I’ve heard personally from many people, even Catholics, who believe sincerely that monks live a kind of soft life and that their withdrawal from the world into the cloister of the monastery is a weakness and an evasion from responsibility. They are convinced these people have chosen the monastic life because they can’t handle the real world. And so, on and on it goes with similar convictions from good folks who just can’t fathom why anyone normal would choose to live in such a way.
What to say? Are there folks who have entered monastic life for the wrong reasons, and some who’ve done so in order to avoid life and all its responsibilities? No doubt, yes. But my own experience suggests this is the exception and not the rule. Today the psychological examination and interview process, to say nothing of the years long process of temporary vows before one is accepted as a professed member of a community pretty much weeds out the possibility of admission to a community on the part of the unhealthy and unbalanced.
Honestly, the monastery is no place for someone who suffers psychologically. The solitude and silence of the cloister, often romanticized in the minds of those who have not experienced either in any real way, is a testing crucible of the highest order. It is the loci within which the monk is seared internally, the timber of his self-constructed identity burnt away, revealing the truth of his being before God. Only from a distance can this seem romantic; it is not. It calls forth the very qualities we admire most in people: steadfastness, perseverance, the ability to suffer for a higher good, altruism, generosity, faith in the face of doubt, love, to say nothing of a reasonably healthy psyche.
Solitude is the place this happens, the monk hidden away from admiring eyes, looking within and beyond for the truth, for God. If solitude were such a vacation from life I would expect monastery’s like the Abbey of the Genesee and all the other Trappist monasteries in the U.S. would be turning away people for lack of space. That isn’t happening and honestly that’s because monasteries that really live the monastic life are the antithesis of Club-Med. They’re places were real people live a very real and demanding religious life.
Peace!