The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

by Rod Dreher

Benedictines view their work as an expression of love and stewardship of the community and as a way of reordering the natural world in harmony with God’s will. Remember that for the monk, everything is a gift from God and is meant to be treated as sacred. Every human thought and act is to be centered on and directed to God and to be united in Him and to Him. And we men and women are participants in God’s unfolding Creation, by ordering the world according to His will. Seen this way, labor takes on a new dimension. For the Christian, work has sacramental value. “Creation gives praise to God. We give praise to God through Creation, through the material world, and into our areas of work,” explained Father Martin Bernhard, thirty-two. “Any time we take something neutral, something material, and we make something out of it for the sake of giving glory to God, it becomes sacramental, it becomes a channel of grace.”