Once again we begin reading Benedict's chapter on the admission of newcomers to the monastery (RB 58), and once again we are made to reflect on the mystery of vocation. Those of us who have professed vows as monks and nuns would be the first to admit that we are novices all our lives, ever learning something new about God and ourselves. We would be the first to acknowledge, too, that the calling to monastic life is one vocation among many: all are called to holiness, to the closest possible union with God, but the way in which each person is called will differ.

Why, then, does my heart sink when someone asks, "How many novices do you have? How many enquirers?" Partly because I don't think of vocations as having much to do with numbers but rather with the gift of self, which cannot be quantified. If I look back over the last five years, I can see that we have spent a lot of time and energy answering vocation enquiries, having people to stay and patiently trying to help them find their way in life. It is a joy to us that we have been able to help one person find her vocation in Carmel, another in marriage; many more have discovered that what they thought was a call to the cloister was actually a call to intensify their life of prayer, and I hope we have been able to help a little with that. One person was so relieved when I told her that I didn't think she had a vocation to monastic life, she practically danced, saying that a great burden had lifted from her shoulders!

God's yoke is light and easy, never burdensome; but assuming it will test one to the core. So, dear reader, if you are toying with the idea of a monastic vocation and rather fancy life in a romantic habit in a wonderful setting, with beautiful liturgy as background and perhaps a little light gardening by way of manual labour, think again.

Here at Hendred we offer not romance but reality: hard work, austere living, financial insecurity, absolute dependence on God. We can promise that you will be tested in ways you never dreamed possible. You will learn things about yourself you would rather not and will struggle to admit. You will discover that your brethren are not saints but sinners, their failings precisely those that make most demands on you. You will discover that the holocaust of self made in the vows is something that has to be renewed daily.

Is it worth it? If you come here to find God, you will indeed do so. If you come seeking anything else, you may perhaps find it, for a while at least, but there comes a point in every monastic life when the soul is stripped bare, so to say, and must seek God and nothing else. Sacrifice isn't popular today, if it ever was, and it is only human to try to escape it. We can all point to monks and nuns who seem to live, on the surface at least, comfortable and even worldly lives with very little of the sacrificial about them.

We don't do "comfortable and worldly" here at Hendred, and please God, we never shall. On the other hand, we do do "joyful". I happen to believe that a monastic vocation is the most amazing gift. Yes, it comes at a price, but what can one give in exchange for life?