Many people have romantic or idealistic notions about monastic life that are untrue. The image of the monk as a workman is a reminder that monastic life is not an idyllic existence but rather something ordinary, obscure, and laborious. The same is true of the spiritual life in general. By taking the Gospel seriously, we are not joining a privileged elite that can afford to take life easy, relying on God’s grace to do everything. We are committing ourselves to the serious pursuit of self-knowledge, the practice of virtue, and the abandonment of all arrogance and laziness. This is hard work, as any know who have tried it. It is even harder to keep at it year after year, decade after decade, for a lifetime, but this is what the Lord asks of us. It is to such labor that we are called.
Michael Casey, OSCO
The Road to Eternal Life, pp. 53-54
