✙ br. bartholomew (hermit)

my hermit’s life

Before I started my life as a hermit, I used to be a rational and successful (or at least: well paid) lawyer, writer, and business advisor. Resisting God’s call during fifteen long stubborn years. You can read more about it here.

However, those well paid days are over, as my vocation as a traditional hermit keeps my active income very limited. First, because of the precedence of prayer over income (you can read more about a traditional hermit’s daily life and schedule here). Second, because having achieved certain traditionally well described thresholds I’m bound - in obedience to Christ - to make my personal experience available to help others in their religious (prayer) life if and when I’m asked to do so, for free. And third, because as a traditional hermit I’m bound to stay as much as possible outside society, in order to focus solely on a life in silence and solitude dedicated to prayer and theology.

For these and other reasons I’m currently living in my car.

Living this kind of de facto homeless life helps me to live a frugal, simple, and God-centred life. Why? Because, practically speaking, this de facto poor lifestyle is currently the best way to enable me to dedicate the many necessary hours to prayer and theology (because I now need a far lower income to make ends meet, and so can work less and therefore pray and study more). Also, religiously speaking, this type of life on the edge of society and beyond helps me to stay true to my publicly professed religious vows as a hermit. These religious vows are to live my life according to the three evangelical counsels - meaning to live my life poor with the poor, in chastity, and in obedience to God (+) - and also to live my life alone, free from material and other worldly bonds, and in unconditional love (agape) to all. These publicly professed religious vows are not seen as being ‘good’ in themselves, but as enabling the most undistracted path towards attaining a ‘perfect’ life in the eyes of our Heavenly Father.

If you want to know more about my path as a hermit - and its ultimate goal of Christian perfection and holiness - then go here.

But please don’t forget: I’m certainly not perfect yet, and quite probably I'll never be. But I publicly vowed to try for the rest of my life. So you are free to measure me according to those religious vows. And I would appreciate your feedback, especially when you think I failed to live up to the high standards that are rightly expected from a hermit.

You can read more about my place within the Roman Catholic Church here.