At the beginning of the 3rd century, men withdrew to the desert to live a life wholly dedicated to the praise of God and intercession for the salvation of mankind.

​

Though times, cultures, kingdoms, and borders have changed, monastic life remains fundamentally the same throughout the centuries.

​

It is always the same call that God addresses to a heart, to a person.

​

As with Saint Anthony, the Father of Monks, and with Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen, founders of the Cistercian Order in the 11th century, it is Jesus who is the reason and the goal of the life of the 21st-century monk. In Latroun, in the Holy Land, the brothers live the same monastic life as their ever-present predecessors.