The Meaning of the Monastic Life

By Louis Bouyer In this day and age, monks are rare and most monasteries are in ruins. Surely, then, the meaning of the “monastic life” is a moot point. But nothing could be further from the truth, as Louis Bouyer makes abundantly clear. Wherever and whenever there are Christians, there also is the germ of the monastic life. For the monastic vocation is in essence the vocation of the baptized taken “to the farthest limits of its irresistible demands.” In light of the “search for God” as the central meaning of a monk’s vocation, Bouyer studies the connections between the angelic and monastic lives; the paramount necessity of death to self and to the world for communion with God; the distinct relationships between the monk and the Persons of the Holy Trinity; and the concrete means by which one lives out the monastic vocation: prayer and penance, manual and intellectual labor, lectio divina and the Holy Mass—ora et labora. Monastic life is a search for God, for God such as he reveals hi