Things You Should Know Before You Become a Monk

Brief Overview

• Monastic life will strip away every comfort, distraction, and coping mechanism you have relied on to avoid confronting your deepest flaws and wounds.
• You will spend decades living with the same men in close quarters, and some of them will irritate you daily in ways that test every ounce of patience you can summon.
• The silence and solitude that attract you to monastic life can become a prison of loneliness, especially during the years when God feels absent and prayer feels pointless.
• Your family will age, decline, and die largely without you, and you will miss weddings, births, funerals, and the everyday moments that bind families together.
• The romantic vision of peaceful monks chanting in ancient chapels collides hard with the reality of manual labor, personality conflicts, institutional dysfunction, and the grinding sameness of daily routines.
• Formation typically lasts six to nine years before solemn vows, and many men leave or are dismissed during this period after realizing the life is not what they imagined.

The Silence Will Force You to Face Yourself Without Mercy

Monastic life is built on silence, and the silence will expose every weakness, fear, and unresolved issue you have been avoiding your entire life. Most monasteries maintain strict silence for large portions of the day and night, with talking permitted only during limited recreation periods or when work requires communication. This is not the peaceful, zen-like silence you imagine when you read Thomas Merton or watch monks on YouTube. This is the silence that leaves you alone with your thoughts, your temptations, your anxieties, and your interior chaos, with nowhere to run and nothing to distract you. You cannot turn on the television when you are bored. You cannot scroll through your phone when you are restless. You cannot call a friend when you are lonely. You cannot blast music when you are sad. You sit in your cell, or you work in silence, or you pray in chapel, and all the noise in your head comes roaring to the surface. The silence reveals patterns of thinking you did not know you had. It exposes addictions you thought you had left behind. It brings up memories and wounds you thought were healed. The monastic tradition teaches that silence is necessary for prayer and for encountering God, but it also teaches that silence is a crucible that burns away everything false and superficial (CCC 2717). This burning is painful, and it does not happen quickly. You will spend years sitting with your own brokenness, and there will be times when you want to run. Some men do run. They leave the monastery because the silence is too much, because they cannot handle what it reveals about themselves. The men who stay are not necessarily holier or stronger; they are simply willing to keep sitting in the fire even when it hurts.

The Daily Schedule Will Control Every Moment of Your Life

Your day will be structured down to the minute, and you will follow the same schedule every single day for decades. Most monasteries follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, which divides the day into periods of communal prayer called the Divine Office, private prayer and lectio divina, manual labor, meals, and limited recreation. You will wake up in the middle of the night for Vigils, which is usually prayed between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. depending on the monastery. You will return to chapel for Lauds at dawn, Mass in the morning, Terce mid-morning, Sext at midday, None in the afternoon, Vespers in the evening, and Compline before bed. Between these prayer times, you will work at whatever task has been assigned to you, whether that is cooking, cleaning, farming, carpentry, maintaining the grounds, managing the guesthouse, or producing goods the monastery sells to support itself. You will eat your meals in silence or while listening to spiritual reading. You will have a brief period of recreation, usually after lunch or dinner, when you can talk with your brothers. Then you will return to your cell for private prayer and sleep, only to wake up a few hours later and start the cycle again. This schedule does not change for holidays, vacations, or personal preferences. You do not get to sleep in because you are tired. You do not get to skip Vigils because you stayed up late. You do not get to take a day off because you need a break. The schedule is the structure that holds monastic life together, and it is non-negotiable. Some men find this structure liberating because it removes the burden of decision-making and creates a rhythm that supports prayer. Other men find it suffocating because it leaves no room for spontaneity, personal preference, or individual needs. The reality is that both experiences are true at different times. There will be seasons when the schedule feels like a gift, and there will be seasons when it feels like a cage.

The Work Will Be Physically Demanding and Often Mundane

Monastic work is not glamorous, and it is often physically exhausting. The Rule of Saint Benedict emphasizes the importance of manual labor, both as a way to support the community and as a spiritual discipline. You will spend hours every day doing tasks that are repetitive, menial, and unglamorous. You will scrub toilets, wash dishes, mop floors, weed gardens, chop wood, repair buildings, and do whatever else needs to be done to keep the monastery functioning. If the monastery runs a farm, you will plant, harvest, and care for animals. If the monastery produces goods like bread, beer, cheese, or liturgical items, you will spend your days in the bakery, brewery, or workshop. If the monastery runs a guesthouse or retreat center, you will clean rooms, cook meals, and serve guests. The work is essential, but it is not intellectually stimulating, and it can be mind-numbing. You may have entered the monastery with a graduate degree in theology or philosophy, dreaming of a life dedicated to prayer and study, only to spend most of your time doing manual labor. The monastic tradition teaches that all work is prayer when it is done with the right intention, and that humility is learned through humble tasks (CCC 2427). However, knowing the theology does not make the work any less tedious. You will spend hours doing tasks that feel meaningless, and you will have to find a way to offer them to God without resentment. Some monasteries allow for more study and intellectual work, especially for men who are ordained or who have special skills the community needs. However, even in these communities, the majority of your time will be spent on ordinary maintenance and labor. The monastery is a working community, and everyone contributes to the physical upkeep regardless of education or talent.

Community Life Means Living With Men You Did Not Choose

You will live in close quarters with men who have different personalities, different temperaments, different levels of emotional maturity, and different ideas about how things should be done. Some of your brothers will be kind, prayerful, and easy to live with. Others will be difficult, rigid, or emotionally unhealthy. Some will have annoying habits that grate on your nerves every single day. Some will have mental health issues, trauma histories, or personality disorders that make communal life challenging. You will not be able to avoid these men or limit your contact with them. You will pray with them, eat with them, work with them, and live with them for the rest of your life. The Rule of Saint Benedict speaks beautifully about the monastery as a school of charity, where monks learn to love their brothers as Christ loved them. The reality is that this school involves a lot of friction, conflict, and the daily choice to be patient with people you find difficult. You will have to forgive men who do not apologize. You will have to live with decisions made by the community that you think are wrong. You will have to tolerate behaviors that you find irritating or disrespectful. Conflicts in monastic life often arise over small things that become magnified by proximity and repetition. Someone chews too loudly during meals. Someone always leaves the chapel door open. Someone never helps with the dishes. Someone criticizes your work in front of others. These irritations can become sources of real bitterness if you let them, and the silence of monastic life means you cannot always talk through the conflict immediately. Some monasteries have better structures for communication and conflict resolution than others, but no monastery is free from tension. The quality of community life depends heavily on the abbot, the size of the community, and the emotional health of the individual monks, and you will not fully know what you are getting into until you are living it.

The Abbot’s Authority Over Your Life Is Absolute

You will make a vow of obedience to the abbot, and his authority over you is total and permanent. The abbot will decide where you live, what work you do, whether you can leave the monastery grounds, whether you can contact your family, and how you spend your time. If he assigns you to a task you hate, you do it. If he denies you permission to attend a family funeral, you stay home. If he decides you are not suited for ordination even though you desire it, you accept his decision. The Rule of Saint Benedict presents the abbot as the representative of Christ in the monastery, and obedience to him is understood as obedience to God (CCC 2053). This means that disagreeing with the abbot or resisting his decisions is not just a practical conflict; it is a spiritual failure. The abbot is expected to govern with wisdom, prayer, and consultation, and the Rule instructs him to listen to the counsel of the brothers, especially in important matters. However, the final decision is always his, and you have no recourse if you believe he has made a mistake. Some abbots are wise, compassionate, and skilled at leadership. Others are not. Some are overly controlling, emotionally immature, or poor at making decisions. Some favor certain monks over others. Some make decisions that seem arbitrary or unfair. You will not get to choose your abbot, and you will not be able to leave if you do not like his leadership. Abbots are elected by the community and serve for life or until they resign, which means you could live under the same abbot for thirty or forty years. If the abbot is good, this is a great blessing. If he is not, it is a heavy cross. The obedience required in monastic life is one of the hardest aspects for modern men, who are accustomed to autonomy, self-direction, and the ability to advocate for themselves. You will have to surrender all of that, and you will have to do it not just once but every single day.

The Prayer Will Often Feel Dry and Meaningless

You will pray for hours every day, and most of the time it will feel like nothing is happening. The Divine Office, which structures the monastic day, consists of psalms, scripture readings, hymns, and prayers prayed at fixed times. The liturgy is beautiful, ancient, and deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church. It is also repetitive, and after you have prayed the same psalms hundreds of times, they can start to feel like empty words. You will show up for Vigils at 3:30 a.m. exhausted and barely able to keep your eyes open. You will stand in chapel for Vespers distracted by thoughts of everything you need to do. You will sit for lectio divina staring at a page of scripture and feeling nothing. The monastic tradition is clear that this dryness is normal and even necessary. Saint John of the Cross wrote extensively about the dark night of the soul, the periods when God seems absent and prayer feels pointless. Saint Benedict himself warned that the mind wanders during prayer and that monks must continually bring their attention back to God. However, knowing that dryness is normal does not make it any easier to endure. You will go through months or years when you feel like you are wasting your time, when you wonder if God is even listening, when you question whether you have made a terrible mistake. The support you receive during these times will depend on your spiritual director, your abbot, and the culture of your community. Some communities are good at supporting monks through spiritual struggles. Others are not, and you will be left to suffer alone. The men who persevere in monastic life are not the ones who have constant mystical experiences or who always feel God’s presence. They are the ones who keep showing up for prayer even when it feels pointless, who trust that God is working even when they cannot see it, and who are willing to live with the tension of faith without certainty.

You Will Miss Everything That Happens Outside the Walls

Your family will age and die largely without you, and you will not be there for most of the important moments in their lives. Depending on the strictness of your monastery’s enclosure, you may be allowed to visit your family once or twice a year, or you may not be allowed to leave at all except in cases of serious emergency. You will not attend your siblings’ weddings. You will not meet your nieces and nephews until they are older, if at all. You will not be at your parents’ bedsides when they are dying, unless the timing works out and your abbot grants permission. You will hear about family events after they happen, through letters or phone calls, and you will feel the distance acutely. The Catholic understanding of monastic life includes the idea that you are leaving your biological family to join a new family, the monastic community. This is true, but it does not erase the pain of separation. Some men enter monastic life precisely because their family relationships are difficult or broken, and for them, the separation is a relief. For others, especially men who are close to their families, the loss is one of the hardest parts of monastic life. You will also miss the ordinary rhythms of life in the world. You will not go to movies, restaurants, or concerts. You will not travel for pleasure. You will not have hobbies or interests outside the monastery. You will not follow sports, politics, or cultural trends in any meaningful way. Some monasteries allow limited access to news and media, but many maintain strict separation from the world. The purpose of this separation is to create space for God and to free you from the distractions and attachments that pull you away from prayer (CCC 918). In practice, it means you will live a very small life, bounded by the monastery walls, with the same people and the same routines day after day. Some men find this smallness freeing. Others find it claustrophobic and suffocating.

Formation Will Test Every Aspect of Your Character

The formation process before solemn vows typically lasts six to nine years, and it is designed to test whether you are truly called to monastic life and whether you have the capacity to live it faithfully. The stages of formation usually include a postulancy period of several months to a year, a novitiate of at least one year, and then several years of temporary vows before you are allowed to make solemn vows. During the novitiate, you will be under the close supervision of the novice master, who will guide your spiritual formation and assess your suitability for monastic life. This is the most intense period of formation, when many men leave or are asked to leave. The novice master will observe how you handle authority, how you relate to the other monks, how you respond to correction, how you manage your emotions, and how you approach prayer and work. He will push you, challenge you, and hold up a mirror to your weaknesses and blind spots. This process is not meant to be cruel, but it is meant to be revealing. The monastic life is too demanding to enter into without knowing yourself well, and formation is the time when you are forced to confront the truth about who you are. After the novitiate, you will make temporary vows, usually for three years, renewable for another three years. During this time, you will live the full monastic life while continuing your formation. The community will be discerning whether to accept you for solemn vows, and you will be discerning whether you are called to commit permanently. This means that for six to nine years, you will be living in a state of uncertainty, not knowing for sure whether you will be allowed to stay. The community can decide not to renew your vows if they discern that you are not suited for monastic life or not a good fit for their particular community. This happens more often than you might think, and it is one of the most painful experiences a man can go through.

The Poverty Will Be Real and Sometimes Humiliating

The vow of poverty means you will own nothing and control nothing. Every possession belongs to the monastery. The clothing you wear, the cell you sleep in, the books you read, the tools you use for work, all of it belongs to the community. You will not have a personal bank account, credit card, or money of any kind. If you need something, you ask the abbot or the cellarer for permission. If someone gives you a gift, it goes to the community. If you inherit money from your family, it goes to the community. This radical poverty is meant to free you from attachment to material goods and to foster dependence on God and the community (CCC 2544). In practice, it means you will have no financial security outside the monastery. If you leave after twenty years, you will leave with nothing. No savings, no retirement fund, no possessions. Some monasteries provide a small transition stipend for men who leave, but many do not. The vow of poverty also involves humiliations that are hard to anticipate. You will wear a habit that may be old, patched, or ill-fitting. You will use donated items that are worn or outdated. You will live in buildings that are cold in winter and hot in summer because the monastery cannot afford better heating or cooling. You will eat simple, repetitive meals because the monastery is on a tight budget. If the monastery is struggling financially, you will feel the stress of not knowing whether bills will be paid or whether necessary repairs can be made. You may have to beg for donations or rely on the charity of benefactors in ways that feel undignified. The monastic tradition honors poverty as a way of identifying with Christ, who had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). However, the tradition also acknowledges that poverty involves real deprivation and suffering, not just spiritual symbolism.

Your Intellectual Life May Be Severely Limited

Many men enter monastic life with romantic ideas about spending their days reading theology, studying scripture, and engaging in deep intellectual work. The reality is that most of your time will be spent on manual labor, and your opportunities for study will be limited. Some monasteries have good libraries and allow time for reading and intellectual formation, especially during the novitiate and temporary vows. Others do not prioritize study and expect monks to focus primarily on prayer and work. Even in communities that value learning, you will not have the freedom to read whatever you want or to pursue whatever intellectual interests you have. The abbot may limit your access to certain books or topics. He may decide that you are spending too much time reading and not enough time on other aspects of monastic life. He may assign you to work that leaves you too exhausted to read or study. The Rule of Saint Benedict does include daily time for lectio divina, the slow, prayerful reading of scripture. However, lectio is not academic study; it is a form of prayer, and it requires a different approach than scholarly reading. If you are an intellectual who loves ideas, arguments, and analysis, you may find lectio frustrating or unsatisfying. You will also be largely cut off from the intellectual conversations and debates happening in the wider world. You will not attend conferences, publish articles, or engage with other scholars. You will not have regular access to the internet or to current books and journals. Your intellectual life will be small, bounded by the monastery’s library and the interests of your community. For some men, this is a welcome simplification. For others, it feels like a death of the mind. You need to be honest with yourself about how important intellectual work is to you and whether you can live without it. If your identity is deeply tied to being a scholar or a thinker, monastic life may be a very painful sacrifice.

Mental Health Struggles Will Be Intensified by the Life

If you have a history of depression, anxiety, trauma, or other mental health issues, monastic life will not cure you. In fact, the isolation, silence, and lack of external stimulation can intensify these struggles. The monastic tradition has a long history of dealing with what the Desert Fathers called acedia, a kind of spiritual sloth or restlessness that modern people might recognize as depression. The silence and solitude that are meant to lead you to God can also trap you with your own dark thoughts and feelings. You will not have the distractions and coping mechanisms you relied on in the world. You will not be able to numb yourself with entertainment, social media, alcohol, or busyness. You will have to face your pain directly, and this can be overwhelming. Some monasteries are good at providing support for mental health struggles. They may have access to therapists, spiritual directors trained in psychology, or a culture that is open to discussing emotional and mental health. Other monasteries are not equipped to handle these issues and may even view them as signs of spiritual weakness or lack of faith. If you are dismissed from a monastery because of mental health issues, it can be devastating. You may feel like you have failed God, failed yourself, and wasted years of your life. The reality is that not everyone is psychologically suited for monastic life, and this is not a moral failure. The life requires a certain level of emotional stability, resilience, and capacity for solitude that not everyone has. If you have significant mental health issues, you need to work with a therapist and a spiritual director before entering monastic life to assess whether you are capable of living it healthily. Entering a monastery will not fix your problems, and it may make them worse.

The Celibacy Is Permanent and the Loneliness Is Real

You will never have a romantic partner, never have sex, and never have children. This is obvious, but the emotional weight of it is harder than you think. The desire for intimacy, partnership, and physical affection does not disappear just because you make a vow of chastity. You will see men your age getting married and starting families. You will feel the pull of loneliness and the ache of human connection that is not being met. Some men enter monastic life with little interest in marriage or romance, and for them, celibacy is not a major sacrifice. For others, it is a daily struggle that persists throughout their lives. The Catholic Church teaches that celibacy is a gift that frees you to love God with an undivided heart (CCC 1579). This is true, but it does not erase the human need for intimacy. You will need to find healthy ways to meet your relational needs through friendships within the community, through spiritual direction, and through your relationship with God in prayer. However, these relationships do not fully replace the unique intimacy of a romantic partnership. You will also have to be vigilant about maintaining appropriate boundaries, because the need for connection can lead to unhealthy emotional dependencies or inappropriate relationships. Monasteries have rules about particular friendships, intense bonds between two monks that become exclusive and damaging to community life. Superiors watch for these dynamics and intervene when necessary, which can feel intrusive but is meant to protect both individuals and the community. The other reality is that some men enter monastic life to avoid dealing with their sexuality, and this does not work. If you are gay and entering the monastery to escape the question of your sexual orientation, you will not escape it. If you are attracted to men, you will be living in an all-male community, and you will have to learn to manage those attractions in a healthy, chaste way. If you have a pornography addiction or other sexual struggles, they will come with you into the monastery, and you will have to address them honestly with your spiritual director and confessor.

The Monastery’s Financial Health Will Determine Your Quality of Life

Your quality of life, your access to health care, and your security in old age will depend entirely on the financial health of your monastery. Some monasteries are large, well-established, and financially stable, with good health insurance, retirement provisions, and resources to care for elderly and infirm monks. Other monasteries are small, struggling, and barely able to meet their basic needs. Before you enter a monastery, you need to ask hard questions about finances. How does the monastery support itself? What kind of health insurance do monks have? What happens if you become seriously ill or disabled? How does the monastery care for elderly monks? Does the monastery have a retirement fund or plan? These questions may feel unspiritual or mercenary, but they are practical realities that will affect the rest of your life. Many monasteries support themselves through a combination of donations, income from guests and retreats, and the sale of goods they produce. However, all of these income streams are vulnerable to economic downturns, declining interest in religious life, and changing consumer habits. Some monasteries have had to sell property, merge with other communities, or close entirely because they could not sustain themselves financially. If your monastery closes or merges, you may be transferred to a different monastery with a different culture, different monks, and different circumstances, and you will have no control over this. The Catholic Church teaches that monasteries have a serious obligation to care for their members, but the Church does not provide funding or oversight to ensure this happens (CCC 2208). Each monastery is autonomous and responsible for its own financial well-being, and the level of security you have will depend entirely on how well your monastery manages its resources.

You Will Watch the Monastery Decline and You Cannot Stop It

Most monasteries in the Western world are shrinking and aging, and this trend shows no signs of reversing. You may enter a monastery with twenty or thirty monks and watch the number dwindle to ten or fifteen over the course of your lifetime. Younger men are not entering religious life in significant numbers, and the men who do enter often leave during formation. This means the monastery will become increasingly elderly, the workload will fall on fewer shoulders, and the vibrancy of community life will diminish. Ministries that the monastery has run for decades may have to close. Buildings may fall into disrepair because there is no one to maintain them. The energy and vitality of a larger community will give way to the reality of a small group of old men just trying to keep the place running. This can be deeply discouraging, especially if you entered hoping to be part of a thriving, growing community. You will grieve the loss of what the monastery once was, and you will worry about what will happen after you and your brothers are gone. Some men find meaning in being part of a faithful remnant, trusting that God will sustain the monastery or that it is acceptable for it to close when its time has come. Others struggle with a sense of futility and sadness. The decline of monastic life in the West is not your fault, and it is not something you can fix by working harder or praying more. It is a cultural and spiritual reality that is much larger than any individual monastery. However, you will live with the effects of it every day.

The Church’s Institutional Dysfunction Will Affect Your Life

Monasteries do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of the larger institutional Church, and they are affected by everything that happens in the wider Church. The clergy sexual abuse crisis, the financial mismanagement of dioceses, the ideological conflicts between progressive and traditionalist Catholics, and the declining credibility of Church leadership all affect monastic communities. You will read news stories about priests and bishops who have betrayed their vows and abused their power. You will see Catholics leaving the Church in droves. You will watch the Church struggle with internal conflicts and declining membership. All of this will raise questions for you about the institution you have given your life to. Some monasteries are more insulated from Church politics and dysfunction than others, but none are completely immune. Your monastery may be under the authority of a local bishop who is incompetent or problematic. Your monastery may depend on diocesan support or benefactors who are affected by the Church’s declining reputation. Your own sense of call and commitment may be shaken by the failures of Church leadership. The Catholic faith teaches that the Church is both human and divine, that it is capable of great holiness and great sin, and that God works through it despite its failures (CCC 827). However, living with this tension on a daily basis is harder than accepting it in theory. You will have to find a way to maintain your faith and your commitment to monastic life even when the institutional Church is a source of scandal and disappointment.

You May Be Ordained or You May Not and the Decision Is Not Yours

Many men enter monastic life with the expectation that they will be ordained to the priesthood, but ordination is not guaranteed. The abbot and the community will discern whether you should be ordained based on the needs of the monastery, your aptitude for priesthood, and their assessment of your vocation. Some monasteries ordain most of their monks. Others ordain very few, preferring to maintain a balance between priests and brothers. If you are not selected for ordination, you will live as a brother, sharing fully in the monastic life but not celebrating Mass or hearing confessions. For some men, this is a significant disappointment and source of grief. They entered the monastery expecting to be priests, and when that does not happen, they feel like they have lost something essential to their vocation. The Catholic tradition honors both priests and brothers as equal members of the monastic community, both living the same vows and following the same Rule. However, in practice, priests often have more status, more responsibilities, and more opportunities for ministry outside the monastery. Brothers can sometimes feel like second-class members of the community, even though this should not be the case. If you are deeply attached to the idea of being a priest, you need to be honest about that before entering monastic life. Priesthood and monastic life are two different vocations, and not all monks are called to be priests. If you cannot accept the possibility of remaining a brother, a diocesan or religious order priesthood may be a better fit for you than monastic life.

The Habit and Visibility Will Make You a Target

If your monastery wears a habit, you will be highly visible in public, and this comes with both blessings and burdens. Some people will treat you with respect and reverence. Others will mock you, ignore you, or treat you with hostility. You will be recognized everywhere you go, and you will not be able to blend in or have an anonymous moment. People will stop you to ask questions, to request prayers, to tell you their problems, or to argue with you about the Church. Some of these interactions will be meaningful and life-giving. Others will be exhausting and intrusive. The habit also carries a responsibility to represent the Church and your monastery well at all times. Your behavior in public reflects not only on you but on all monks and on the Catholic Church. If you are rude, impatient, or inappropriate, people will remember it and judge the Church accordingly. This means you will need to be constantly aware of how you present yourself, even when you are tired, stressed, or just trying to run an errand. Not all monasteries wear habits in public, and some have moved to simpler forms of dress or wear habits only within the monastery. If visibility and public attention are concerns for you, this is something to ask about when discerning which monastery to enter.

Leaving Will Be Traumatic No Matter When It Happens

If you discern at any point that monastic life is not your calling, leaving will be one of the hardest things you ever do. If you leave during formation before solemn vows, you will face the grief of a dream that did not work out, the practical challenge of rebuilding your life, and often the judgment or confusion of family, friends, and fellow Catholics. If you leave after solemn vows, the process is even more complex, requiring a formal dispensation from Rome, and you will carry the weight of having broken a permanent commitment. Men who leave monastic life often describe feeling like failures, even when they know intellectually that discerning out is valid. You will have to explain your decision repeatedly to people who ask what happened. You will have to figure out where to live, how to support yourself, and how to re-enter a world you have been separated from for years. If you gave away all your possessions when you entered, you will start from scratch with little or no money. Some monasteries provide transition support for men who leave, including temporary housing, job assistance, or a small financial stipend. Others provide nothing, and canon law does not require them to help. Men who leave after many years face additional challenges. They have no work history in the secular world, no credit history, no savings, and often no marketable skills outside monastic work. They may need to go back to school, retrain for a career, or take entry-level jobs despite being middle-aged. The social and emotional challenges are significant as well. Men who leave monastic life often feel disconnected from both the Catholic community and the secular world, struggling to find their place and rebuild their identity.

The Joy Is Real But It Coexists With Suffering

Despite all the difficulties and sacrifices, many monks find deep meaning and joy in monastic life. The joy comes not from the absence of hardship, but from the sense of living in alignment with a calling, from intimacy with God that grows through years of prayer, from bonds of brotherhood that develop over time, and from the satisfaction of a life lived simply and intentionally. The joy of monastic life is not superficial happiness; it is the deep joy of knowing you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to do, even when it is hard. The Catholic tradition is full of saints who lived lives of radical sacrifice and also spoke of joy. Saint Benedict himself wrote about monks who live in the monastery with persevering patience and who share through patience in the sufferings of Christ. The joy and the suffering are not mutually exclusive; they coexist, and both are essential parts of monastic life. You will have moments when prayer feels effortless and God’s presence is palpable. You will have days when the community feels like a true family and you are grateful for every sacrifice. You will see the fruit of your witness in the lives of guests who come to the monastery seeking God. These moments are real and worth paying attention to, because they will sustain you through the harder times. However, you need to enter monastic life with realistic expectations, not romantic notions that joy will be constant or that sacrifices will always feel worth it. There will be times when you question whether the trade-offs make sense, when you wonder if you could have served God just as well in another vocation, when you are tired and lonely and ready to quit. The men who persevere are not the ones who never struggle; they are the ones who keep choosing to stay even when it is hard, who keep showing up for prayer even when it feels dry, who keep loving their brothers even when it is difficult, and who trust that God is working even when they cannot see it.

You Need to Visit Multiple Monasteries Before You Commit

Before you commit to any monastery, you need to visit multiple communities and spend significant time with each one. Do not choose a monastery based on its website, its location, or its reputation. Visit for extended stays, participate in the daily life, observe how the monks interact with each other, and pay attention to the culture and atmosphere. Some monasteries are healthy, prayerful communities with good leadership and strong fraternity. Others are dysfunctional, marked by tension, poor leadership, and unhealthy dynamics. You will not be able to tell the difference without spending time there. Ask detailed questions about everything that matters to you. How strict is the enclosure? How much contact can you have with family? What kind of work will you be doing? How are decisions made in the community? How does the community handle conflict? What is the financial situation? What happens if you become ill or need to leave? A healthy monastery will welcome these questions and answer them honestly. A monastery that is evasive or defensive is not a place you want to commit your life to. Talk to monks at different stages of life. Do not just talk to the young monks in formation; talk to the men who have been there for twenty or thirty years. Ask them about the hardest parts of monastic life. Ask them what they wish they had known before entering. Their answers will tell you more than any brochure or recruitment talk. Pay attention to your own reactions during your visits. Do you feel at peace, or do you feel anxious? Do the monks seem genuinely happy, or do they seem tired and discouraged? Does the community feel like a place where you could grow in holiness, or does it feel oppressive? Trust your instincts, but also seek wise counsel from a spiritual director who knows you well and who is not invested in you choosing monastic life. The decision to enter a monastery is too significant to make quickly or without full information.