Mystery Creates History

"IS ANYTHING TOO MARVELOUS FOR THE LORD TO DO?" – Gen 18:14

First Steps (3 of 14)

After three months of prayer and study, Christ prompted me to call Father Robert Flaherty, O.Carm., prior and pastor of St. John the Baptist Priory and Parish in New Baltimore, Pennsylvania. I asked him if I might come to live as a Hermit there. Father Robert graciously welcomed me and provided a beautiful hermitage at one end of the top floor, across from the library. I had the privilege of participating in the daily Eucharist from the choir adjoining the sanctuary of the parish church. There, too, I prayed during the day and evening.

My hermitage had one spacious room with a magnificent view and a smaller room for making cassette recordings. Embryonically, all the inner facets of the life of a Hermit of Our Lady of Mount Carmel were in place. The call to unceasing prayer was expressed in at least two hours of solitary prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, the Liturgy of the Hours, reading the Bible, solitude, silence, and work to help support myself—manual labor—and the challenge of finding a bishop who would allow me to follow Carmel’s prophetic call as a hermit.

I took almost all my meals in my hermitage. Father Robert, however, wanted me to join the community for Sunday dinner; I was honored and happy to do so. Father Robert was kind, understanding, and compassionate. He even let me use his car to learn to drive. The initial lessons were in the parking lot. Even after I had nearly driven over an embankment onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he continued to encourage me and allowed me to keep driving! My memories of New Baltimore are a blend of gratitude and awe for all that happened there: a profound peace in the midst of my leap of faith and constant surrender to God. In the ensuing years, the Carmelite Fathers were to appear in different circumstances, but always with Christ’s gracious kindness and love.

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