By Joseph R. Wood.

But first a note: As Professor Wood explains today, the contemplative life, especially of hermits, is a fundamental service to the Church and the world, even though to many it doesn't seem so. Here at TCT, we cannot make such fundamental claims, but we do what we can, and we know it achieves results, not least among our readers. What we already see developing this year will call for some of the same - and even greater - efforts that we've made for the past decade and a half. We know economic times are hard out there, but they're hard for us too. And right now, we're not hitting our chalk marks for this mid-year fundraiser. So I have to ask, please, if you care about the future of Catholicity in this country and the world, we're in the fight. Will you be too?

Now for today's column...

This year's routine announcement of clergy assignments in my diocese included one that you don't see often. A priest will follow a hermit vocation.

Eremitical life, and the contemplative vocation in general, were central in early Christianity and remain a search for union with God for the contemplatives themselves, and for the good of the universal Church.

The early Desert and Church Fathers, often hermits, are a source of strength and grace, always being forgotten and always being found again. Today seems to be another "found again" moment.

As Sister Benedicta Ward explains, the earliest years of the Church saw some Christians determined to await the return of Christ "with a totality of commitment. . .[as] ascetics. . .who undertook a poor and celibate life. . .in the expectation of the coming of the Lord."

This asceticism was first undertaken in urban settings, but "gradually a need for more absolute retirement. . .caused people to seek. . .solitude away from social, political, and economic demands."

In these years, as Hilary White has noted, "there were no written rules to follow, no orders to join and permission was not needed from any ecclesiastic in Rome or Constantinople. You simply decided to do it."

People moved away from cities in search of solitude and silence, sometimes as hermits occasionally getting together for prayer or meals, sometimes in more tight-knit groups.

St. Anthony the Great sought solitude. But according to St. Athanasius, Anthony encountered other hermits and, in particular, St. Paul the First Hermit. Anthony himself attracted followers and became known as the Father of Monasticism for the group that gathered around him.

We think today of "hermits" as living in solitude and "monks" as living in a cenobitic community in accord with the Rule of St. Augustine or St. Benedict. The necessity for such rules and their emphasis on obedience to superiors became apparent in those first few centuries, as the rigors of ascetic life led some to holiness and others in all sorts of bad directions.

St. Dorotheos of Gaza reports the foul ways his wayward brothers showed their displeasure with him. St. Benedict, after living as a hermit then being drafted as superior for some misguided monks, was nearly murdered when they found his efforts to reform their ways too strict.

Two orders devoted to eremitical life became prominent over the centuries: the Benedictine Camaldolese founded around 1000 A.D. by St. Romuald and renewed half a millennium later by Blessed Paul Giustiniani, and the Carthusians founded by St. Bruno not long after St. Romuald. Both remain active.

In recent centuries, the eremitical vocation has often followed decades of devotion in a monastery. The experienced monk, equipped with the strength and temperament gained through years of monastic practice, leaves his brothers to seek a closer union with God and to undertake spiritual combat with the devil.

He'll usually stay close to his monastery, under obedience as part of complete submission to God, for both physical and spiritual support as he enters a deeper solitude.

Herein lies one of the most misunderstood aspects of monastic and eremitical life....