Information for candidates to the monastic life.

At present there are three monasteries in Poland, and from 1 September 2003 Benedictin's fundation  on the Slovakia:

The Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec
Ul. Benedyktynska 37, 30-375 Krakow,
Tel. +48/12/267 59 77, 267 55 26
Fax. +48/12/268 08 01
e-mail: tyniec@benedyktyni.pl
internet: tyniec.benedyktyni.pl

The Benedictine Monastery in Lubin
Ul. Mickiewicza 6, Lubin
64-010 Krzywin,
Tel: +48/65/5170222
Fax: +48/65/5170425
e-mail: lubin@benedyktyni.pl
internet: lubin.benedyktyni.pl

The Monastery of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biskupów,
Biskupów 72, 48-355 Burgrabice,
Tel/fax: +48/77/439 82 06
e-mail: biskupów@benedyktyni.pl 
internet: biskupow.benedyktyni.pl

Benediktínsky kláštor
Dom sv. Benedikta
Barúcov 28, 961-61, Slovakia
Tel.: (00421) 45/538 7425,
         (00421) 915/800 124
e-mail: benediktini@stonline.sk 
internet: tyniec.benedyktyni.pl/sk/

A candidate to the monastic life comes to the monastery as a guest before entering it, in order to become acquainted with the life of a particular community. After initial discussions and approximately a two week stay in the monastery, a date for entering which is individual for every person is decided upon during a talk with the abbot and the monk in charge of novices. 

Upon entering the monastery the candidate begins a six months postulation period. Following this he takes the habit and begins a canonical novitiate lasting a year. If his vocation is confirmed then after half a year he takes his vows temporarily for one year, which he renews twice in the following years. 
After five years from the beginning of his postulation, if he shows he is sufficiently prepared he can take his perpetual vows . 
He then pledges God constancy (stabilitas), monastic customs (conversatio morum) and obedience (oboedientia) according to the Rule.

In order to be accepted as a postulant it is necessary to be not less than 18 years of age. The following documents are necessary:

1. An application,
2. A curriculum vitae (CV) written by hand,
3. A certificate of baptism and confirmation,
4. A certificate of matriculation and religious instruction,
5. A Health certificate,
6. A reference from a Parish Priest, 
7. Two photographs of identity

Benedictines are monks living according to the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia written in the first half of the sixth century. It was one of many Rules which the monastic movement of the time, which was widespread especially in the eastern part of the Meditarranean Sea adhered to. 

St. Benedict by a stroke of genius transferred the spiritual capital of this movement to a land of the western cultural tradition. From the beginning of the VII century the Rule became universal in the western Church. Up to the XII no other monastic orders existed, so that the designation ‘benedictines’ only arose in the XVI century. 

General information about Benedictine order may be found at:
http://www.benedyktyni.pl/english

ST. BENEDICT OF NURSIA ( c. 480-547)

St. Benedict, the Patriarch of western Monks and the main patron of Europe was born in Nursia (today’s Norcia in Umbria, Italy) into a noble family in about 480. Not much written testimony about his personage has survived. The basic source that enables his spiritual profile to be read is the famous Rule, written by him in the monastery of Monte Cassino, which he founded, and his biography, dating from the end of the VI century, written by the Pope St. Gregory the Great, and contained in the second book of his Dialogues. 

The age in which Benedict happened to live, was a time of great crisis for the ancient culture of the western Roman empire, destroyed to a large extent by the invasions of tribes from the north and east. St. Benedict, as St. Gregory writes about him, was sent to study in Rome as a young man. However, seeing the demoralization and intellectual decline, he ran away from his studies with the idea of a monastic life. He first dwelt as a hermit in the in the region of Subiaco in central Italy. Then he became the superior of a nearby convent in Vicocaro, from which; when some of the community rebelled against him - he departed with a group of followers loyal to him, to found his own monastery. After many difficulties he set foot on Monte Cassino. The Rule, which St. Benedict wrote shortly before his death (he died probably on 21 March 547), was the fruit of research over many years. He borrowed freely from the spiritual capital of the whole monastic movement up to his time, skillfully composing and modifying the worked out rules and principles, to make them conform to his vision of man, and of the way in which he attains a deeper understanding of God and of the spiritual force of love. It was a vision - as was to become clear later - far ahead of the time frame, in which it was given to St. Benedict himself to live.

You can read more about St. Benedict on page http://www.benedyktyni.pl/english/benedykt.htm

SPIRITUALITY

In the times of St. Benedict the monastic movement was already very developed in the whole eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in Egypt and Syria. It was characterized by a symptomatic ‘withdrawal’ from civilization as if to its boundaries- deserts, uninhabited areas, free of troublesome administrative arrangements. Monks enjoyed great freedom to organize themselves here and to choose from a variety of different forms of life – from vast monasteries, like the five thousand strong community of St. Pachomius - to the spectacular achievements of individual hermits. In times when antiquity was already formally Christian, but still carried much of the former pagan mentality within its bosom, the confines of civilization became suitable territory, in which the burning fervour of the early Church found ideal conditions for spiritual development. Almost all the outstanding figures of the Church and the theologians of the time passed through monastic life.

At this time in the West, the situation was already however completely different- here the presence of warlike tribes had to be taken into account. The building of a monastery in these conditions was a serious risk.

The Rule was not a collection of legal ‘paragraphs’, prescriptions for life. Excellent with respect to the organisation of the monastery from without, it opened it up to the mystery of Christ present in each individual and the community, in the Holy Office, that was celebrated (the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the hour), work and individual study of the Holy Scripture (lectio divina).

A monastery organised, thus did not become a closed, elitist world. It became almost a miniature Church, which for the first Christians was never merely a ‘community of the baptized’ but primarily a reliable school of initiation under the leadership of the Supreme Shepherd himself. 

St. Benedict described the monastery as a ‘school for the service of God’. He developed the various elements in such a way, as to enable a monk faithfully adhering to the rules laid down by him: to get to know himself, to develop the grace received at baptism and to find the presence of Christ in the community, participating with full consciousness in His Pascal Mystery, extended into the sacraments and the liturgy. Faithfulness to the Rule inevitably leads to a true meeting with Christ as the Master, King and High Priest.

The fundamental task of a monk was always - as the Rule states - ‘a search for God’ and for unity with Him. This individual dimension of openness to the grace of God and of life in obedience to the will of God, was written by God himself into a greater work the history of the Church, culture and civilization. 
Hence every true monk was always according to the fullest meaning of the word a man of the Church, even when living the solitary life of a hermit. A Benedictine Monastery led a communal life (cenobite) moulding also those who wished to go into the desert already formed and fairly strong, in order to combat evil individually. It created a very universal form of monastic life into which people of widely varying temperaments and ways of life could fit. At the same time this very characteristic of a ‘miniature Church’ was instrumental in deciding about the special relationship between the monastery and the world. 

The community of monks was not directed ‘outwards’ to necessary work in the Church or in the world, but ‘inwards’, to display the supernatural nature of the Church itself in given social and historical conditions, to be its clear sign and to help people buried in the realities of their times, to find it again. 
The assignment of Benedictine monks has become not it can be said – ‘to go into the world’, but ‘to live in’ a monastery in such a way - that the world might come to it, so that that in the course of meeting the Benedictine community it might itself discover the ways of God. All activities, likewise pastoral, undertaken by benedictine communities were always subordinated to this general way of thinking and conduct. 

In Poland the Benedictines appeared in the Xth century as missionaries. One of them was St. Adalbert (Wojciech). The first monasteries were founded in the XI century. From that time Benedictine life developed in Poland, until the partitions, when all the monasteries were closed. After the First World War the monastries in Lubin (1924) and in Tyniec (1939) were restored.