“The monk may think he has come [to the monastery] to gain something for himself: peace, security, quiet, a life of prayer, or study, or teaching; but if his vocation is genuine, he finds that he has come not to take but to give–or, more accurately, to be shaped as an instrument of God’s action.”
Aelred Graham in The Monastic Way: Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living: A Book of Daily Readings, ed. by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 190.