Supplier: Abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire
Ingredients: cane sugar, glucose syrup, natural flavors, citric acid. Natural coloring: anthocyanin. Gluten free
Net Weight: 150g
Made in France
Being a monk at Fleury abbey
The life of the monk is nothing other than a simple Christian life, it involves nothing more than another, so-called normal life: the monk eats, sleeps, prays and works; in fact, there are only two differences, community life and celibacy.
Monastic life is first of all the interior experience of life with God, and the monk is a reminder for man that there is in him a whole dimension of his being, his interior dimension, not to be forgotten and to bring to life.
One can define monastic life as the reaction of a certain type of temperament to the mystery of the absolute, the mystery of God. One could say that the monk is a person who strives with all his being to achieve the ultimate goal of his life by giving up all that is not necessary.
It is this exclusivity of the goal to be achieved in relation to any other secondary project, even legitimate, that distinguishes monastic life from any other.
The life of a monk is therefore to allow oneself to be transformed by God in order to live with him and of him; the central mystery of this life is the transfiguration, the Resurrection; to be like Christ.
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The root of the word monk is "Monos" Greek word meaning "one":
* he is "one" because he has only one goal: to see God and to live by him. Our lives are often split into a bunch of projects that scatter us. To achieve the only goal, the monk drives out anything that could distract him from this essential: seeing God.
* he is “one”, because he wishes to be “alone” with the only one; it was to be with him that he left everything, and that is the reason for his celibacy: not to be distracted from the one with whom he wishes to live. What the monk wants to avoid is having a divided heart, torn between two goals that he would find it difficult to make coexist in himself.
* he is "one" because he wants to be unified throughout his life. Now we know how quickly our heart is very quick to disperse, and that the surrounding world, far from unifying it, only pulls it in all directions. Therefore the monk chooses to live apart from the world to promote inner recollection and the gathering of all his powers. The first monks lived "in the desert", in Egypt, in the desert of Judah, in the desert regions of Syria or of Asia Minor; Today, monasteries are generally separate from the cities, "separated from the world" to promote this research, not to be far from men.
* he is "one", because he desires to be "one being with Christ". It is the desire to live what Christ invites us to do "may the love with which you loved me be in them and I in them".
