Inquiry Phases
1. Inquiry: Initial contact with the order. Conversations with members the order, getting an overall "feel" of what they're about as a group and who many of them are as individuals. Also, a truckload of literature to carry home. I was excited when the Brother vocation director gave me Fr. Jim Martin's My Life With the Saints, a book I had always wanted to read for the longest time.
2. Associates program: For guys seriously wanting to look into this way of life. It's not much different than the inquiry stage since you're still learning about them, except now you're invited to more exclusive "come and see" type events, and as interest gets more serious, may be assigned a spiritual director who "accompanies" you in trying to improve your prayer life, specifically as it relates to sorting through all the different feelings of the discernment process.
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Application Stages
3. Official application: Invitation to begin an official application may happen six months to a year (or even more) after first inquiry. This part tends to be more intense and exhaustive since it intends to qualify whether you would be a good fit for the order and also whether the order is a good fit for you. This part (done by most if not all orders) includes many personal interviews (some with members of the order, some with lay associates), psychological evaluations, physical/dental exams, criminal background checks, and request of official documents like school transcripts and sacramental (proof of baptism/confirmation) certificates. Yup, pretty intense. The portofolio that's gathered is then presented to a board of admissions that will decide whether to accept you, reject you, defer you, or accept you under certain conditions.
4. If accepted, you're invited to move into the novitiate class of the following August.
Every religious order (whether for men or women) has a different way of going about this process, but in general they tend to follow a similar sort of structure in helping candidates discern.
I have way too many feelings to sort through now because I find myself "stuck" between two religious communities, but I still think I made the right choice because I can't make a decision until I really get to know them better.
I'm worried I'll make the wrong choice (God supposedly has a "will" or "plan" for everyone, but what if I choose path A when God's will was path B?).
I have no idea what God's will is and won't presume to know (which is why I rather use the word attracted to religious life rather than literally called--which conjures up the image of someone literally calling me up on the phone), but I'm comforted by Saint Faustina's encouragement to boldly say "Jesus I trust in you."
At face value it may sound like one of those really banal sentiments on a cheesy prayer card in your grandmother's purse, but it makes me hope that no matter what steps I take, I'll eventually walk into (or most likely stumble into) whatever God had planned.
edit 9/7/09: After advice from close friends/mentors I plan to take this as slow as possible in examining all feelings and motivations behind this. The point in this discernment process is not for me to have a prestigious title like Brother or Father, but to be open to whatever God is calling me and see the good in EVERY vocation (which includes being a single or eloped lay person).
I feel like such an indecisive flake (is that redundant?). However, my 4+ years of indecision (senior year of high school and all of college) of whether or not I'm called/suitable for religious life have important reasons behind them which I promise to talk about soon.
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