ABSTRACT

This essay [by the Right Reverend Bishop Kallistos Ware] examines the varied contributions to the wider church of Orthodox Christianity's three kinds of monastics: solitaries, those living in community, and those of the middle path (partly in community and partly solitary). Unlike western monastics, eastern monks never specialized in intellectual pursuits, instead supporting themselves by manual labor and dedicating themselves to prayer and spiritual struggle, a struggle whose benefits extend not only to each individual monk but to the whole body of the church. While monastics seek to live out their baptismal covenants in an ultimate commitment to God, monastic spirituality nonetheless represents the same Christian life to which all the baptized are called.

"Monks are the sinews and foundations of the church."

-St Theodore the Studite