THE CALL
To join the community requires, essentially, feeling called by God to seek him with sincerity by monastic path.
necessary conditions exist in the candidate: ability of coexistence, love for prayer, reading, study and work, have an even temperament and be responsible and committed. The best way to know if you have a vocation to the monastic life is known a particular community, for the monastic vocation means living the lifestyle community with a specific, unique and unrepeatable.
The applicant must seek the best possible guidance and pray earnestly to God to help you discern the truth of his call.
STAGES
There are certain stages in the process of discernment for further integration into the community.
At first, a time of contacts with the monks to allow mutual understanding. Includes retreats for weekends. When the person determined to explore life more seriously monastic, these gatherings are set once a month (external candidaturĂa).
Then there is the initiation into the monastic life as an internal candidate as an applicant. Then comes the novitiate, where the novice is devoted to study the Rule of St. Benedict and monastic spirituality which enables a clear discernment of vocation.
is passed to the next stage of temporary profession, ie the profession of monastic vows, time to continue training and also attends to the deeper theological and patristic.
stage of betrothal to Christ, is the solemn profession, where there is commitment final live as a monk in the community through the repetition of vows before cast. These votes are, as we advance, the stability (stable life in the monastery), conversion of manners (to live as a monk) and obedience (to the abbot and following the Rule of St. Benedict).
A monk who reaches this stage can be ordained if, after adequate discernment, it is found that is called by God to this ministry. The monastic life is not in itself implies neither the priesthood aims. The priestly vocation is neither necessary nor sufficient by itself to determine entrance to the monastery. The monks priests exercise their ministry in a subordinate position to status of monks, so their management does not substantiate any derogation regarding observances concerns or in the exercise of objections.
MONKS FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM.
Monks "for the third millennium? Does that makes sense of monastic life in a postmodern era of advanced technologies? Is not it a waste medieval? Is this kind of existence has something to do with what we live on the street? Is it a vigorous approach, the monk, which clashes with the ideology of "light"? Or is it an evasion for not tackling the challenges posed by society?
Although it may appear in the eyes of many as a monotonous life, quiet, monastic life is dynamic. Moreover, it is a battle. So defined, for example, the Rule of St. Benedict in chapter I. A daily struggle. A fight against many elements that nest in the inner world. A struggle that brings into play the fundamental elements of existence: love, self-esteem, loneliness, sexuality, the use of freedom, the relationship between people or groups, the fatigue from work, limitation in the use of material goods and the difficulty of sharing. A bout at stake, too, the choice to believe, the question of the meaning of existence, the darkness of faith.
A distinctive label of the monks, from the very beginnings of monastic life is that of virginity or celibacy. This is not a mere continence borne stoically, but to embrace chastity for the Kingdom of God as a way of life and love implies total surrender to Christ and an opening, also total, to others. The monk or nun, in her journey of integration and maturation of affectivity and sexuality express the goodness of the sexual dimension, created by God, but also its finitude, and denounce the absolutism of sex: His Life teaches that man or woman can never be viewed simply as an object or seek to satisfy gaps selfish satisfactions. The evangelical option for chastity is a deep respect for other's personal mystery: In addition, chastity for the Kingdom expressed the deep conviction of the nearness of God, although often of his silence and seeming absence. The monk, the nun, it offers absolutely and indivisible love, knowing that only God can fill the human heart deeply.
Another great hallmark of monastic life is obedience, through which the monks try to use mature and evangelical freedom. Indeed, the experience Monastic obedience is far from the shallowness and immaturity infantilising; not intended to take the responsibility of choice and action: On the contrary. It requires a lot of maturity, you will gradually acquire and exercise their own will firm decided to discharge completely in the depths of his heart, where it develops the struggle between freedom and slavery to selfishness: For the obedience The monks want to continue living that fundamental attitude of discerning God's will to implement it, we find in the great characters of the Bible and Church History.
Through the simplicity of life and communion of goods that must prevail in the monasteries, both individual and community level, the monk seeks to be inwardly free over the use of material goods, without any attachments: it also requires a constant struggle. With his brothers, headed by the Abbot or Abbess, who has received the mission to be the center of communion in the monastic brotherhood, seeks to create a community where each received the necessary, non-privileged material or arbitrary distinctions: He even live-and one wonders whether he should be more often, the same experience of the poor who do not have enough.
with their daily tasks is emphasize the dignity of work, not seeking gain profit, but trying to be helpful to the needs of others with the direct result of their work or the distribution of the benefits provided by community work. The monastery, according to the wisdom passed on by the Fathers and Mothers of monasticism, should be sought as far as possible the work of any type-it manual or intellectual, not enslave or be burdensome or detrimental other values, such as prayer, fellowship, training, culture.
not the way of liturgical prayer or individual is exempt from the daily battle. The monk is a search engine God's passionate and wants to love completely to Christ. But, like other believers, at certain times of your life is also the darkness of faith, the silence of God, prayer apparently not heard, the weariness, the "sloth" that the Fathers speak of monasticism. And it experienced a life choice, as the monastic, which has no fundamental support that faith itself. In these situations, try to persevere humbly in sorrow and in love without falling in the prayer life of knowing God's pedagogy is not always comprehensible to human logic. Is aware that the reception of the Word of God and prayer they will purify their passions, give birth to the love inside and I are opening up to God and neighbor. He knows that, by sheer grace, the Father, through the Spirit, is transforming - "transfiguring" Parents say, little by little the person to reproduce in him the image and likeness of Christ. The monk also in all situations, both when in the fullness of his spiritual force, as when you experience the disappointment, try not to stop exercising the ministry of intercession that the Church has entrusted on behalf of their brothers in faith and of humanity.
Through this journey progresses towards the fullness of its realization as a human being and as a believer. Life in the monastery to the slow helps to know your inner world to unify the dispersion, pacify and focus on Christ helps also to find unity with others. Does
therefore regard the monastic life in the third millennium? Can you give something to their contemporaries? Or is it a personal choice, why not respectable in an age that highly values \u200b\u200bindividual freedoms, which have nothing to offer to others?
I said so far allows for a response beginning (...). Actually, the spiritual experience that runs the length of the monastic life is not alien to the fundamental experience living human being if you become aware of their personal reality and live it in depth. And yet when it comes to a believer in Christ.
From hence their own existence and growing knowledge of the depths of his being, the monks can render a great service to his contemporaries, as they are ready to welcome them with their values, their limits, their questions and internal wounds and say a word out of the depth of his experience as believers. A word of life, a word of "salvation" in fundamental continuity with asking the Fathers of monasticism visitors monastic deserts centuries back in the fourth, fifth and sixth.
probably the service that can provide the monk is more necessary now than at other times in history. Indeed, our time is characterized as a period of crisis of civilization, of disappointment, a great progress in technology but fails to produce fullness of joy and disappointment with the limits of science, the collapse of ideologies that sustained the hope of many, a lot of empty despite many words as you hear and read, consciousness of the brevity of life and the inevitable arrival of death. In this context, many seeking a transcendent experience: Where, then, postmodernism proclaimed the failure of so many things and the most lucid wonder about the meaning of life and person, the monks can hold, from his peculiar choice, illuminating a word that embraces not always explicit concerns of his contemporaries, as living in monastic life fighting experimentally the existence and the question of the meaning of it. His answer is a parable for others. An indication of the path that leads to true happiness: This should be your major contribution with others in other specific areas. And there is something new, and the service already provided monasticism in other periods of crisis, like those experienced by San Benito.
When one has come into deep contact with monasticism, he realizes that continue to maintain all its force the words of Pope Paul VI at Monte Cassino in 1964, before a highly qualified representative of the entire Benedictine Confederation: "The Church and the world need a monk out of the ecclesial community and social circle and its walls of solitude and silence, and from there we do hear the lovely accent of his prayer full of peace, from there to attract us to offer the box office the "divine service", a small ideal society, where love reigns and order, obedience, freedom from things and the art of good employment, the primacy of spirit, peace, in a word: the Gospel. The excitement, the excitement, the feverishness, exteriority threaten the inner man. It lacks the silence with their genuine inner word, it lacks order, prayer, peace, without his own self. To regain the domain and the inner spiritual joy needs to be restored at the monastery. And once recovered for himself in the monastic discipline is recovered for the Church. The monk has a more urgent than ever. And when he has rediscovered himself, may have a role also for the world. Its very remoteness it comes to creating new relationships through contrast, surprise, the example of the possible dialogue confidence and secrecy, the fraternal complementarity. "
This complementarity can and should continue in the third millennium.
(From the preface of the book for the third millennium monks, Mercer Cherry Rellán. Ediciones Monte Casino. Zamora: 2000)
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