In the monastic tradition, hospitality and peacemaking have long been cellmates. Back in the sixth century, St. Benedict specified in his Rule, seminal to Christian monasticism, that “as soon as a guest is announced, let the Superior or the brethren meet him (sic) with all charitable service. And first of all let them pray together, and then exchange the kiss of peace.” Welcome, prayer, peace: the paradigmatic Benedictine progression.
History credits monasteries for carrying classical thought, art and culture through the violent, chaotic years following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Internally ordered and disciplined, these communities of scholars, craftspeople and scribes reproduced ancient texts, preserving them in Europe’s largest libraries. Without these committed centres of learning, an irreparable rupture in the inheritance of knowledge would have left the West intellectually impoverished, perhaps permanently.
Universities eventually replaced abbeys as bastions of scholarship, education and archival activity. Monasteries went on to shrink in number, influence and strength. Irish monks may well have saved civilization in the early Middle Ages, as scholar Thomas Cahill argued in his 1995 book, but no one’s writing books to contend that they’re still doing so.
I offer not yet a book, but this article in support of that idea. I’ve come to think that monasteries, and their contemporary offshoots, retreat houses, in fact are working on a civilizational scale—not in the traffic of the intellect, but rather in the realm of spiritual experience. As places that preserve silence, reflection, patience and compassion—all essential ingredients for peace—they may well, anonymously, be pulling us through these latter-day Dark Ages.
Iconic modern monastic Thomas Merton hints at this when he writes, “St. Benedict’s true contribution to European civilization is not that his monks were pioneers and builders and scholars and guardians of the classical tradition. These were only insignificant by-products.” More importantly, Benedictine monasteries “kept alive the central warmth of peace and unity among men (sic) in a world that seemed to be wrestling with the ice of death.”¹
Even with the steady rise in global temperatures (2024 was the first year to reach the notorious average of 1.5 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels—bad news, say climatologists), our world seems very much to be “wrestling with the ice of death.” This makes the warmth of peace all the more crucial to our social survival. For those with eyes to see and skin to feel, pockets of such warmth can be found in activist circles, artistic communities, charitable organizations, churches. They are perhaps most consciously tended in monasteries and retreat houses.
As intentional repositories of welcome, prayer and peace, these places safeguard the conditions for genuine spiritual experience. People here enter spaciousness and silence to explore who they are and what they truly believe. Of course, the sacred concentrates itself no more in these areas than elsewhere; they do, however, make it their explicit work to offer hospitality to the searching, thirsty, yearning parts of us that intuit livelier solid ground beneath the deadening daily grind.
For a decade in a renowned retreat house, I gave spiritual direction to scores of retreatants from seemingly opposites ends of the religious spectrum. Parishioners faithful to their congregation’s liturgical worship would supplement this communal form of prayer with annual retreats conducted in stillness and interiority. On the other hand, many people stultified by institutional religion’s constraints would retreat to the nakedness of presence alive in a group of strangers knit together by a shared, open solitude stronger than creeds and dogmas. Both sets of guests, the classic Christian and the recovering Christian (plus a multitude outside either camp), found welcome and comfort at the retreat house.
Scions of Benedictine hospitality, retreat centres grew out of the monastic ministry of keeping guest houses accessible to lay people. Not called to perpetual reclusion, guests would benefit from inhabiting briefly the irenic pace and prayerfulness endemic to the monastery. Daunted, if not downtrodden, by the unique modern blend of corrosives—alienation from nature; social isolation; addictive technology; political polarization; widening economic inequality, to name a few—people need the refuge of retreat houses today just as much as scholars needed monastery libraries in the Middle Ages. At the very same time, in direct opposition to this need, Christian retreat houses continue to be shuttered.
This gives mutuality to the necessity. We all, albeit unbeknownst to most, would greatly benefit from retreating into the fostered quiet of monasteries and retreat houses. The latter, for their part, can’t survive without retreatants. The tranquility these places cultivate lives in the community, even if ephemeral, of seekers who welcome each other into an uncommon communion constructed out of practiced prayerfulness, not to be confused with stiff piety. Please consider going on retreat for the sake of lasting peace.
¹Thomas Merton, The Waters of Siloe, Garden City Books, 1951, p. 6
