bedelaar 4

He remained some two years longer with his priest-uncle... 

who continued to have his doubts about him. 

While he was still trying to make up his mind, when Benedict was about eighteen, an epidemic fell upon the city, and uncle and nephew busied themselves in the service of the sick.

The division of labor was striking. While the uncle, as became a priest, took care of the souls and bodies of the people, Benedict went to and fro caring for the cattle. He cleaned their stalls and fed them. The chronicler tells the story as if, in spite of the epidemic, which had no fears for him, Benedict were by no means loth [afkerig] to exchange this life of a farm laborer for that of a student under his uncle's roof.

But a still greater change was pending. 

Among the last victims of the epidemic, was the uncle himself, and his death left Benedict without a home. But this did not seem to trouble him. Benedict was one of those who seldom show trouble about anything. He had already developed that peculiar craving to do without whatever he could, and now that Providence had deprived him of a home, he began to think that he might do without that as well. 

But what was he to do? How was he to live? At first he had thought that his natural aloofness [afstandelijkheid] from the ordinary ways of men, meant that he should be a monk. His family had put him off, but why should he not try again? He was older now, arrived at an age when young men ordinarily decide their vocations. This time, he said to himself, he would not be so easily prevented.

Benedict returned to his family with his mind made up. He loved his parents—we have later abundant evidence of that; natures like his have usually unfathomed depths of love within them which they cannot show. He would not go without their consent.

He asked, and again they refused. His mother first, and then all the rest of the household with her. But he held on in his resolution, till at length in despair they surrendered, and Benedict set off with a glad heart in the direction of La Trappe.

-

He arrived there only to be disappointed. 

The abbey at which he applied, had suffered much of late from the admission of candidates whose constitutions were unfitted for the rigor of the life. In consequence, the monks had passed a resolution to admit no more unless they were absolutely sound in body. 

Benedict did not come up to their requirements. He was under age, he was too delicate, he had no special recommendations. They would make no exception, especially so soon after the rule had been made. Benedict was sent away, and returned to his family, and all they said to him was: "We told you so."

Still he would not surrender. 

For a time, he went to live with another parish priest, a distant relative, that he might continue his studies, and above all perfect himself in Latin. 

But the craving to go away would not leave him. If the Trappists would not have him, perhaps the Carthusians would. At least he could try. Once more, he told his parents of his wish, and again, more than ever, they opposed him. They showed him how his first failure was a proof that he would fail again, how he was throwing away a certain future for a shadow, how those best able to judge were all against him, how with his exceptional education he might do so much good elsewhere. 

Still he would have his way, and one day, when he had won a consent from his parents that at least he might try, he went off to ask for admission among the Carthusians of Montreuil. But here again, he met with the same response. 

The monks were very kind, as Carthusians always are. They showed him every mark of affection, but they told him as well that he had no vocation for them. He was still too young to take up such a life, he had not done so much as a year of philosophy, he knew nothing of plain chant; without these he could not be admitted among them.

[ewtn]