After seven years waiting, enough was enough. So I stepped back from offering all my work and talents trying to build my life within the institutional side of our Church. Instead, I will now live my calling outside the formal institutes and representatives of our Church, while obviously I will keep visiting them for the sacraments.

This is a real pity, because I think my life as a hermit could have been more focused and fruitful when structured within the institutional Church, while the institutional Church could have meaningfully benefited from my proven legal, financial, and strategic talents. However, this was apparently not meant to be. Therefore, from now on I will not only devote my main hours of the day as a hermit to theology (through prayer, study, and practice), but on top of that I’ll use the few remaining hours to earn my own income not within the Church but in the world, to save for my pension, and hopefully one day to buy my own hermitage in a very silent and secluded region.

In other words: now that I have to become self-sufficient in my own worldly needs, you will now have to become self-sufficient in your own spiritual and practical knowhow. Because over the last seven years I’ve been giving, helping, and instructing a lot for free on behalf of our Church, hoping for a mutual kindness as was common tradition in the old days of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. But with only four or five notable exceptions (in other words: far less than one per year, with two of those whose sizeable help I refused because of their own limited financial means), there has been scant financial support other than some coffee money. In other words: neither the institutional Church and her formal representatives, nor the many lay people I’ve helped over these last seven years came forth to support me in return. But nearly all, priests and lay Christians alike, eagerly sought out my advice and opinion in both worldly and Christian knowhow. But despite spending hours and hours of my time on them, with often with very good short and long term results - see the comments & commentaries of people I’ve helped - whenever I needed them, they found reasons not to be there for me.

Although - in our current modern era - this was a pretty foreseeable reality from the very start of my hermit life, I nonetheless decided I needed to experience and prove this to be true in my own life too before being willing - and feeling justified - to step back from building my hermit life within the organisations of our institutional Church. However unfortunate, after seven years it was indeed both as prophesied and as expected. Not as hoped. Therefore, from now on I will, in effect, accept the fact that we are not any longer living in the common traditions of the old days, but instead in a new modern era. And I will adjust to this modern era according to the prophecies of the Dessert Fathers. Hence, I decided to become an undercover hermit.

A major consequence of this decision is - as the English expression goes - that after seven years waiting and funding myself: “something’s gotta give”. Which means in my life that I cannot continue helping others sharing my knowhow, giving advice, suggest practical solutions, and instruct on prayer techniques for watchfulness, meditation, contemplation, and self-emptying, while also living a full scheduled hermit life, and having to work for a self-sufficient income. Furthermore, as I cannot do less of my hermit schedule in praying and studying, and I now have no choice but to start working in the world for an income again, it’s therefore inevitable that sharing my knowhow with others becomes the break point. This means that I either don’t share my knowhow at all (as is traditionally a valid option for a hermit), or I get paid to recompense me for my knowhow, time, effort, and lost income. I think this latter option is the least bad option, as it in effect forces people to self-select better whether they need my specific knowhow or not. Either way, I will maintain the silence and solitude that is considered necessary for a hermit’s life, or otherwise I will get paid for my knowhow, time, effort, and lost income and so (a) obtain the necessary funds to remain as much as I can in silence and solitude living my hermit way and calling, while (b) at the same time remaining available for extending my help when needed. This then, is all in line with the old traditional way, but with an apparently modern shift in which the traditional student-servants and the traditionally generous lay Christians of old got replaced by a modern invoice. Not my preferred way, but an unavoidable adaptation after my last seven years of experiencing what happens when giving everything away for free in the old traditional way.

In other words: my calling to the hermit life prescribes as much seclusion and isolation as is achievable. And that is not very compatible with being open to help everybody at all times, as I’ve nonetheless been doing these last seven years while having to wait for the institutional Church. But after waiting for seven years, those days are now over. So if you need help with your religious questions and struggles, then from now on please first turn to your closest priest, monk, nun, or reverend. They are God-appointed to help you, and they are trained, ordained, and paid to do so by the institutional Church. By their own admission they are Christ’s representatives on Earth, God chosen wearers of His loving kindness and wisdom. So they should be your first port of call for both your spiritual and practical needs and knowhow.

But if their help leaves you nonetheless unexpectedly helpless, then I won’t leave you an orphan. Instead: feel free to use the contact form on this page to contact me. I’ll be there for you. However, then please realise that from now on I will have to ask you explicitly to recompense me for my knowhow and time invested in helping you. Why? First, because the worker is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7). Second, because we live in a new era of self-sufficiency to which I’ve had to adapt after seven years living according to the old traditional system in which I gave everything away for free but didn’t receive any meaningful support to continue a simple and basic lifestyle as a hermit. Alas, our current world doesn’t function like that anymore, though personally I would have preferred the old traditional way better. Third, because the time I dedicate from here on forward to solving your problems I consequently cannot use to earn my own necessary income. Fourth, we don’t live anymore in a time in which being widowed or orphaned, falling ill, or getting fired equals direct and total loss of income and destitution as it traditionally used to be. Instead, in our modern Western welfare state with its extensive social safety nets, most of the widows, orphans, sick, and unemployed nowadays still have sufficient disposable income to make free spending choices. And fifth, if Christ’s own representatives on Earth cannot help you enough, then apparently some hard-won practical knowhow and real-world experience gained from my hermit life might be helpful and therefore worth a small investment of your savings instead of spending it on your next pair of jeans, phone, or even a holiday.

But if you don’t want to recompense me for sharing my time and hard-won practical knowhow and real-world experience with you, then you remain fully free to not ask me for my help and instead to try and obtain the same kind of knowledge and experience somewhere else, either within the world, through artificial intelligence, and/or within the institutional Church as they are here to shepherd you. Or in case you feel you are too poor to pay me for sharing my hard-won personal knowhow and experience, then please send me your government issued tax documents over the prior three years. If those documents indicate that you indeed are reasonably unable to pay for my help, then I will fully, wholeheartedly, and traditionally spend all the time I can for free on giving you all the advice, practical solutions, and practical prayer techniques you want in as far as that is compatible with my normal hermit schedule.

And last-but-not-least in keeping with paragraphs 2121 - 2122 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: my intercessory prayers and my blessings will always remain available for free for everybody. And any effect of them can only come from God (+), thus will always be given for free by Him (+). Therefore, any gratitude you might have for that, will always solely be between you and God (+) and due to Him (+) alone.

Your brother-in-Christ,

bartholomew