Thao Begins the Novitiate

Dear Thao,
Today is a momentous day.  Like the Israelites standing at the threshold of the promised land, you hear these words addressed to you:
“Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.” (Deut 8:2)
You stand on the threshold of a new phase of life, having traveled a long way to reach this point – though it has not been quite forty years, it might feel like that!  Now is the time to remember that it was the Lord who brought you here, who sustained you on your way, and who calls you onward.  

You have been knocking on the monastery door since the age of 21, unswerving in your desire for a life given to God.  Over these past two years, your spirit has been tested, to see if you truly seek God (RB 58.2,7) – tested, not by deliberate attempts to try you, but by trying circumstances which come to all of us in life, whether physical, emotional, relational, legal, or practical.  It may be the “great and terrible wilderness” of an unfamiliar place, unfamiliar people, and personal discombobulation, or the “poisonous snakes and scorpions” of thoughts, worries, doubts, and temptations (Deut 8:15).  Moses says: “The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years” (Deut 8:4).  On the contrary, for most of us, by the end of the postulancy our clothing was threadbare, our shoes were done for, and our hair was, well, as one of my fellow-novices put it, “just waiting to be covered.”  Our patience may be wearing thin too.  St Benedict reminds us that an essential element of the novitiate is to be “thoroughly tested in patience” (RB 58.11) – that patience which draws us into intimacy with the one we seek, by giving us a “share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom” (RB Prol. 50).

In all this, you have stood firm in your resolve.  You have persevered through thick and thin.  Now is the time to remember how the Lord brought you to this point, and how he will continue to lead you:
“He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut 8:3)
The Lord is sustaining you with unfamiliar food, and not with all that you relied on in the world.  In his Body and Blood, he gives you himself to live on.  He is teaching you that you can rely on him, live on him, thrive on him, that you need no other source of sustenance.

Now is the time to remember where you are going, your goal and destination:
“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing.” (Deut 8:7-9)
This fruitful land stands for yourself: having driven out all forces of darkness, its natural beauty springs forth.  This is a good land.  As in the garden of Eden, the water comes up from an underground source, so that even without rain, there is ongoing nourishment.

Guerric of Igny has a wonderful sermon on trust in God, in which he offers encouragement to a novice in distress:
“Whoever puts his trust in the Lord inserts himself into him.  The tree drinks in the sap of life and the waters of fertility from wherever its roots have penetrated. … O Lord, open the eyes of this child – I tell you he is inexperienced and a novice – who whenever he is afflicted thinks that he is abandoned. … O Lord, I pray you, open the eyes of this child that he may see that those who are with us are more numerous than those who are with our adversaries. … Because he has sent the roots of his heart into the stream of love, he will not fear when the heat of anger and distress comes, and in time of drought, when for a long time the heavens are closed and neither the dew nor the showers of grace have fallen on him, he will not be anxious as if God had forsaken him.  He knows by experience that he is planted in faith, rooted in charity by the waters of life.”
(Guerric of Igny, Second Sermon for St Benedict)

In your ongoing journey, may your roots plunge deep to feed on unfamiliar food, the hidden spring of grace, so that your land may be fruitful.  You have chosen to receive as your religious name your baptismal name, Thérèse, with the addition of the name of Mary, keeping these two as silent companions to your given name, Thao.  And so, Sister Mary Thérèse Thao – Sister Thao for every day – I invite you to be clothed as a novice.