We are praying, praying all the better when we voice no prayer. We trust all the more strongly when we seem to doubt. We show our faith when we show our love, and he who needs no telling knows what we desire.

-St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Within the pages of this site we have tried to provide both an explanation and an experience of our life, a life that is both a sublime mystery, yet prosaically earthy and practical. Cistercian life is ordinary and simple, yet it is life abundant. As monks we do nothing more than strive to live out the common, christian, baptismal call to seek God, according to the nine-hundred year old cistercian tradition. We offer worship to God in a life that follows the Rule of St. Benedict. In an atmosphere of quiet and solitude, the community lives under its abbot. The monastery is traditionally called "a school of brotherly love" where everything is shared in common: heart, mind, burdens. We respond to the dialogue of voiced needs and concerns with the tools of good works, humility, mercy, and love. That is, we spend out lives learning how to truly love and be loved. Union then comes most fully in our personal love for Jesus Christ. It is in this love that the cistercian vocation blossoms into a life-long fruitfulness. To prefer nothing to Christ is, therefore, our purpose, our end, and our happiness.

We may call our body and soul the sides of this ladder, into which our divine vocation has fitted the various steps of humility and discipline as we ascend.

-St. Benedict's Rule 7:9