The Domestic Hermit •

A Message From The Dawn

Henceforth I worked no more alone despite

memories of bitterness, gall and slight.

My companions the saints are helping now.

Our coxswain sits facing us toward the bow.

With these friends I strive, prized fellowship won.

I am no more set against everyone

no more shocked at my own imperfections

no longer loathe to accept corrections.

The common rule of the Church willingness

to defer each to each with peace does bless.

The eighth step of humility is that

we reject the lure of the petty spat.

In godly souls the Holy Spirit works

to scrape off the pride that beneath still lurks.

Not thirsting for praise, nor feeling holy

training Christ’s body we transform slowly.

Fragile skiff buffeted by fearsome gales

bears on chilled scullers shivering betrayals.

Ignored, mocked, shunned yet somehow not sinking

salt on lips, light in eyes, our lives linking

the wind against us, straining at the oars

we struggle as one toward eternal shores.

Nor vying, nor pandering, onward sent

vast vistas opening, heavenward bent.

Courage, free soul, fear not to venture through

these worldly choppy seas with such a crew.

Away from violence a gentle course chart.

Against jealous currents strive loving heart.

Jettison anger, rage, malice, discord.

Hold fast love, peace, joy, your treasures on board.

Bail out bad habits for dear love of life.

Repair the breaches of splintering strife.

Douse flames of slander that would sink this boat.

Work together wisely and stay afloat.

Cheerfully accept the stranger customs

God’s stewards hand on until kingdom comes.

We Christians do freely what is endorsed

by Scripture through tradition Spirit sourced.

Christ ventured sad into Gethsemane

for joy set before him braved agony.

God’s Son suffered long your soul to redeem.

All children adopted, pull with the team.

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An oratory is a physical structure constructed to demarcate a sacred space dedicated to prayer. There, members of a community can come and go freely to pray individually, without disturbing or being disturbed by the bustle of ordinary life.

Without the interior compunction that recognizes the worth of the sacred, no physical structure can by itself make holy a location. But holiness exists wherever the hearts of human beings apprehend the worth of God. The sacred space is the place where the One who bestows all worth communes with the person who apprehends his worth.

We apprehend the worth of God when we entrust to him our agonies and acknowledge his answers to our earlier entreaties.

To apprehend the worth of God is to worship God.

To apprehend the worth of anything is to distinguish its inherent value from any use it might afford to us.

God, the creator and sustainer of all things is of all the most useless, because God cannot be used. No person or group owns God or controls him. No one can summon God, because he is always already everywhere present.

God is not useful, but worthful. From him and by him all things receive their worth. And everything he has called into being is worthy to exist. Every person who apprehends the worth of God is free to worship him.

Of all his creatures, only the human ones have this capacity to apprehend worth. Therefore of all creatures, human ones are the most worthy. Wherever a human being lives, there exists the holy presence of God willing to share worth with his creature.

To acknowledge the worth of another human being is to apprehend the order of God’s creation, which is another act of worship. To circumscribe with compunction your own actions, for the sake of the worth of another person is again an act of worship. And this is how, when you allow another person to pray, you participate in marking out a sacred space for oratory.

God knows individuals, so when we worship him, we do so each as a separate person. When we come together to agree in prayer, we become a community. Just as common prayer builds community, so individual prayer builds personal worth. So oratory includes both individual and communal prayer.

Our deepest need is to know that we are worthwhile. Our deepest agony is to feel worthless. In a world where only usefulness is acknowledged, no one is worthy, and no life is inherently worthwhile. Without a sense of worth, not all the wealth in the world can save you from despair. But with worth, you can live well, and worthily, even through want and turmoil.

So, everyone benefits when the worth of each is acknowledged. And the most elementary enactment of this apprehension in society is to protect prayer.

Time spent in prayer may be useless, but it is worthwhile. Such time is not a waste but a sacrifice. Time is the only thing meted out, in equal measure, minute by minute, to all creation. The same minute is meted out to you as to anyone else, anywhere on earth. And a worthy sacrifice of it is a word to the One who endows you with the apprehension of Worth.

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Say Sorry

If someone commits a fault…he must at once come before the abbot and community and of his own accord admit his fault and make satisfaction. (Rule of St. Benedict 46.1-3)

Piety is honesty plus contrition. Religious exercises become void if in interactions with other people you never admit to having done wrong. Self-deprecation before God is a farce if you’re too proud to apologize to another human being.

Christians must practice as a steady habit the willingness to admit when they’ve messed up and the readiness to say sorry. It’s impossible to overstate the worth of these habits for maintaining relationships, or the destruction that results from refusing to practice them. Far more serious than the fault itself is the denial of it. Infinitely more harm comes from the haughty refusal to say, “I’m sorry” than from the original offense.

To err is human. No one expects you to be perfect. But if you refuse to admit a fault, you sever the bond of trust without which no relationship can survive. The one who proudly refrains from saying, “I’m sorry I offended you” places self-esteem above the worth of the other person. There’s nothing so corrosive as dishonesty. There’s nothing so repellent as pride. Now you have not only injured but insulted the other person.

Certainly it’s all right to say, “I didn’t mean it.” Very rarely do we offend other people on purpose. Most lapses are due to a bad mood on a bad day. Usually there’s some sort of miscommunication. Almost always there are mitigating factors. How easy, then, it should be to say, “I’m sorry I did such-and-such. I’m sorry if I offended you.” It should be easy, and yet, how many adults have never learned to do this simple thing!

Owning up is important because, first, it shows that the mistake was unintentional. Second, it shows remorse. Third, it shows willingness to take responsibility. Together, these are signs of good character. And integrity is worth more to a relationship, a family, a society than any material asset. Conversely, a deceitful, remorseless, irresponsible person cannot but cause harm to everyone.

Therefore children should be trained always to say, “I’m sorry,” whenever they’ve given offense. Afterwards they can relate details of intent, blame, and circumstance. First apologize, then explain.

There are tones of voice that can contradict an apology and make it sound insincere to the aggrieved party. Then the person becomes furious at feeling manipulated. So children must learn to say sorry in a voice that is loud enough to be heard and that may be sullen but must not be insolent. This effort made, the offended person must accept the apology and cannot reject it as insufficiently contrite. If possible, the offender should make restitution. All parties should resolve to do better next time. And then forever the point is moot. Never drag out a past offence. Once addressed, it is dead and done with.

Don’t wait to be confronted with what you suspect you may have done, but hasten to volunteer an apology. The humility, honesty and good will evident in such behavior make all the difference to any relationship. These habits keep friendships alive, marriages happy, children thriving. Without them, intimacy, trust and peace wither away.

It’s true that there are vindictive people who will punish you for honestly admitting a fault. They walk away guilty before God for refusing to forgive. But you will have saved your soul from the rot that eats away the interior of dishonest people. You will have done everything you can to make peace.

Sometimes, for any number of reasons, people cannot speak to a situation directly. So, they make some other gesture to show remorse. Be alert to such efforts at reconciliation. Be ready to accept any gesture that expresses an intent to make amends.

As human beings we don’t convince anyone when we pretend to forget the bad thing that we did yesterday. We must apologize when we’re able to speak at all. Little kids can learn to say sorry. They learn to say it before they mean it. They learn to mean it.

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Cultivate Silence

Be still and know that I am God olive tree

My children, “…diligently cultivate silence…” (Be still and know that I am God.) Rule of St. Benedict 42

The spiritual discipline of silence has an age-old history. In the spectrum of spiritual disciplines, it belongs to the category of fasting. Exercises such as fasting–from food or from mental stimulus–not only benefit our physical and mental health, but also develop us spiritually. Over time, they help us reap a greater peacefulness, and increased fortitude to face whatever we must face in life.

Silence need not be absolute to be beneficial. Even an ordinary person can practice it, even in a domestic context. You benefit physically from disciplining your consumption of food, and mentally from disciplining what you expose your mind to. This principle holds true even for people who are not seeking any sort of communion with God. It’s a basic fact of human health. Just as the person who cannot stop eating is showing signs of something amiss, so too the person who remains in a perpetual state of distraction. The one who cannot bear to be silent even for a few minutes is exhibiting a mental state akin to insatiable appetite.

You may not learn to value silence until you’ve had the experience of caring for a screaming baby. The constant clamoring of children teaches us that the ability to stay quiet is a sign of maturity, whereas constant agitation and demands are the starting point of beginners in life.

Silence as a spiritual discipline is not about finding a quiet environment, although of course this helps. But spiritual quiet is an interior state that is independent of whatever noise may be all around you. The discipline of silence has to do with the mental stimulus that you are free to regulate, not with all the noises that you do not control.

Of course, there are people who should not engage in food restriction, because their bodies are in a fragile state. And people who are in a fragile mental state should not be seeking silence, especially if they are depressed. Some people need more nutrition, or more stimulus than they’ve been getting.

But, if you are fit, the voluntary silencing of distractions can strengthen you spiritually. When you are at leisure to listen to something or not–music, or whatever else you normally turn to–simply refraining from this input can become a gesture by which you express to God your willingness to hear him. Even if you have nothing else to offer God, you always have this: the gift of yourself, expressed as the willing sacrifice of your attention, should he wish to speak.

This doesn’t mean that when you practice silence, you will hear a supernatural voice. On the contrary, just as when you fast you can expect to feel hungry, when you are silent you can expect to hear nothing but the ordinary noises of your environment that you don’t normally pay attention to. If you have made yourself available, and you know very well that you have heard nothing divine, congratulations: this is a sure sign of your sanity. And you are in good company. The testimony of the saints through the ages is that they endured many long years of the silence of God before ever perceiving the voice of God.

But the silence of God does not mean that he is absent. The God who sustains the universe at the atomic level sees and understands the effort you have made. Perhaps he will reveal himself in a spectacular way, but these interventions are rare and, by most accounts are terrifying when they occur. He doesn’t want to terrify or destroy you but to call you into harmony with himself. God knows what you can bear, because he designed you. He gave you the freedom to turn toward him, and when you exercise that freedom, even in a tiny way, he will surely draw near to the one attempting to draw nearer to him.

On the way to hearing from God, you will have to face yourself. And for many people, the perpetual search for distraction is exactly the attempt to escape from themselves. In silence the troublesome thoughts you have been suppressing come into the forefront of your mind. Sorrows, anxieties and nagging perplexities come bubbling to the surface of your awareness. Rather than fighting them, hand them over to God in prayer: Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

Or perhaps you find yourself enduring a period of forced silence, not at all what you wished for. Since you cannot escape, you might as well offer God your willing attention. Who knows but he will open up a whole new path for you? All things work together for good for those who love God. He will communicate, probably not with signs and wonders to impress anyone else, but in ways meaningful to you. If you have gone wrong in some way, he will bring to your attention what you should correct.

The God who made the universe is not a puppet on a string or a genie in a lamp. No one can summon him and make him perform. He speaks to whom he wishes and says what he means to say: when, where and how he chooses. But he also quietly draws near to humble hearts willing to set aside a moment of freedom in his honor. See if he does not repay you for your effort with some gracious gift of his own.

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Helpers For The Chef

Household Chores

If the community is rather large, he should be given helpers, that with their assistance he may calmly perform the duties of his office. Necessary items are to be requested and given at the proper times, so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in the house of God. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.17-19)

Who wants to do chores? Isn’t it demeaning, a waste of talent, for an educated person to pick up dirty socks off the floor? If there’s one thing that drives people away from domestic life, it’s the perception of household tasks as endless drudgery.

Is the drudgery in the tasks themselves, or in the disdain with which people view them?

A functioning household depends on these mundane, routine tasks. What happens when family members consider them unimportant and undesirable? Whoever does them receives not thanks but contempt. Someone who has worked hard without any recognition eventually from sheer discouragement gives out. Pride, resentment and humiliation damage the fabric of the family. When the members of the household despise the very things that hold it together, sooner or later it falls apart.

So even if you can afford to hire outside helpers, everyone should still participate in chores, according to ability and opportunity, but not according to rank or privilege. Parents should lead by example to show that the household itself is worth maintaining. There is no formula except to aim for some balance of fairness intrinsic to the family. The willingness is all. Each person contributes cheerfully to a worthwhile enterprise.

Children like to be helpers, and the problem when they’re little is that they so eagerly make all sorts of mistakes. It’s easier to do the thing yourself, but it’s important to take the time to include them. They need to learn not just the skills but the crucial principle of active participation.

It’s true that most households have to manage limited resources. But ultimately those resources and the children themselves belong to God. Parents are not owners of their children but stewards of souls entrusted to them for formation. Children are not chattel, and parents are not at liberty to dispose of them like property. Parents who use their children like objects will answer to God for what they have done, and for what they have failed to do.

Since everything that exists is sustained by God and belongs to him, we are all helpers accountable to him for what he has entrusted to us. But the steward of God is not a slave. Nor is God an employer who is just scraping by himself, squeezing everything he can get out of those he controls. God’s resources are limitless, and he promises to come alongside and be our Helper.

When your home is a pleasant place to return to, glamor does not lure you. Home is your refuge. You can refrain from excess and be generous toward those in need.

The trick is to be content. This is the whole end game of the domestic life and the thing that eludes so many unhappy people.

Contentment is a spiritual state. But it’s also about managing your resources, so that you’re not constantly pushed to the very limits of your strength.

Which is why, again, you need helpers. The goal is not to survive on your own without depending on anyone. The goal is to live happily together, sharing life’s burdens and joys.

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Good Taste

He will provide the brothers their allotted amount of food without any pride or delay, lest they be led astray. For he must remember what the Scripture says that person deserves who leads one of the little ones astray [Matthew 18:6]. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.16)

The chef serves. When you take charge of the food, you assume the role of a servant, and in this you imitate Christ. If you resent this role and complain about it, you teach your children to despise and resent service to others. You set them against Christ, who came not only to serve but to feed us.

God designed us to eat daily, and what we eat, we taste. The sense of taste offers the first of comforts to the newborn and the last of consolations to the dying. You can be blind, deaf and immobile, yet still taste, and feel refreshed.

So the formation of taste is important. Lots of things are edible, but not all digestible things are healthy. If you teach your children that healthy food tastes disgusting and that unhealthy food tastes delicious, you form in them a self-destructive habit of thought. You set inclination against principle.

This is folly. The sinful aspect of a guilty pleasure never deterred any but the most devout and self-controlled among us.

Far, far better for a happy life is to align inclination with principle, so that the healthy food is also delicious. Then the unhealthy loses its power of appeal.

Disgust is a visceral reaction, orders of magnitude more powerful than any reasoned argument. If something disgusts you, not only will you not want it: when someone tries to push it on you in the name of pleasure, your revulsion only increases. The person who tries to tempt you with a disgusting thing becomes repulsive herself.

This is how the formation of taste plays into the formation of morals.

Children are mimetic. They will mimic your actual behavior. If you tell them that sodas are unhealthy and off limits, but then they observe you guzzling sodas every chance you get, they will conclude that sodas are desirable but forbidden.

But if you reject sweet drinks yourself when you could have them, your children will notice what you choose instead and reach for that.

The problem is that you’re up against powerful forces in this world, all dedicated to making unhealthy foods alluring. The only possible way to train children in good taste is to provide them with good food regularly, as a matter of course, as the norm. Make a case for healthy food by ensuring that what you serve is also tasty.

But don’t ban sweets or anything else as evil. Beware the trap of the forbidden fruit that human beings will crave exactly because it’s mysterious and off limits. Let children taste everything, so that no food or drink inspires awe. Let them become connoisseurs, and invite them to judge for themselves. One day you’ll find that your children’s standards are higher than your own. You will have set them on the right path, and they will outstrip you.

An ordinary Christian household is neither ascetic nor gluttonous. There’s a time to fast, and there’s a time to feast. If you get this balance right, you will have calibrated the dynamic between inclination and principle that will influence all of your children’s decisions throughout life.

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Character Of The Chef

Temperate Definition

There should be chosen from the community someone who is wise, mature in conduct, temperate…. If any brother happens to make an unreasonable demand of him, he should not reject him with disdain and cause him distress, but reasonably and humbly deny the improper request….knowing for certain that he will be held accountable for all of them on the day of judgment. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.1-9)

The cellarer is the person in charge of the food. It may come as a surprise that St. Benedict required this person to possess such a long list of interior traits. We’re accustomed to discerning the qualities of the food, not the qualities of the chef.

So, is the person in charge of the food really carrying out a moral task? Does this job matter to God?

St. B decisively affirms that the tasks associated with food are intimately tied to principles of charity and hospitality. So, the person in charge of the food is nurturer and host. A community rests on these pillars.

But such lofty qualities seem far removed from the experience of raising children. They are constantly making unreasonable demands as to what they want–or don’t want–to eat. If you always give in to their demands, you train them to be selfish. On the other hand, if you enforce rules angrily and impatiently, you drive them away from the family table. How does a human being get from the howling chaos of infancy to the temperate maturity of happy adulthood?

If you want your children to develop good habits, you’ve got to work on your own habits. This means that you make wise choices about what you eat yourself. Think of yourself as the mature version of what your children will become. Do you need to correct your own behavior, for their sakes? Temperance is the virtue of refraining from excess. Too much food, but also too many restrictions are intemperate.

So, Mom does not open a bottle of wine every afternoon just before the kids come home from school. Likewise, she does not eat excessively. She is not irritable or doctrinaire, not impatient or tyrannical. She is not lazy or wasteful, but views her stewardship of the food budget and meal planning as work done before God. In other words, she is a saint.

In order even to want to aim for this standard, you must actually believe that there is a moral quality to the food habits of your household. It’s not that food has any moral value in itself. But food habits form the foundation early in life for all other forms of consumption.

In short, the goal is for the children to internalize good principles so that they willingly make healthy choices and eventually become responsible adults. To get there, they have to learn to make temperate decisions. This is a project that takes years of effort and perseverance. If you can do this, you can do anything.

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Comfort The Wayward

The abbot must exercise the utmost care and concern for wayward brothers . . . . Therefore, he ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in . . . mature and wise brothers who . . . may support the wavering brother, urge him to be humble as a way of making satisfaction, and console him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Rather, as the Apostle also says: Let love for him be reaffirmed [2 Corinthians 2:7-8], and let all pray for him. (Rule of St. Benedict 27)

Human beings are not born hard-hearted. They become hard-hearted when parents teach them a sense of impunity. We have to correct our children so that they will learn to distinguish right from wrong. When the child seems ungovernable, the parents need to pray for wisdom.

But parents should not leave a child to figure out the next step alone. A parent should take care to intervene and to discuss the situation. You have to explain the punishment and point the way forward. A contrary child needs to hear explicitly what behavior the parent wants to see.

If an older sibling steps up to take on the job of remonstrating with and comforting the wayward child, the parents should let the brother or sister handle the situation. Children can sometimes come up with wacky but effective solutions to domestic problems. Adolescents can at times be more insightful about the dynamics of a conflict than their parents are. It’s a good exercise for an older child to attempt to mediate. It also benefits the younger one to interact with a sibling who is taking on the role of intercessor and adviser.

Ultimate responsibility of course rests with the parents. We must take care that no bitterness takes root to estrange siblings from each other or to alienate a child from father or mother.

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The Lord Is My Shepherd

Psalm 23

Even under the shadow of horror

I will not fear evil

For Christ is my companion.

You let me lean on the staff that you hold steady

You wield the weapon that beats off attackers

You have brought food for the journey, and no enemy dares approach the fire that you light

You give me an abundance of everything I need.

With you I can live a good and merciful life

And when I enter into eternity, I will find welcome in the household of God.

Introduction and Outline

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From St. Thomas Aquinas

Each new human creature receives existence directly from Being and is therefore radically new.

Each human being is determined by antecedents as regards matter and form. But each is radically undetermined by matter and form as regards existence.

At every moment, radical newness is not only possible but actual. New persons come into existence, summoned by Being himself.

Therefore we are free not from matter and form, but within matter and form.

Newness comes from creation by Being.

The individual human creature has freedom to act as a creative mover within matter and form.

The creative mover does not destroy what came before but works within what came before. Thus the creative mover is able to act in a new way and do new things within received matter and form.

Working within all of the constraints of matter and form, genuine newness arises from the fact that each human person as a being is genuinely new. This newness is not self-generated but depends on the sustaining Creator.

Therefore new beginnings are possible in this world.

Cosmological reasoning is a facet of classical arguments for the existence of God. The thesis of Thomistic Existentialism is that Thomas Aquinas can answer many of the classic objections brought against cosmological reasoning. Topics include: the principle of sufficient reason; existence as a predicate; use of ontological reasoning; reliance on sense realism; the problem of evil; susceptibility to the critique of “ontotheology” as famously put forward by Heidegger. All of these objections receive a reply.