The monks live together in the Monastery. As a community they eat and sleep, pray and work, play and die together. More than just a home, the Monastery is like a School and the Church.
The Monastery is a School for the Lord's Service. Here the monks learn how to serve the Lord and practice doing so. The teacher is the Abbot. The textbooks are the Gospels and the Rule of Saint Benedict. Oddly, the program is not utilitarian. Rather, the real task is, as Jesus told us, to love God and to love the brother. This manifests itself in two primary ways: prayer and work. Prayer permeates the daily routine, occurring five times and totally some three hours. Work makes monks look like laborers, artisans, teachers, or scholars. Through these human pursuits the monks are not so much practicing a craft as they are serving God. Indeed, the ordinary tasks of prayer and work present numerous opportunities for Christian charity. By doing the ordinary well, the monks glorify God.
The Monastery is like the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. The head, Christ, is represented by the Abbot. In a sense the Abbot, the father, adopts the brethren as his children. Together, they form one body, a family of sorts, united in the common endeavor of seeking God. The Monastery is no mere human construct, but rather an institution infused with divine life.