I know of a person who tried pursuing the hermit path under the Diocesan banner, but it’s very difficult, depending on where you live. If you want to be a priest, that’s great; if you want to be any other kind of consecrated religious, they think you need to go off and be a Benedictine/Franciscan/Dominican/whatever in a group setting, because they know how to handle the group— but they don’t really want to get involved with a single person vocation towards the eremetic life, let alone really be involved in their support/maintenance/etc. So it’s all about how the Diocese feels about Canon 603— if you’re out of luck, it’s a very tough row to hoe, and can be years or decades of frustration. Usually, people in those situations seem to end up living in the world-- working a quiet job, living humbly and in relative solitude in the midst of the bustle of their town or city, and spending their remaining non-work hours in prayer.
The person I know wrote their own Rule. I don’t know if they had the discipline to keep to it-- that’s important. Just like being self-employed means your success or failure is directly tied to you, and not other people; being a hermit means that you don’t have other people’s strengths to lean on. So some people are good at being self-motivated, and others aren’t.
Depending on where you’re located, you might check with your local chancery for hermits who currently live under 603, and visit with them. See the diversity of their approaches.
Otherwise, you might check out websites like the
Carmelite Hermits out of Oklahoma, or the
Hermit Sisters of Mary out of Idaho, where groups of hermits have come together to pool their efforts in a communal way, but still maintain their solitude and seclusion.
Good luck with your path!
