Monks live in service, and to think like a monk ultimately means to serve. The Monastic Way quotes Benedictine monk Dom Aelred Graham as saying, “The monk may think he has come [to the monastery] to gain something for himself: peace, security, quiet, a life of prayer, or study, or teaching; but if his vocation is genuine, he finds that he has come not to take but to give.” We seek to leave a place cleaner than we found it, people happier than we found them, the world better than we found it.
