnosed only four years after moving to Transfiguration. Being an “Aspie” has made it impossible for me to do full-time parish ministry, but in itself it does not mean that I am called to the hermit life. The two are related in that they are both a part of who I am, but one does not imply the other.
Looking back, I see that when I explained my hermit vocation to some people after my Aspie diagnosis, I leaned a bit too hard on that diagnosis as a way to justify my hermit vocation in their eyes. That was wrong, and I apologize. That showed a lack of trust in that calling, and ultimately in the Holy Spirit. I say all this to set the record straight, as far as that goes.
And – about that sense I had of “not doing something I was supposed to do”? Once I truly said yes to the Lord and made that act of faith by going to Bishop Malone about my hermit calling, that sense left me. It has never returned. I am morally certain, as canon lawyers would say, that I am called as a priest to the hermit life. I continue to do part-time parish ministry, and some tribunal work. The tribunal work no longer bothers me, for it is limited in scope, and my overall life is in harmony with the Lord’s call – in spite of my weaknesses and occasional failures. Many days, I wish that I had even more solitude and even less parish ministry than I have. However, the overall balance seems good to me, in spite of the ongoing challenges that even limited parish ministry give me due to the Asperger’s. I feel very much at home with my call-within-a-call.
I have reached the point where I do not feel “guilty” about not doing my part in the diocese. Nor do I feel like some kind of “failure”. Indeed, if we really believe in the power of prayer, then I can also believe that my hermit calling is a gift from the Lord to this diocese. My fidelity to my calling will, somehow, be a means through which the Lord will strengthen the commitment of other diocesan priests in their calling. This has nothing to do with how I see myself; it has everything to do with what happens when we put aside our agenda and points of view, and say yes to the role that God gives us, trusting that our ‘success’ is by God’s grace and not by our efforts. Anyone who is worried about the lack of priests should ponder the story of Gideon in the book of Judges. This fidelity does involve some pain, but this, too, is not without its fruits. It’s not unlike Frodo, near the end of The Lord of the Rings, who tells Sam, “The Shire has been saved… but not for me.” Growth in faith implies pain, the letting go of one’s personal agenda, and trusting fully in the Lord. He alone saves. He alone builds up his Church. We are grateful when he shows us how he wants to work through us. “May it happen according to Your word.”
I have tried to describe my vocational journey to you in as brief a way as I could. Many details were left out, but enough are here to give you a sense of how I was led from “there” to “here”. The journey goes on.