9 The Hermit and Service
You find yourself in a new relationship when you hear this call from God and set out on this journey of self-discovery. In the eremetic life there is a new relationship you have with other people, and it may help you uncover the reality of your life, not the theory. If you ask anybody if they feel they are sensitive, alive, awake to other peoples’ needs, and so on, they will all say yes. But if you can learn to look at the actuality of your life, you can see whether that is true or not. This is very important when we’re thinking of any kind of community life, the problem arises because all relationships have a history, we all know each other too well, whether we have known each other for a short or a long time is not relevant, because that history has started to create a groove within which you act and react with other people, it’s like a rut and you’re not meeting the freshness of people and things.
Mother Teresa is somebody I consider a great spiritual leader, not because she has great insights or any new doctrine, but simply because she’s managed to close the gap between what she says and what she does. She said:
The fruit of prayer is faith,
the fruit of faith is love, and
the fruit of love is service.
If you have this prayer and this silence in your life, that is where you can hear God’s call, and your eyes open in faith, and with that faith you then travel in the wilderness, and you have to love the totality that you find there, because love is the only thing that can transform it, and that will bring compassion and service in its wake.
In the church when we think of service we always think of what we can do materially, and running schools and hospitals and so on obviously has its place, but we can also be of service to each other in a different way, in a spiritual way, and that’s what we’ll be thinking about today because I feel that this is a particular service that a hermit is called to. The call is to prayer and silence, and to healing and compassion also.
There’s all this sorrow and pain that people bear, and it’s also in the community of people, in society as well. We see all these divisions in social and political life, and I feel it’s entirely wrong for a hermit to take sides in these things, not because he must keep aloof, but because when you take sides you are no longer in a position to heal it, you are simply reinforcing the divisions. I think you must see all the misery and suffering that is caused by these divisions, religious, political, and social, you must allow all of that to come inside of you, without resisting it, and then you can offer it all up in prayer before the Lord, and maybe it can be healed, made whole once more.
We find that people are also divided against themselves, and the hermit must have the same attitude there as well, and for the same reason, you must accept and help others to accept the totality of themselves because it’s the only way true inner healing can take place. Otherwise all that you get is suppression for a while, which is a pushing into the unconscious of those things you don’t, for one reason or another, like about yourself. But the hermit must have seen the totality of himself first, and been healed himself, otherwise he will not be able to accept the totality of others, and of society.
People often come and ask for prayers from those leading a hermit life, and I feel if we’re all joined together in God, in love, then there is meaning to our praying for one another; but if we’re all just separate individuals, and we have no connection with one another on a deeper level, then there’s no meaning to intercessory prayer. You see I don’t think you can change God’s mind by intercessory prayer – I don’t think God has a mind, as least not in any way we can conceive it, it’s we who have minds – and God is already calling everybody to fulfilment in all things, this is a call that is ever present in all of the events of our lives. But intercessory prayer is a sign of the love that we bear for one another.
It’s important that we care for one another even when we’re not physically present to each other. Then that love has a depth beyond what may be simply the gratification of action and reaction. We are then spiritually present to one another, and that love can be very strong, and maybe you really touch people, and people will tell you that they’ve actually felt that in their lives. Love is God’s presence in the world, and if you care for people then you pray for them, and I feel that then you become a channel whereby the world becomes present to God, and God becomes present to the world – if you’re silent. If you’re forever busy you obstruct all that, but if you’re silent then that’s a beautiful thing that you’re doing – all you do is stop the noise and this channel of love opens up.