I don’t mean for this to sound snotty or anything but what’s the point of a monk sitting in a monastery his whole life praying? How does that help the Church and other Christians? A parish priest’s work is visible, but as for a monk’s…? (Just curious here)
Well, for starters, we know that it was the monks who preserved the culture - to say nothing of copying and preserving the sacred texts - during the “Dark Ages”; this by itself is certainly a work which still bears much fruit. This illustrates that although the heart of the monastic’s life is prayer there is also the dimension of the more visible work he or she does within the confines of the monastery. E.G. they may write books, preserve rare manuscripts, make communion wafers, make liturgical vestments and art, etc., etc…, they do this in aid of the Church as a whole and to support themselves in their way of life.
But to look at your question further, you have to consider the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His ministry before His Death and Resurrection in order to gain a better understanding of the consistent witness of the Church to, first, the eremitical life, and then the monastic life.
Only Christ Jesus, since He is God and Man, was and is full of all the charisms of life that we could possibly imagine. In His graciousness He allows His brothers and sisters to reflect in their living of His way their own individual expressions of particular charisms. In Jesus’ life we see Him healing the sick, teaching, comforting the poor and the dying (the Good Thief), and praying to His Heavenly Father. So, among His brothers and sisters we see these same charisms reflected: some teach, some preach, some bring healing, some comfort the dying, etc., - all for the glory of God and the furtherance of His Kingdom; so, too, with prayer.
This dimension of the Christian life has far more power to it than most can possibly imagine - and, seemingly, begin to appreciate. When we speak of prayer we usually think of intercessory prayer, i.e., praying for ourselves, loved ones, and friends. Or we can speak of the prayers of praise and thanksgiving that reflect our debt to our Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is a deeper dimension to prayer, though, as we see in Scripture because there we are told that the Spirit Himself makes intercession within us. The Spirit “groans” with the hunger of love for the Body of Christ He is vivifying.
This hunger of love is what drew Christ to prayer, and continues to draw men and women throughout the ages to seek intimacy with God, offering their lives in an oblation of love to Him, so that the Kingdom of Christ will be seeded in the hearts of men and bear a fruitful harvest for the Master of the Harvest.
Some may think of this as a misguided use of one’s life. Why not go out into the world and bring it the knowledge of Christ in a very immediate way? Well, how necessary is the heart to the body? We have feet that can walk to foreign lands, hands that can touch and heal, mouths that can proclaim the Good News, but without a heart full of love all the functions of these parts will be misused. If the heart is not even beating then these parts are useless. So it is with the Body of Christ: some are the feet, some are the mouth, some are the hands - and some, the heart. This is monasticism. It is the heart of the Mystical Body of Christ, His Church. The zeal for Christ and the coming of His Kingdom burns brightly in these monastic “furnaces” of prayer. The power of this prayer made in union with Christ reverberates through the whole Body.
The analogy of the body and the heart pumping blood to the various members enabling them to do their jobs and do them well is a very apt one for the monastic life of the Church. We cannot make the erroneous assumption that because some “work” - namely, the functioning of the heart - is not seen (by the unaided eye), that it therefore is of little or no use to the rest of the body. The same can be said of the function of the brain - wasn’t it the Egyptians who discarded the brain during the mummification of corpses because they didn’t see the use for it? If we look, though, at an EKG or EEG, or an X-ray, or do open-heart surgery, we can see very well the functions of these organs, though we may not understand them completely.
The same, again, is true of the man or woman who enters a monastery or is called to the life of a hermit. To the busy, work-oriented world (including the world of the Christianity) they may appear to be foggy-minded dreamers, at best, or lazy louts, at worst; but what are they to the “X-ray vision” of God? The Church recognizes that the prayer of these monastics and hermits is what gives power to the rest of the Body of Christ to function. Just as our work for the Lord must be formed and informed by prayer, so it is the whole Body; those who pray assist those who work in more visible ways. It is in their intercession before the Throne of God joined as it is to the one intercession of Christ - be it in the dim-list cloister or on some solitary mountain - that sends the power of the Holy Spirit surging through the rest of the Body enabling it to do its work. Prayer IS their work.
It can help us appreciate the Church’s understanding of this to remember that along with St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary to the Far East, St. Therese of Lisieux (the most recent Doctor of the Church!), the young Discalced Carmelite nun who died in her twenties, is the co-patron of the missionaries. The Church recognized that her work in her monastery was just as important as the more visible and more adventurous St. Francis. (What, though, is more adventurous than seeking the depths of God’s presence by grace in one’s soul?) St. Therese experienced a longing to be everything for Christ: a missionary, a martyr suffering all the martyrdoms of the Saints, a prophet, a Doctor of the Church (!) - even a priest; but all these desires were caught up in her sudden recognition that “in the heart of my the Church, who is my mother, I WILL BE LOVE!”
A number of years ago a popular Catholic magazine published an article relating interviews with men and women of various monastic Orders reflecting on their lives. Most striking was the interview with a young monk who admitted he was quite humbled by the fact that the only thing the Lord found him capable of doing was praying. This is the witness of a Saint-in-the-making!
Any work done for the Lord must BE His work, what He has called us to do (to be!). We may all want to be great missionaries (we must all at least desire the furtherance of God’s Kingdom), but if the Lord has something else in mind, we must be willing to drop all for Him, even if it means putting away great ambitions of service and hoeing a very little row in a monastery in some backwater town in France.
