Our peace is to be found in doing God’s Will. As St Augustine famously put it, 'Our hearts shall not rest
till they rest in Thee'.
Saint Benedict tells us that we should not give easy admittance to the newcomer. How do we ‘test the
spirits’, as St Benedict put it, to see if an attraction to the monastic life is truly a call from God?
First there are some fundamental questions to be asked, is the candidate single, Catholic, unmarried,
of reasonably good physical and psychological health and free of responsibilities and financial constraints?
Our words to an enquirer are then those of the Lord himself, ‘Come and See!’
If our way of life continues to attract after an initial visit, if the candidate begins to find that peace
that comes with doing God’s will, if his heart begins to expand with that ‘inexpressible delight of love’
described by St Benedict in his prologue to the Rule, then we encourage a gradual increase of exposure to
the monastic life, getting to know the monks, sharing in their work. Usually men interested in joining us
come to stay at the monastery for an occasional weekend, and then they increase this for longer periods. We
encourage them to foster more deeply a life of prayer, frequenting the sacraments, furthering their
knowledge of the faith. God has made our hearts for absolute love, absolute generosity, nothing less will
satisfy. To become a monk is to sign a blank cheque and to let the Lord write the amount he demands of
us. Our happiness is proportionate to our self-surrender.
If the monastic community recognises in them the germ of a vocation and the degree of flexibility and
elasticity needed to have the stamp of a Farnborough monk impressed on them, then they may be accepted to
the first formal stage of entry to our community that of postulancy before entering the Novitiate.
Anyone considering a monastic vocation should write to the Novice Master.
ocations
