The Hermit is the powerful story of “a priest who showed no fear”

Priests are indispensable in the life of the Church. It is through our priests that we are reconciled with God, fed through the Holy Eucharist, brought into the Body of Christ through baptism, and much more. We may not always recognize the profound role priests play in our lives, but in some cases, the role is so dramatic that it cannot be ignored.

One such case is told in Kevin Wells’ latest book from Ignatius Press, The Hermit: The Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage, and a Family (2024). It is a memoir, chronicling the story of Wells, his wife Krista’s struggle with personal wounds and addiction, and the role Father Martin Flum played in bringing healing to them, by God’s grace.

It is a raw and profoundly personal story, and a beautiful exploration of how God dispenses grace through the sacraments–in this case, in particular, the sacraments of Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders.

Kevin Wells has written several books about the importance of holy priests, including The Priests We Need to Save the Church and Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz.

Wells recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his new book, the role of a husband and father, and unanticipated grace.

Catholic World Report: How did this book come about?

Kevin Wells: The Hermit was written because my wife, Krista, urged me to write it in the aftermath of two significant events.

She has been healed from the grip of addiction during the height of COVID-19 when a holy priest, Fr. Martin Flum, fought to guard her soul as Catholic churches worldwide placed a moratorium on the Mass and sacraments.

In 2021, Fr. Flum was granted permission by his bishop to enter the eremitic life as a consecrated hermit, where he’ll spend the remainder of his life absorbed in prayer, penance, and mortifications as an expiation for the sin of mankind and the recovery of the priesthood. A few months after he entered his cell, Krista asked that I write what Fr. Flum did to save her during the pandemic, “to show a priest who showed no fear, of how a man behaves.”

CWR: This is a deeply personal story. Did you hesitate to share it? Or were you convinced that sharing your own story could do good for others?

Wells: No part of me wanted to share it. When Krista proposed the idea of writing the story, I told her ‘no.’ As time moved on and she persisted, I continued saying “no,” because I knew part of the story of Fr. Flum’s spiritual work included dredging up the dark night of our marriage. As her husband, I certainly didn’t want to be the one typing into existence her wounds and “putting her stuff out on the street!” Finally, Krista said, “Kevin, I want to expose myself so Fr. Flum’s priesthood can be exposed.” She told me her past no longer mattered; she just wanted me to shine a light on what a cassocked repairman did to piece her—and our lives—back together during the awful time in 2020, which ironically became the greatest year of our lives.

When I began writing the manuscript, Krista and I had no idea the story I/we had intended to write of a self-emptying priest during the pandemic would actually become a memoir about marriage—and the manner in which matrimonial graces work to dissolve the dark night. After the September release of The Hermit, folks from around the country began to share how the story had entered their wounds and spoke of the mystery and purpose of their own crosses.

Others have also expressed how Krista’s recovery had given them a blueprint to escaping their wounds through the medicine of the sacraments and daily time spent in Adoration. Krista and I sort of sit back in wonder because the purpose of The Hermit, we thought, was to memorialize Fr. Flum’s exceptionalism during COVID, and how his actions managed to save Krista.

CWR: The focus of the book is on how Fr. Flum “saved a soul, a marriage, and family”. But he wasn’t working all on his own. What does this story say about a husband’s role and the calling you had to save Krista’s soul, your marriage, and your family?

Wells: I am not a supernaturalist, but it’s difficult to answer this question without speaking of Satan. I imagine I’m not unlike most men who grow up wanting to earn the princess’s heart by slaying the dragon—but the dragon in our lives had become very real. He was multi-headed and growing and wasn’t about to be brought down. In her woundedness, Krista needed me to love her as a man must, and Satan, I knew, would work tirelessly to turn my thoughts inward, where loneliness and hopelessness might have me effeminately considering divorce. As time went on during what I’ll call ‘our wintertime’, I began to see I wasn’t so much fighting against Krista’s binge drinking as I was against Satan.

I have come to see that Satan is directly involved with alcoholism. Choruses of demons seemed to become entrenched into the disconsolate mix of Krista’s shame, addiction, and woundedness. In time, it seemed the Evil One wanted to destroy me as much, if not more, than Krista. He knew that to annihilate my family was to get me to wave the white flag on Krista and my marriage. I am certainly no hero, but I was going to do whatever I could to fight for my bride and protect my family.

I want to add that I learned an awful lot about the Evil One during Krista’s years of hidden drinking. He was masterful at shifting his patterns and modifying his approaches to demoralize and tempt Krista to drink. It was the same for me. If I had managed to reign in and overcome an unruly emotion, he pulled from his cabinet to take me down a different road to dishearten and taunt me. In time, I learned to battle the devil with one weapon more than any other: I worked to repeatedly surrender everything to God and nail myself to the cross, where I knew I could expect no consolations as I awaited Krista’s recovery.

CWR: You speak a lot in the book about the profoundly negative effect that COVID-related lockdowns had on Krista. What was it about that isolation that made things so much worse for her? And is that something innate, that everyone struggles with to varying degrees?

Wells: I promise this will be one of my last mentions of the devil! I saw during the COVID lockdowns, for the first time, that Krista’s demon of shame was pushing up against something to which it was unaccustomed. Her soul was in the process of being sanctified by God through the daily reception of the Eucharist, regular confessions, and long hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Fr. Flum told her during COVID that the simple act of regularly adoring Jesus at the Holy Hour would begin to give birth to a languorous peace, where rays of love would warm and fully cure her. He told her nothing on earth would be more medicinal for her soul than the act of simply keeping Him company at Adoration and gazing upon His Face in the monstrance.

For years, it was isolation and secret places that allowed Krista endless opportunities to secretly drink. When all of a sudden in the spring of 2020 the world began to bark—“isolate!”—I couldn’t imagine a more dooming word to speed up Krista’s demise. Terribly, the sacramental rhythm that had led to Krista’s healing was suddenly shut down by bishops. Krista believes, as I do, that it was during the COVID lockdowns that she was fully healed by the Mass and sacraments. And rather than isolating (as unnamed medical panels and the world urged) she repeatedly gave her long-held shame to Jesus at Adoration and asked that He take it away, which He did.

CWR: The book is filled with a string of stunning moments of grace, God working through Fr. Flum. Is there a particular moment (or two) where you were especially moved, or even shocked?

Wells: Ah, there are many moments of heroism, but since I want CWR readers to read The Hermit, I’ll leave all of them unmentioned except for two: One afternoon during spiritual direction, when Krista was still battling her addiction, Fr. Flum told her: “I don’t think we can see each other anymore because I think it’s gotten to a place where your love for the demon in you is more powerful than anything I can do for you.” After a few moments of registering his diagnosis, Krista weakly asked him to explain what he meant. He looked her in the eye and said in a plain and un-nuanced way, with a sliver of exasperation. “You continue on a path that is taking your soul to Hell, and I am not able to stop it.” I tell this story to show that Fr. Flum, as the shepherd of Krista’s soul, was never reluctant to say very hard things to bring her to an awareness of what her choices were doing to impact her eternal soul.

A second story I’ll touch on is when Fr. Flum was shoved into the pavement by an invisible force. He came into his parish church to celebrate Mass the following day with a face and body that appeared to have been pummeled. He didn’t discuss with anyone what had happened the night before except to one of his closest friends—who became wordless when he heard.

CWR: I’ve heard it said that you have a gift for “teasing the sacred drama out of a life”. This is on full display here, as well as in your biography of Fr. Aloysius Schwartz. What is it about these two holy priests that makes their stories so compelling?

Wells: Both priests were relentless in living out the burden of their identity to save souls. Because of their zeal to serve God and souls, both were also/still are undergoing attacks in the visible and invisible world. In Fr. Flum’s case, I don’t think Satan liked him stealing away Krista by his repeated work of helping to heal her wounds. It was the same for Fr. Al, who each day of his priesthood worked to save hundreds of thousands of the most bullied and humiliated children in the world. For this, too, he was relentlessly attacked. Their lives are compelling because violence, calumny, and weariness seemed to act as accelerants for them to work even harder for Christ.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Wells: I’ll stress just two things: I’d like readers to see a portrait of what holy priests do to save long-suffering souls. In Krista’s case, Fr. Flum kept taking a staircase deep into Krista’s shame and woundedness until healing came. Also, as the suffering world seems to be running more and more on fumes, I think this book offers a good reminder of how God is faithful to those who reach out to Him as if He is the only hope in the world, which of course He is. In different ways, Krista and I were trapped in a long dark night, but God responded by pulling us out through his servant, Fr. Flum.

CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Wells: I really encourage readers to purchase The Hermit for anyone they believe is caught up in shame, woundedness, or seemingly never-ending pain. Please give it to someone who sees God as absent in their misery. The story I wrote, I believe, will greatly help this type of individual by providing a different look at God’s strange providence and the ways He mysteriously works to heal us.