Seeking the Stylite

I have never met Fr. Flum, the devil’s “public enemy” and subject of The Hermit: The Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage, and a Family (Ignatius, 2024). At this point, I likely never will—now that he’s “completely off the grid, gone forever like absolved sin,” as the author of said book, Kevin Wells, relayed to me. A good man is hard to find, after all, and a holy man even more so.

People used to venture out to the desert to seek out the Fathers and Mothers who lived there. What they sought was simple: “Give me a word,” they would beg. There’s something to the man who does not wish to be found, who has worked to erase his tracks as best he can and purposefully neglected to supply a forwarding address. There’s something to a man who wrestles like Jacob and the angel on the daily with not only himself but with Old Scratch and his legions. No recording of such assaults. No “Marked Safe from Satan” status updates online. It’s hard to scandalize others when yours is a company of one. You could indulge your choicest sins and who would know? Just a man and the demons—both his own and those who visit uninvited. A man under the sole eyes of God Almighty.

My “pearl of great price” was encountering Christ alone in the wilderness as a teenager and a few years later as an eighteen-year-old college freshman finding His Church. Becoming Catholic was worth everything I gave up; as St. Paul said, “I count all as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Now, decades later and in my mid-forties, I find myself searching out another lost coin that has eluded me: solitude.  

Solitary confinement for prisoners is a punishment; for a man can rape and rob amid company and yet be reduced to a quivering kind of insanity when shut up with no one except himself. For the man who would do anything but be alone, it is indeed a cruel subjection. For those living in the world, when “the sadness” (as comedian Louis C.K. aptly called it) rears its little head and we seek to distract ourselves from being alone by “like, texting ‘hi’ to fifty people,” we are given voluminous opportunities to do so. 

For the man in the world who has found his palate seeking sweetness in solitude and power in silence, however, there are precious few opportunities to soak there for long. Perhaps the car on a long drive or work commute. Or an armchair in the living room at 5 a.m. Other than that, opportunities for both solitude and silence are like rare earth elements—a precious commodity today not because the masses of modern men seek to acquire and commodify them, but rather because they cannot tolerate them and know not what to do with them.  For the man in the world who has found his palate seeking sweetness in solitude and power in silence, however, there are precious few opportunities to soak there for long.Tweet This

That’s why I consider it a grace that I discovered a historic Catholic chapel, no longer in use but maintained on the grounds of a parish dating back to 1729, ten minutes from my home. It is never locked, and no one is ever in there. For the past month or so, I have been getting up at sunrise and riding my bike there to pray for an hour or so each morning. No one knows I’m there; I am completely alone with God, and it has become sweet to me. For a couple of hours, I disappear. I could be there for hours or days without seeing another soul. Of course, to do so would neglect my primary vocation; I am a husband and father, not a monk and hermit.

The esoteric anchorites like St. Simeon Stylites (d. A.D. 459), who lived half his life atop a fifty-foot pillar in Syria, sought to “get away” from the masses that sought out their prayer and advice. The pearl of solitude and silence eluded St. Simeon as long as such distractions persisted. And so, up the pillar he went.

But ironically, if you wanted to find him, you knew where to do so. The pillar was fixed, and though he was physically removed from the proximity of men below to pray and fast, he was far from hidden. Granted, there is a tradition of this peculiar type of asceticism in the Christian Near East. But there is also a part of me that is reminded of the words of one of Thomas Merton’s psychoanalysts to the monk: “What you desire is a hermitage in Times Square with a large sign over it saying ‘Thomas the hermit.’” The ego is a wily beast indeed.

I couldn’t find Fr. Flum to seek his spiritual counsel even if I wanted to because he is a man not wanting to be found. His pillar is not in the public square but inverted and drilled down into hidden depths beneath the forest floor. He has acquired the pearl of great price in Christ Jesus; but he has also obtained a pearl of equal weight in this hiddenness. And not that I would even need to seek him, for that in itself could be a temptation to distraction. For as all those hidden know, only one thing is necessary: to “stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

Modern man commodifies what can be bought and sold but, also, what is marketable. His product is noise, distraction, adulation, attention—which we fools pay top dollar for. Solitude, silence—only the man that knows the true worth of these rare spiritual metals will discretely buy them for pennies on the dollar, because they are considered useless husks in the marketplace of the world. For it is in the prayer of silence, in the refuge chapel of solitude, where we are able to hear Him who calls our name. And that is worth its weight in gold.

[Photo credit: Stillsong Hermitage]