<![CDATA[Hermitage of St. Joseph

<![CDATA[Hermitage of St. Joseph - Newsletter]]>Tue, 24 Dec 2024 10:22:11 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Christ is Born Glorify Him!]]>Tue, 24 Dec 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/christ-is-born-glorify-himMerry Christmas

The mystery of the Nativity is often shrouded and overrun by the noise of the world and our own weakness and sentimentality. Maybe, it is most appropriate to say very little on or about this great feast, only that the next eight days, this octave of Christmas, are days which are best spent in the winter silence, gazing intimately on the mystery of the Word made flesh.

Merry Christmas and happy new year.

]]><![CDATA[Autumn Pictures]]>Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/autumn-pictures

If fall could be described as anything it would be temporal - evanescent - the splendor of nature's last show of color before its winter sleep was, for the third year in a row, a beautiful one.

]]><![CDATA[Embertide]]>Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/embertide

This morning was hazy with a high humidity that was barely distinguishable from the fine rain drops. The pungent smell rain wetting the bone-dryness of the earth lingers. If it were a little foggier, it would remind me of a day I spent working in an orchard after the summer ‘help’ had gone back to school. Sighing with relief, it was finally possible to get something done. The day’s work was peel the horticultural tape off of young apple trees which had been grafted and remove any dead scions. It was a slow dreamy kind of day that remained dark and hazy, cool and rainy. One can really loose track of time.

In returning to this memory, the scripture came to mind: I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without me, you are able to do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he will be cast away, like a branch, and he will wither, and they will gather him and cast him into the fire and he burns. (John 15: 5 – 6)

There are many pastoral and agricultural references in scripture, partly because these realities were the substance of most people’s lives, but more so, I think, because they are timeless, transcendent in the way that, as long as man lives on earth, he has a body, and so long as he has a body, he is dependent on the world around him. It is easy to forget in a world – at least in most of the “first world” – which is so urbanized, technological, and mechanical how radically dependent we are on the earth. It seems our collective hubris has created an artificial landscape which is held up by a single, fragile, thread of technology and global communication, and if -- God forbid! -- this delicate thread is severed, even if only for a while, we will come quickly to a new appreciation of how helpless we truly are without the providence of God through means of good soil, sunlight, clean water, viable seeds, and robust animal stock.

God sees what we do in charity for Him, charity to our neighbor, love of our enemy, and the care we give to ourselves and to the world which we have been given to steward. What we do privately, our own devotion, no matter how small, is seen and cherished by God who delights in us, but how much more efficacious is it when, through obedience to Him through His Church, we, as the body of Christ praise and petition Him in unison? The Church has offered us many opportunities to do this during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent, some observe another fast during Michaelmas. There are liturgical prayers – the Mass – but also the Liturgy of the Hours which is the official prayer of the Universal Church. These are all opportunities that the faithful have to fulfill a kind of obedience, to receive and participate in the practices of the church that are more commonly called tradition.

In Romans 11 we read: And if some of the branches are broken, and if you being a wild olive branch, are grafted on to them, and you become a partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree, do not glorify yourself above the branches. For though you glory, you do not support the root, but the root supports you.

The Church has invited all of the faithful to participate in another rich tradition marking the change of the seasons by participating in three days: Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, of fasting, abstinence, and prayer of thanksgiving and petition to God for His many gifts and to appeal to His abundant mercy. These Ember Days or Quatuor Tempora, have fallen largely out of use and are no longer obligatory, but the faithful are still invited to participate in these short seasons of prayer, penance, and thanksgiving.

The Michaelmas or Autumn Embertide is traditionally seen as a time to give thanks for the abundant harvest of grapes that ripen on the vines at this time of year and will be pressed into the wine offered on the altar.

Each season of Embertide can be seen as a period of thanksgiving for a good that has been offered to God – Spring for bees, their labor which provides us candles for the liturgy, and sweetness during our feasts. Summer for the wheat which ripens and is threshed and milled into the flour and made into altar bread, autumn for grapes, and winter for the olives that will be pressed into the oils used to anoint the sick, the newly baptized, and the hands of a priest during his ordination.

Everything has a season, and this is particularly true of these fruits of the earth which any gardener or farmer watches carefully for signs of pests and disease but also for ripeness. Our communications, networking, and transport have allowed us the luxury of ‘picking’ fruit for the market year round – we even have peaches at Christmas time. This has perhaps numbed us to any sense of urgency that befalls those who work the land.

Patience is a virtue, and the farmer is no stranger to patience as he plants and cares for a young vine and waits, sometimes years, for it to bear any signs of producing fruit. But when that patience is rewarded with a ripening harvest, he is called from a sort of dormancy, of waiting, into the field, and if the fruit is not harvested as it ripens, the bounty will be lost. Certainly we can also read this story of ripening fruit as a call from God – and when He calls, we would be fools to delay our answer.

Our Unruly Jungle

Our "wild jungle" property is home to many creatures. The usual: raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and fox, but also some more interesting characters like coyotes, mink, kingfishers, herons, and big brown bats. Not to mention the ducks.
Hopefully, in time, civilization will be brought to the many thorns and thickets and strangling vines so that it can be a suitable place for people as well as wildlife.

This baby squirrel was hiding in some of the unruly grass on the edges of the pathway and was re-homed him into a large maple tree.

As the jungle yields to more cultivated plants, some edible, some medicinal, some providing flowers for the chapel, and some native to support our local wildlife in this riparian valley, we are more able to enjoy quiet moments of simple observation.

Bald faced hornets nesting in a maple tree over Ephesus.

Little moth on one of our lavender plants

Making vegetable soup outside over a very fancy fire

A nearby lake.

]]><![CDATA[Introductions | Exaltation of the Cross]]>Sun, 08 Sep 2024 21:25:27 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/introductions-exaltation-of-the-crossHiding behind the anonymity of the screen is much more comfortable than putting yourself out there, but sometimes it is necessary to step out into the light. About a year ago, Brother Richard handed the responsibility of the website over to my care, and since making some updates, there have been several inquiries about vocations to the eremitical life in general as well as to the Hermitage of Saint Joseph.

While it was so good to see interest and hear from different people, I could not help but to be just a little disappointed that they were all men, but how was anyone supposed to know that the vision of the future Laura is to be of both brother and sister hermits living in separate housing? I was told to introduce myself, and I dragged my feet for a while...

We are not angels, stop it with these pious pictures. I am chopping onions.

My name is Jacqueline and I have been living in a hermitage just north of Brother Richard for about three years. The house is named "Ephesus" after the last home of Mary on earth - it is her example of contemplative silence that we desire to emulate.

Ephesus represents the hopeful future home of the sister Hermits and our expectation is that the Hermitage of Saint Joseph will be able to provide a modicum of the sweetness and freedom of the cloister by alleviating some of the worldly burdens associated with the more typical solitary life and that the Laura will allow the hermit to enjoy a "stricter separation from the world" which is not abstract or purely interior. Mass in a common chapel, in house formation, common recitation of the office on Saturday evenings, and gathering for major feast days are a foreseen means of generating this interior 'space' - the freedom of remaining hidden.

Still in its infancy, The poverty of the Hermitage of Saint Joseph outweighs its richness. The road ahead seems as though it will be long and arduous, a truly "Teresian" adventure which will require a single thing, something we cannot give to ourselves - grace, an abundance of grace, in order to persevere in hope as we travel these rough seas whose buffeting waves pose a constant threat to our peace. The only way out is through. Sempere avanti, ever forward.

dry cross

The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross has particular significance to the Carmelite. It is the beginning of a fast that will last until Easter of next year.

The world itself seems to be entering a period of austerity when the fullness of summer hands its gratuity over to the gravity of wind, rain, and death. The landscape slowly ages, becoming cold, barren, even skeletal.

Visually, the beauty of Carmel is not found in ornate coir stalls or regal mahogany but in its echoing hallways adorned only, if at all, with holy scripture and the admonitions of Carmelite saints. Look closely and realize that the place is held together with twine and straight pins. Saint Teresa threatened her sisters about the loud noise that a large and ornate house will make as it crashes down on them. What need do thirteen poor women have of such things? The silence of Carmel is not only auditory - it is visually silent - and these many layers of exterior silence form an abundance of space for the fostering of interior silence.

A sister eats her meal with eyes cast down, listening to scripture - except, perhaps on a feast day when silence may be dispensed. At the head of the table of the prioress and sub-prioress is a skull, and behind them one of my favorite of the 'silent' symbols of Carmel - the Dry Cross - a barren cross without corpus. This cross, which also hangs in each cell, is not some protestant aberration, but a reminder both of the Cross of Christ, our only hope, by which we have been saved, but also that each of us must die with Christ in order to rise with Him, that there is no resurrection without the crucifixion, no Easter without Lent. There are times when the darkness is so obscure and deep, that there is nothing else to do but embrace this dry cross understanding that it is by this rough wood, by these nails - poverty, chastity, and obedience - that God purifies our soul, that He delights in every opportunity to reach down to us in this dark and lowly state in order to elevate us to greater union with Him.

The cross is the joy of Carmel

Until next time,
- Jacqueline (Teresa)

]]><![CDATA[Congratulations Brother Richard | Our Lady of Mount Carmel]]>Wed, 03 Jul 2024 20:18:22 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/deacon-richard-our-lady-of-mount-carmelWe are all grateful for the continued blessing of God, support of the Archdiocese, and the hard work of Brother Richard who was ordained to the transitional diaconate on May 11, 2024, and ask for continued prayers as he makes his way toward the priesthood.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

From its earliest beginnings, the solitary longing of the Carmelite soul has been for eternal union with the Living God, to enter into the innermost heart, laboring in the presence of God, the Bridegroom of the soul, ever present doing us good.

Established in the footsteps of Elijah, Carmel is a wilderness, and the thirsty soul is driven into arid desert by the Holy Spirit, not to wither, but to draw from the fount of Carith, to drink from the streams of Living Water found in the silence of solitude, to taste, intensely and intimately, the pleasure of the divine, of contemplation, and the experience of God.

Father Paul-Marie of the Cross O.C.D. wrote that, in Elijah, Carmel sees itself as in a mirror. His eremitic and prophetic life expresses its own most intimate ideal. […] It perceives its deep kinship with this man who “stood in the presence of the Living God.” If it shares his weaknesses and his anguish, it also knows his faith in God and his zeal for the God of Hosts, and it has tasted the same delights of a life hidden in God which the prophet also experienced. [...]So we may say that having found its model in Elias, the Carmelite advances with him toward the very origin of true contemplative life. Or, it might be more exact to say that having found the contemplative experience in its origin, carried by Elias to the highest degree of purity, detachment and fulfillment, the Carmelite, wishing to renew this experience, feels obliged to recreate in his soul the climate in which this life grew: the desert with its spiritual solitude and silence; and he, in his turn feels constrained to undertake this persevering march toward the mountain of God where fire burns but does not consume.

Indeed the vocation of the Carmelite is a prophetic one handed down through Elijah and Elisha. It should be noted that is not the ability to foretell the future, that defines the prophet, but rather contemplation, intimacy, and the uniqueness of a direct relationship with God which created the phenomenon of the Israeli prophet. The prophet, like the contemplative Carmelite, rather than by the spectacular witness of Elijah, or by visions and miracles, which are an accidental outcome of this direct intimacy with God, are more importantly defined by three basic elements of the prophetic personality: Faith, humility, and trust.

The Carmelite lectionary for the solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel takes its first reading from the book of Kings:

Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, crouched down to the earth, and put his head between his knees. He said to his servant, “Go up and look out to sea.” He went up and looked, but reported, “There is nothing.” Seven times he said, “Go look again!” And the seventh time the youth reported, “There is a cloud as small as a man’s hand rising from the sea.” Elijah said, “Go and say to Ahab, ‘Harness up and go down the mountain before the rain stops you.'" All at once the sky grew dark with clouds and wind, and a heavy rain fell.

1 Kings 18:42-45

This little cloud, so small and delicate in its virginal beauty, almost too easy to overlook, is traditionally seen as a foreshadowing of of Mary, a pure servant of God who, though so hidden, so seemingly small in the grand scheme of things, would, through her cooperation with the Holy Spirit, bring down upon the parched earth a deluge of grace through her divine Son.

If we find such inspiration in the life of our founder, Elijah, even more so may we look to this fairest flower of God's garden for comfort and guidance and have recourse to our Patron, the Mother of God, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is the silent, hidden, and contemplative example of Mary that we desire to emulate as Carmelites through her fiat, her first yes and her continual yes, and her trust in the providence of God that brought Christ into the world. Mary is an example of patient endurance, her life a picture of the power of the love of God which extinguishes all fear and supplies the steadfast soul in the midst of both unfathomable joy and inexpressible sorrow.

]]><![CDATA[Solemnity of Saint Joseph | Happy Spring]]>Tue, 19 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/solemnity-of-saint-joseph-happy-springIn 1542, after months of suffering a debilitating illness, Saint Teresa of Jesus was miraculously healed and attributed this healing to the intercession of Saint Joseph and she turned to him as her spiritual father throughout her life stating that:

“To other saints, Our Lord seems to have given power to succor us in some special necessity, but to this glorious saint (I know by my experience), he has given the power to help us in all things. Our Lord would have us understand that, as he was subject to Joseph on earth—St. Joseph, bearing the title of his father and being his guardian, could command him—so now Our Lord in heaven grants all his petitions.”

In 1562, she founded the first discalced convent bearing the name Saint Joseph, entrusting the reform to his care.

It is a joy to have this saint, the foster father of Our Lord, as our patron, of the whole church, and in particular of the Hermitage of Saint Joseph. Without uttering a word, he has given us an example of perseverance in the face of temptation and of unwavering loyalty in the responsibilities to which we have been called. Christ was born into a world already waging war against Him, and in this precarious atmosphere fraught with danger, God entrusted to Joseph the role of protecting his family – the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Word incarnate. As members of Christ’s body we enter into the care of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, who remains a good and faithful servant and protector of his Master’s household.

An Ancient Prayer to Saint Joseph:
O St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, I place in thee all my interests and desires. O St. Joseph, assist me by thy powerful intercession and obtain for me all spiritual blessings through thy foster Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord, so that, having engaged here below thy heavenly power, I may offer thee my thanksgiving and homage.
O St. Joseph, I never weary contemplating thee and Jesus asleep in thine arms. I dare not approach while He reposes near thy heart. Press Him in my name and kiss His fine head for me, and ask Him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath.
St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for me.

Signs of Spring

Looking back on the beautiful gift of snow while looking forward to warmer days

And the fleeting radiance of winter morning skies

The days are becoming noticeably longer and as the frigid claws of winter lose their grip we find ourselves rapidly approaching the profound mystery of Holy Week.

We are not the only ones enjoying the spring weather!

All of creation awaits the future glory, the celebration of the great paschal mystery, and the wedding feast of the Lamb in eternity.

]]><![CDATA[Congratulations to Br. Richard | November Beauty]]>Thu, 09 Nov 2023 20:42:59 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/congratulations-to-br-richard-november-beautyCongratulations to Brother Richard for his installation as a lector in October and admission to candidacy for the Transitional Diaconate and to the Ministry of Acolyte, this past weekend. We all look forward to his ordination to the diaconate in the spring of 2024 and to the priesthood in 2025.

The adornment of leaves and flowers have faded away and the skeletal landscape lies dormant anticipating the coming warmth of spring, but mellow summer breezes remain far away. In the meantime we look forward to pristine snow and magnificent winter sunsets. This stark season of natural silence is a reminder that all things fade. In this month dedicated to the faithful departed, It encourages meditation on the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell and on the heroic lives of the saints who have gone before us and who enjoy the beatific vision in eternity.

November has a beauty unto its own which is reminiscent of the subtle and austere elegance of Carmel, both in appearance and spirit, which fosters a single-minded focus on God alone. The slowing of life and waning daylight is a signal to return our focus to prayer, especially during the quickly approaching season of Advent which embodies the hope of the contemplative life. In the frigid cover of night, there is an expectant waiting for an intimate encounter with the Living God.

]]><![CDATA[First Update]]>Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:27:49 GMThttp://hermitageofstjoseph.org/newsletter/12-year-update Almost 12 years have passed since our website has been updated. Little progress has been made on the construction site, but truly, God’s ways are not our ways, and His timing is certainly not our timing. Life is bittersweet, however, and while the brick and mortar remains in disrepair, other foundations are being made. Brother Richard is currently in seminary formation and, God willing, his ordination to the priesthood will take place in the spring of 2025.

The trailer pictured in our archives has been removed and two houses nearby have been converted into cells, one of which has a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and Mass is offered on special feast days. All of the hermitages are currently occupied and the prospect of converting the “Big Building” into more "cells" and communal spaces including a larger chapel, has not been abandoned, but the road ahead is a long one which will require much planning and even more help from God.

We hope to make regular updates either seasonally or as events unfold in this little corner of the world. Until next time, please enjoy some photos of the beauty that surrounds us in our daily lives.

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