When she is to be received she promises before all in the oratorystability,fidelity to monastic life and obedience.This promise she shall make before God and His Saints,so that if she should ever act otherwise,she may know that she will be condemned by Him whom she mocks.Of this promise of hers let her draw up a documentin the name of the Saints whose relics are there and of the Abbess who is present. Let her write this document with her own hand; or if she is illiterate, let another write it at her request, and let the novice put her mark to it. Then let her place it with her own hand upon the altar; and when she has placed it there, let the novice at once intone this verse:"Receive me, O Lord, according to Your word, and I shall live:and let me not be confounded in my hope" (Ps. 118[119]:116). Let the whole community answer this verse three times and add the "Glory be to the Father." Then let the novice prostrate herself at each one's feet, that they may pray for her. And from that day forward let her be counted as one of the community. If she has any property, let her either give it beforehand to the pooror by solemn donation bestow it on the monastery, reserving nothing at all for herself, as indeed she knows that from that day forward she will no longer have power even over her own body.At once, therefore, in the oratory,let her be divested of her own clothes which she is wearing and dressed in the clothes of the monastery.But let the clothes of which she was divested be put aside in the wardrobe and kept there.Then if she should ever listen to the persuasions of the deviland decide to leave the monastery (which God forbid), she may be divested of the monastic clothes and cast out. Her document, however, which the Abbess has taken from the altar, shall not be returned to her, but shall be kept in the monastery.

"Receive me, O Lord, according to Your word, and I shall live: and let me not be confounded in my hope"

"Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope," is how the New Revised Standard Version translates the same verse.

Last evening I prayed - fitfully it is true, but earnestly as well - that I might die.

This Easter morning I am urged to live and to live with hope and confidence in God.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word.