In order to live by the four vows, the monks answer the call of God by entering the ‘School for the Service of the Lord’. After a probationary period of five years, in which they can confirm and deepen their vocation, the future monks can bind themselves to the community forever through their solemn vows.
This does not mean that these vows guarantee the monks happiness as of that moment. Moments of unbelief, strife and powerlessness, despair, incomprehension or harrowing loneliness, where the monk can feel confined, fumbling in the dark, looking for the light, waiting for the morning, are not simply eliminated forever by the vows. In this extreme helplessness, the monks will however get to know God closely, and through darkness and desolation they will experience the onset of God’s Mercy, with which He creates all and everything.
Neither failure nor falling short can keep the monks from persevering in this endless attempt to get going again and to learn to live in the Presence of God and on the basis of that presence, and to experience it with deep gratitude.
