Steps to Becoming a Monk

  • The vocation inquiry begins with an email, a phone call, or a Zoom conversation, whereby you begin establishing a relationship with the Vocation Director. The purpose of these initial conversations is to answer basic questions about monastic life and for the vocation director to understand your background.

    After several of these conversations, the next step forward is a Vocation Discernment Visit, which is usually a 3-day visit, often over a weekend. It is a time to meet some monks of all ages, to experience community prayer and Eucharist, to do some work, to be with monks in quiet and recreation, and to dine with the community.

    Depending on your experience, you may know immediately that monastic life is not for you. Or the visit may be interesting, and over the course of time, you may make additional visits. Each time you will get to know more monks, deepen your prayer experience, and come to a deeper understanding of what monastic life is all about. During this time, you will be in conversation with a vocationally seasoned monk for guidance.

  • If the process of inquiry has gone well, you will feel ready to apply for postulancy, to live the monastic life with the community for a period of three months. In preparation for postulancy, the community needs to know a little more about you:

    • We provide you with a writing guide to write your autobiography (family, where you grew up, relationships, schooling, work history, and your faith history).

    • We also ask you for three letters of recommendation from individuals who know you well, who have a pretty good understanding of who you are and what you care about.

    • With all this information in hand, the vocation team will invite you to a series of interviews to learn more about you.

    After review and recommendation, the vocation team, with the approval of the abbot, will officially invite you to begin postulancy.

  • For three months, you will live with the monks, praying, working, and experiencing the monastic life. Together you will live and study the Rule of Saint Benedict, the psalms, and our prayer together. Being in the community, you also get to meet more monks. During this time, there are regular conversations with the Vocation Director to field questions and to give counsel. You may leave or be asked to leave at any time, should it be discerned that you do not have a call to the monastic life at Saint John's Abbey.

  • The novitiate is the first phase of monastic life. It is a probationary period of discernment and formation before making simple profession (temporary vows). Upon leaving postulancy, you will stand before the community, confessing your desire to become a monk of Saint John's Abbey. You are then clothed with the monastic habit (black robes comprising of a cassock, scapular, and hood.) As a novice, you will live the life of a monk: you pray and work with the community while studying the monastic life with the abbot, monk teachers, and the formation director. The novitiate is a year-long period of strict discipline, prayer, discernment, and formation. Your daily work as a novice will explore the monastic vocation, teach humility and obedience, and expose you to the wide variety of Saint John's Abbey apostolates. As with postulancy, you may leave or be asked to leave at any time, should it be discerned that you do not have a call to the monastic life at Saint John's Abbey.

  • After the initial formation period of the novitiate, monks enter temporary vows for three years. No longer living under the strict discipline of the novitiate, but still under the guidance of the formation director, this stage of discernment offers more freedom and a clearer experience of the monastic life as lived by a finally professed monk. Your work is more focused than in the novitiate and takes advantage of your individual talents, allowing you to invest yourself in the ministry and identity of Saint John's. You will continue to learn about the monastic life, take theology classes, and advance your professional studies.

  • On the Feast of Saint Benedict (July 11), as the monks before you, you will make the solemn profession of the Order of Saint Benedict, committing to this community, stability, conversion to a monastic way of life, and obedience. This means that you are now a Catholic monk of Saint John's Abbey, standing in a 1,500-year-old spiritual tradition, seeking God and serving the Church and the larger world. Over the monastic habit which you received on the day you entered the novitiate, you are now clothed with the cuculla, the symbol of a finally professed Benedictine monk.