Welcome to St Cuthbert’s House, home to a canonical hermit of the Diocese of Hallam, UK.
Thank you for finding this space! It is ten years since I last put together a website, and I am relieved to find the technology is much easier to use now. My previous website will not exist for very much longer as software updates prevent me from making any more changes to it. I know some of the information on the pages over there has been very useful to those interested in hermitage, so I have transferred a few of the most visited pages over here (under SCH Archives tab)
Apart from the Archive, there is just a couple of sections to this new website. One is a news blog which I will try to keep updated with illustrative snippets if anything eventful occurs! The other I have titled “ponderings”, and is likely to be longer, more thoughtful.
God is with us +
Rachel Er.dio.
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The hermit is simply a pioneer in the way of the desert which the whole of humanity must follow of necessity one day, each one according to their own measure and desire. This eremitical vocation, at least embryonically, is to be found in every Christian vocation. It is necessary that the Church and society do something so that this may be realizable, so that each may at least touch it, be it only with the tip of their little finger. Benedictine Raphael Vernay: On the Desert Place of the Inner Sanctuary. 1974
Guidance and Rule of Life under Canon 603
Rachel M Denton: Hermitage of St Cuthbert, Diocese of Hallam.
Part I –
Hermitage
The Son who is the way which leads to MotherFather (cf. John 14:6) calls all those whom MotherFather has given to him (cf John 17:9) to make the following of himself the whole purpose of their lives. But of some, those called to the consecrated life, he asks a total commitment, one which involves leaving everything behind (cf. Matt 19:27) in order to live at his side and to follow him wherever he goes (cf. Rev. 14:4) Vita Consecrata 18
The Church recognises the life of hermits or anchorites, in which Christ’s faithful withdraw further from the world and devote their lives to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through the silence of solitude and through constant prayer and penance. Canon 603
Evangelical Counsels
The evangelical counsels, by which Christ invites some people to share his experience as the chaste, poor and obedient One, call for and make manifest in those who accept them an explicit desire to be totally conformed to him. Living “in obedience with nothing of one’s own and in chastity”, consecrated persons profess that Jesus is the model in whom every virtue comes to perfection. His way of living in chastity, poverty and obedience appears as the most radical way of living the Gospel on this earth, a way which may be called divine, for it was embraced by him, God and man, as the expression of his relationship as the Only-Begotten Son with MotherFather and with the Holy Spirit. Vita Consecrata 18
Life consecrated through profession of the evangelical counsels is a stable form of living, in which the faithful follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit, and are totally dedicated to God, who is supremely loved. By a new and special title they are dedicated to seek the perfection of charity in the service of God’s Kingdom, for the honour of God, the building up of the Church and the salvation of the world. Canon 573
Part II – Rule of Life
By God’s providence, by God’s calling, and for God’s own purposes and desires, as a member of Christ’s Church through baptism and guided by the holy scriptures and the Gospels, the life of the hermitage is to be a life of thanksgiving, hidden in Christ for the sake of his Church, sharing through prayer and penance in his continuing purpose of redemption, and in him to be transformed into a fragrant offering, acceptable to MotherFather: “This is my body, this is my blood”.
And so, by God’s mercy, and in imitation of Jesus who “during his life on earth offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save him out of death, and who submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard.” (cf Heb 5:7): –
To live simply, in solitude and silence, staying and returning there insofar as duties permit.
To work for a sufficient living, seeking means which are directly supportive of simplicity, solitude and silence.
To spend time each day in prayer, in silence, in study, and in joining with the Divine Office of the Church.