On March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, I return from Vespers to find a slip of paper with the corner turned up waiting for me in my mailbox. I flip it over and read: "I have reflected on my experience of the last few years living at New Melleray and prayed for the guidance of God. I believe that God is calling me to spend the rest of my life seeking him in this community. I therefore petition that I may be permitted to make Solemn Vows as a monk of New Melleray Abbey." The note was signed "Brother Stanislaus". Stanislaus is twenty eight years old on the day I am reading this note. How many young men his age, signed their names to pieces of paper today—passing inter-office memos, signing checks, concluding contracts? One hopes, in each case, the young man signing his name to a piece of paper will be rewarded by greater union with God and the fulfillment of his deepest potential as a human being. There is at least a chance it will. Bro. Stanislaus is leaving less to chance. With this note, Stanislaus sets in motion a mysterious process something like Jesus "turning his face toward Jerusalem." Jesus, turning his steps in the direction of Jerusalem, is fulfilling his mission from God. In his note, Stanislaus is likewise saying his very personal "yes" to taking up his own cross , uniting himself with Jesus, giving over his life to be transformed and glorified and made into something completely new. There is here the seed of a fulfillment and joy no human heart can imagine. But that transformation doesn't happen in a moment—and it doesn't happen in thin air. This mission is fulfilled by one whose feet are firmly planted on the earth. Stanislaus is not in heaven yet. So—the first thing that happens, now that he has submitted this note, is that I make an appointment with the abbot to review the protocol to be followed. This much is clear: His written petition will be read before the Abbot's private council who will discuss his readiness to make this final commitment as a monk. If the council approves his petition, then a date will be set for the community to vote on accepting him as a monk of our community for the rest of his life. A week before the vote is taken, I will share with the community, at Sunday Chapter, a final evaluation of Stanislaus' progress during the three years of his Juniorate formation. Based on this, and their own experience of living side by side with Bro. Stanislaus for almost six years, the community will make it's final decision. On the big day, an oak box is passed around into which each monk drops a ball, either a white one . . . or a black one. It is rare that a monk, on the point of making Solemn Vows, is "black-balled" and obliged to leave the monastery. By the time a man comes to a vote, he has lived in the monastery almost seven years. If his call was not at New Melleray Abbey, he would have been told before now. The vote is not usually very suspenseful. Rather, it is a kind of verification, a communal embrace—the community drawing to itself a new man we have lived with for seven years and come to love as a brother. As the white balls are counted, it is as though we were saying to him: "You are one of us. Now, you are ours. Your life is no longer your own. Your fate will be shared with us. Choosing to die with Christ, none of us is without him and none of us is without each other.

Father Raphael