Recalled To Life

The following is a letter from my brother Jesse.

Dear Family and Friends,

I want first to thank all of you sincerely for all of your prayers, encouragement, and support, which has taken many forms, and at which I have always been amazed. I secondly want to declare my unworthiness of it, and now I want to tell you some big news. Big news for my own life anyway.

It is probably not hard to see the direction this email is going already, so I’ll tell you the conclusion first, and then try to explain how it came about as calmly and clearly as possible.

After much prayer, consultation of family and friends, and with the blessing of my spiritual director, I made the decision not to take solemn vows. As it happens, I will be coming home much sooner than I ever expected, but I think that it is best. Once I decided to leave, the decision was made to send me home as soon as possible, since it would be a great strain on me and the community if I were to remain. So, technically I am still bound to obedience to the prior, but he has given me permission to live out the last part of my simple vows at home, effectively as a layman. So I will be flying home this coming Monday, November 30th.

I know this is going to seem totally out of the blue to many of you, because even up to the past few weeks I have consciously endeavored to give every outward impression that my mind was made up and I was set in the monastery for good, no negotiations to be made.

So how did this happen? A few weeks ago I had a very serious conversation with the prior of the monastery(Fr. Cassian), in which he made it abundantly clear to me that my behavior had been disruptive, and I knew it was true, at least in regard to him. He recommended that I work on converting my life, and ask myself if I even want to. It was not long before I realized I did very much want to change my behavior for the better. I apologized to him and set about making an effort to be more respectful and to take better care of the responsibilities entrusted to me.

Then, the following question seemed to spontaneously arise in my heart: Do I even want to be here? Yes, I certainly want to be good, but do I actually desire to be a monk? I asked some people for advice, and took my spiritual director’s (Fr. Benedict) advice to ask permission for a retreat to think this over. I let Fr. Cassian know what my intentions for the retreat were, and he gave me permission.

Following his and my Dad’s advice, I met with Fr. Benedict before I left for retreat and tried to listen to what God had to say to me through him. I was surprised, and relieved, to hear him say that he wanted me seriously to consider whether I had a monastic vocation at all, and seriously to consider whether I had a vocation to marriage. This was based of course, on more than a year’s experience of meeting with me every week, and sometimes more frequently. I have been more transparent with him than with anyone else, and he pointed to several indications of my behavior, and events in my past, as to why he thought this was reasonable.

I fear I have made too good a show of being perfectly determined the monastic life is for me. At least some of you may have heard me say that I have had some really low times since I’ve been here, but looking back and being honest with myself, I can see that my prevailing sentiments have been anger, depression, and all around dissatisfaction. There have been spikes of happier times, and I believe I have grown a lot through many of the trials, but for the most part I have been on the unhappy side of things.

So on retreat I asked myself these questions: What were the real reasons I came? Were the prevailing reasons bad? If they were bad, should I now leave? Do I have reason to believe the monastic life could actually be bad for me, and that marriage might be better?

I believe I came mostly as a flight from the problems of daily life, which I was afraid I would never match up to. On top of that, my time here has shown me that even when I have tried very hard, the temptation to fall back into selfishness and retreating from others is all too easy to succumb to here. My personality hides easily behind silence and form, and there is an abundance of that in the monastery. I think there are objective things about this life that encourage in me selfish and stand-offish behavior, and that always leads to unhappiness. I think it reasonable to say that I would be a more loving man as a husband and father, and to grow in love is what I wish to seek most.

The way I am looking at this now is that the formation process of this monastery worked for me…my unhappiness which caused my at times unruly behavior, as well as other things more personal, were all indications that I did not have a monastic vocation. I leave this place with some painful goodbyes, but in the good graces of the monastery, and I would recommend it as a good place to go for anyone seeking God, and would mention it to anyone who thought they might have a monastic vocation.

Because of how quickly this ended up happening, I have not been able to contact many of you individually, as I would have liked. Please email me back with any questions you might have. It is my wholehearted intention and sincere desire to avoid causing any pain or misunderstanding or disappointment to anyone. It may be helpful to know that I am really excited about this next step in life, and am more on fire for God than I have been in a long time.

Please feel free to let everybody know about this who might wish to know. Also, my new email is jessebares@gmail.com, so please send any replies to that address.

Now that I have written a book for you, I will leave you with a memorable quote from one of my favorites, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I have made a few adjustments to it.

“Only one thing more, he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner…This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ‘Recalled to Life.’”

With all my heart,

Jesse Bares

I am incredibly happy to have my brother back and look forward to having him as a much more active part of Logan’s life as his Godfather than we would have been from overseas.