Still refused permission to enter the monastery by his parents, he began to frequent a neighboring family which consisted of a mother and her two daughters who lived a monastic form of life in their home, which they shared with an elderly priest, who then taught him about the Divine Office.

[2] At the age of fifteen, Manug finally received the permission he had long sought from his family and he entered the nearby monastery, where he was quickly ordained a deacon.

He began to seek out a source of true learning of the spiritual life, being taken to various monasteries by several traveling religious scholars who promised to teach him what he sought if he would serve them.

Finally, upon reaching Aleppo, he placed himself under the spiritual direction of a Jesuit priest, who gave him a letter of introduction to the Congregation of the Propaganda.

Malachia Ormanian, a conservative Armenian Apostolic scholar and Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote highly of Mkhitar Sebastatsi, calling him an "ecclesiastic of progressive and liberal views."

Such a line of conduct, which was in keeping with national interests...The cause for Mekhitar's beatification, which would normally have been able to start fifty years after his death was disrupted by the events of the invasion of Italy by the armies of Revolutionary France under Napoleon, in the course of which almost all monasteries were closed.