philosophy Archives • The Domestic Hermit

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.

Choose Your Destination

Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden (RB 1.8-9)

So . . . if you’re thinking that this is a description of our culture today, actually it’s not. This is Saint Benedict describing corrupt monks in the sixth century. The mentality that surrounds us now was already an option then.

The monks that St. Benedict does approve of are the coenobitarum, which is Latin for koinos bios, which is Greek for common life, which is English for what I aim to discuss here. Life in community is the focus of St. Benedict’s Rule. He invites us to choose community with our fellow human beings in this world, but it’s clear that the community depends on each individual’s commitment to follow Christ. St. Benedict’s Rule explicates the practical living out of “the communion of saints” of the Apostle’s Creed. This communion joins those on earth with those in heaven, but those on earth are the ones who need help trying to figure out how to live.

There is another kind of monk that St. Benedict refers to: the eremitarum, which is the Latin transliteration of the Greek eremitēs, which means “one who lives in the desert” and gives us the English word hermit. He himself lived as a hermit for three years. He describes the hermit as ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind (RB 1.5).

When I first started to think of the housewife-mother as a domestic hermit, it was because of the sense of isolation I experienced. I faced many struggles that didn’t seem to be addressed by the Church. I don’t think my experience is unusual. I think that many people flee the domestic life exactly because of the combination of exterior harassment and interior aridity that afflicts people whose vocation is neither respected by the world nor adequately addressed by religious authorities.

My goal here is to provide some support for this double challenge of Christian families who are attempting both to sustain a personal spiritual vitality and also to create community within a materialistic, competitive culture. I’m going to write from the perspective of someone who finds Christian goodness difficult and not always attractive. If you don’t feel that you need help in this area, nothing I say will be of much interest. But if you’re hanging on by your fingernails and thinking of letting go, I have a few tips for how to claw your way to survival.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” John 14:6. But his way of life is one among many options, in the post-Christian West, and not the one that the cool people choose. Many nice people are rushing off along other paths, and they certainly don’t intend to destroy themselves. But Jesus insists that only his path leads to life: Matthew 7:13-14. If you’ve watched as dreadful consequences play out around you, it’s already clear that not all paths are equally good. But it’s not necessarily obvious either how to live out the life that Christ talks about.

If your desired destination is eternal community with those you love and with your Creator, then you’re in the company of St. Benedict. What follows will be my interpretation of some of the principles he wrote about.

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Silent Night, Holy Dawn

Elegant Definition

We absolutely condemn in all places any vulgarity. . . . (Rule of St. Benedict 6.8)

In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. He spoke, and called forth formed things. To live a holy life is to move within these forms willingly.

A holy life is an elegant life.

The savor of elegance blends qualities of restraint and creativity. Vulgarity glaringly lacks both.

What is vulgarity?

Vulgarity displays itself verbally in language; visually in esthetics. Jokes can be crass, but so can architecture. Clothing but also conversation can be indecent. The vibe of vulgarity involves an absence of restraint along with a will to self-assertion, especially in a group. Crude people do not call themselves into question, because everyone they notice is doing the same thing. A sort of pushy smugness combines too much confidence with too little content in too callous a crowd.

Profane people do not stop. They stampede in the direction of a boundary and trample it deliberately, because they can. It’s also the only thing they know how to do. They tend to be the set in power at the moment.

With no respect for boundaries, there’s no sense of danger. Uncouth people back off the edge of the Grand Canyon taking selfies. They die on a ledge a few hours later because the lives of paramedics can’t be risked for anyone that graceless. Their barbaric friends take more pictures, then go on their way just as before.

Base people do not feel grief. Mourning requires sensitivity to the border between life and death, and even this line of demarcation they do not perceive. How could they? All they’ve ever been taught is that they emerged randomly from nothing. They fully expect to dissolve into nothing again, and not be missed. Randomness is a brutal philosophy. Its adherents show no pity.

Elegant people are gracious

In contrast, gracious people voluntarily honor boundaries: the lines between right and wrong; good and evil; being and nothing; beauty and ugliness.

The antidote to vulgarity is humility. If you treat other people with respect, you won’t commit obscenities, even though you make mistakes. If you’re not trying to assert yourself over others, you’re not likely to infringe. Minding limits, you engage your whole life in a practice of discipline. This reeling in of yourself on the verge of a boundary is the essence of modesty. It’s an active compliance that trains self-control, so you can live a graceful life.

Elegant, definition: Elegance involves a sense of risk. It’s a challenge to thread your way through without transgressing. Who can do it? But each attempt develops ability. There are some who succeed beautifully. We admire them and strive to imitate their technique. Artistry is not the province of flippant violators. Creativity does not ignore principles but rather applies them.

For the Christian, beauty includes paradox. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The greatest was the servant of all. The virgin gave birth. The creator of the universe chose human parents who couldn’t afford anything better than an animal shed to shelter in. Again and again, Christian teachings balance improbable truths on a fulcrum of miraculous possibility.

As we make our way, we search for this narrow ridge of redemption. We find it, and then our feet slip out from under us, and we slide off. But there is someone to rescue us. Holiness is not only practiced but bestowed. Failure climbs back as resilience.

Within the ways of God we exercise complete freedom to create. He is the one who called us into being, gave us shape and endowed us with talents. Vulgarity is not our destiny.

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Eat Your Vegetables

Raising Kids

…we must be vigilant every hour… (Rule of St. Benedict 7.29)

The kid who is old enough to chew solid food will also be smart enough to realize that you’re cooking peas with his pasta.

He’s willful enough to feel insulted.

He’s passionate enough to throw a screaming fit.

Because you’re a Christian mother–loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and self-controlled–you don’t beat him with your wooden spoon at the end of a long, hard day. Instead, you pour yourself a glass of wine, turn up the music, get down in his face with the bag of frozen peas and say: WATCH ME. Then in defiance of his will you add the peas to the ziti while he howls and kicks on the ground at your feet.

So what if he removes every pea from his bowl and refuses to eat even one? So what if he peers into each tube of ziti and sticks his finger in it to expel each internal pea? You’ve held the line. You’ve retained your principles. That was the Battle of the Peas, and you won it.

When he’s a little older, you’ll no longer permit him to remove all vegetable matter from his personal space. Even if he won’t taste the broccoli, he must tolerate it. He may not remove it to the table, or throw it on the floor, or foist it onto someone else’s plate. He must suffer the presence of the hated green thing. When at last he resigns himself to its existence, you’ve won the First Battle of Broccoli.

Then there’s the Second Battle to fight: he’s got to taste the broccoli.

When he gags and vomits at your dinner table, you feel disheartened. You’ve already toiled through years of cooking for an ungrateful, complaining family. Now you want to give up and never eat again–not with them. But the night is darkest just before the dawn. The little boy who gags on his broccoli will one day volunteer to cook dinner for his whole family (Fettuccine Alfredo; extra Parmesan; no peas).

Far, far more important than the presence or absence of vegetables are the social principles he has internalized:

Everything the cook serves must be TASTED.
The one who provides dinner must be THANKED.
If you want it different, do it YOURSELF.

The first two principles are essential to civilization. The laws of hospitality are older than Abraham. Flaunt them at your peril. The third undergirds a free society.

So persevere. One day you’ll reap the rewards of having trained your children in good habits. When you feel yourself flagging, just take a look around at the consequences of giving up. Habits of self-control and principle go far beyond food choices. Children who’ve learned that food consumption is not an act of self-worship will later be able to put other forms of consumption into context. Habits acquired in childhood are difficult to break.

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The Challenge

This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. (Rule of Saint Benedict. Prologue.3)

St. Benedict is not the first to describe the Christian life as a spiritual battle. St. Paul talks about the armor and weapon of the Christian in his letter to the Ephesians. It might seem a bit histrionic, though, for me to characterize life in domesticity as a spiritual battle. For that matter, the use of military language to describe the spiritual life of Christians has been generally out of favor for a long time. But there is a point where a struggle deserves to be called a fight.

I certainly felt that a spiritual enemy was prevailing when my fourteen-year-old came home from Catholic high school and told me that her classmate’s sister had committed suicide. The classmate found her sister’s body, hanging by the neck in her closet. In a bid for comfort, the classmate decided to have sex with her boyfriend. Then he dumped her. Then she left the school. The bleakness and wrongness of that series of events does demand some response, some mobilization of effort, some marshalling of troops, so to speak.

Transferring my daughter to a different Catholic high school yielded better academics and more resources, but no escape from brutality. There a sixteen-year-old shared publicly that her boyfriend sent her to the emergency room with a perforated vagina. The parents of the boyfriend see no evil, hear no evil, where their progeny is concerned. Nothing is wrong, and no one is bad. This indifference too strikes me as a spiritual rout, a defeat not merely at an individual level, although it’s individuals who sustain the wounds. If nice people are loveless, are they Catholic?

You can say the Lord’s Prayer over and over, “Thy will be done,” but a call to “obedience” is a socially risky teaching to espouse. It sounds strange, in a culture where we’re constantly being told to break all boundaries, emancipate ourselves, be free, and so on. Obeying the revealed commands of God is hard enough if you accept, say, the Ten Commandments. Obeying the teachings of the Catholic Church may seem so wildly incompatible with survival that it doesn’t even bear considering. But if you’re going to live at all, you’ll be taking actions along certain principles, whether you’ve thought about them yourself or are just doing what everyone else seems to be doing. In fact, you will be following someone or something, whether or not you call it obedience.

The call to follow Christ is a call to obey a Person. Christians are supposed to be able to know what Christ wants through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The accumulated revelation of the Church over two millennia is supposed to help us individually understand how to live this life. But whether we understand how or not, we’re still here and doing something. It would be helpful to have some templates that correspond to situations that ordinary people face today. Can you call this obedience to God? I hope so.

Outline

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