Folia Canonica 5. (2002)

STUDIES - W. Becket Soule: Hermits in Current Eastern Catholic Legislation; CCEO cc. 481-485

HERMITS IN CURRENT EASTERN CATHOLIC LEGISLATION

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According to those canons, those hermits who were strong enough were to do some work compatible with the eremitical life that would “render them useful for themselves and the monastery.”29 If they lived adjacent to the monastery, they were to attend Vespers, Compline, Mattins and Mass every day.30 If they lived far away from the monastery, they were to attend at first and second Vespers of Sundays and feast days in the monastery; they were to reside there overnight, make their confession and take Holy Communion.31

VI. The Return of a Hermit to the Monastery

Can. 485 - Superior monasterii sui iuris potest de consensu sui consilii imponere finem vitae eremiticae iusta de causa, etiam invito eremita.

Can. 485 - The superior of the monastery sui iuris can, with the consent of the council, impose an end to the eremitical life for a just cause, even against the hermit’s will.

The eremitical life may be lived either for a determined period of time, or for the rest of the hermit’s life. In the first case, after the agreed upon period has expired, the eremitical life ceases (without the superior’s permission to continue) and the hennit must return to the monastery. While this possibility of temporary commitment to the eremitical life is not explicitly stated in the CCEO, it was permitted by the Synod of Lebanon (Maronite -1736),32 and is commonly admitted in most monastic proper law. There is, nevertheless, a strong tradition in the sacred canons that the eremitical life is a state assumed perpetually; the Council in Trullo (691) prescribed that once the eremitical life had been undertaken, the hermit was not permitted to return to the monastery except “by reason of some matter of common advantage and benefit or other necessity threatening death, and then only with the blessing of the local bishop. Those who endeavor to leave their abodes without the aforementioned excuses shall, in the first instance, be

291 bique orationi et spiritualibus corporalibusque exercitiis vacet, si enim firmo sit corpore, agellum colendum suscipiat, aut alium laborem manuum exerceat, qui sibi et monasterio utilis fuerit, atque conveniens. Pars IV, c. 2, 21, XX, found in Disciplina (nt. 17), 513 n. 621.

30 Si monasterio contiguae sint cellae, ad horas canonicas vespertinas, nocturnas et matutinas, et ad Missarum etiam solemnia omnibus diebus debent eremitae accedere. Pars IV, c. 2, 21, XX, found in Disciplina (nt. 17), 513 n. 621.

31 Si vero longius absint, tenentur solum diebus Festis et Dominicis a primis ad secundas vesperas ad coenobium convenire, ibique pernoctare, divinis officiis assistere, confiteri peccata et communicare. Pars IV, c. 2, 21, XX, found in Disciplina (nt. 17), 513-515 n. 621.

32 Si quis eorum eremiticum institutum ad certum tempus vel in perpetuum, colere voluerit ... Pars IV, c. 2, 21, XX, found in Disciplina (nt. 17), 513 n. 621.