When silence meets the soil: monasticism and environmental stewardship

For more than fifteen centuries, Benedictine and other monastic communities have shaped landscapes, preserved forests, and cultivated agricultural traditions across Europe and beyond. Their approach to land was never an afterthought to prayer; rather, prayer and cultivation were understood as one continuous act of attentiveness. In Australia, where vast distances separate urban centres like Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, and where environmental pressures include prolonged drought and the slow devastation of the Great Barrier Reef, the monastic witness offers a quietly radical counterpoint to a culture of consumption. Learn more about As Recordações E Memórias Orais Das Festas Antigas.

The rhythms of the monastic day — Vigils at dawn, work after Mass, midday rest, Vespers at dusk — were designed to mirror the seasons of the earth. When a monk knelt to weed a row of cabbages, he was expected to do so with the same reverence he brought to the Divine Office. This embodied theology has modern echoes among Australian landcare groups, weekend farmers' markets in Adelaide, and the increasing number of urban households composting their kitchen scraps. The soil, the seasons, and the soul were never separate domains.

Aspect Monastic approach Secular environmentalism
Time horizon Generational; the abbot plans for successors Often tied to electoral or media cycles
Daily rhythm Fixed hours of work and prayer woven together Work and activism separated by commute
View of land Held in trust, cultivated with care Managed as resource, conserved as policy
Source of motivation Love of God expressed in love of neighbour and place Ethics, science, legal obligation
Economic assumption Sufficiency over growth Growth tempered by regulation

Echoes from the desert and the cloister

The earliest monks of the Egyptian desert, figures such as Antony and Pachomius, fled cities not only to escape corruption but to enter directly into the lifeblood of creation. Their cells were often little more than rock shelters in wadis where birds nested and lizards darted among the stones. This proximity to uncultivated land taught them that humanity was a tenant, not an owner, of the earth. The tradition carried forward into Benedictine foundations where monks became foresters, beekeepers, and millers, holding lands in trust across generations.

When the oral memories of old village festivals in Latin America preserved the names of patron saints of particular crops and weather patterns, communities were recalling a worldview in which feast days and harvest seasons were inseparable. Such remembrances of old festivals reflect the same instinct that drew medieval monks to record the flowering times of their orchards and the first frost of each winter. Memory, in both cases, was a form of ecological stewardship.

The Rule as an environmental charter

Few readers of the Rule of St. Benedict realise how much of its counsel touches the natural world. The abbot is exhorted to treat even the monastery's tools as if they were sacred vessels of the altar, never leaving them lying about carelessly. The cellarer is told to regard the community's goods as if they belonged to every member of the household. These instructions, written in sixth-century Italy, anticipated by centuries the discipline now visible in Australian household recycling programs and the strict requirements of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999.

The chapter on the daily horarium assigns specific hours for manual labour, including agricultural work, when weather permits. Monks were expected to rise for Vigils regardless of the season, then return to bed briefly, then eat, then work the fields — a structure that aligned the body's needs with the earth's productivity. In this scheme, land was neither exploited nor romanticised; it was simply honoured as the place where human effort met divine providence. Even the monastery's silence was an environmental act, for it slowed the rush of words and allowed space for the slow voices of wind, water, and birdsong.

Working the earth in the Australian context

Australia presents a particular setting for this conversation. The country stretches across climate zones from the tropical north near Darwin to the temperate south of Hobart, and its people have learned through long experience that land cannot be taken for granted. The catastrophic bushfires of 2019 and 2020 burned more than 46 million acres across New South Wales and Victoria, displacing wildlife and reminding urban dwellers in Brisbane and Canberra that the land they lived on was alive, vulnerable, and in need of constant care.

Monastic communities in Australia, though few, model practices that resonate with this reality. Some sisters cultivate drought-tolerant gardens of native grasses and grevilleas; others tend small orchards of heritage apple varieties, pruned according to lunar cycles that farmers' market growers in Perth and Adelaide have also begun to revive. The Olivetan tradition, to which the community at Plaisance belongs, places particular emphasis on the monastery as a working farm, where olive oil, honey, and preserves produced by the monks recall the agricultural origins of the order in Italy. A visit to the monastery's news page often shows photos of these ongoing projects.

Several practical commitments characterise such communities:

These habits echo a passage in the Rule that describes how all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, and the same spirit of hospitality extends to the land itself.

Liturgical seasons and the rhythm of the year

The Liturgy of the Hours, prayed in choir throughout the monastic day, follows the turning of the year more closely than most people realise. Advent falls in the southern hemisphere's spring, transforming the anticipation of light into a season of blossoms and lengthening days. Lent coincides with autumn, when leaves fall and the harvest is gathered in. Easter arrives at the threshold of winter, a strange and hopeful announcement of life in the midst of darkness.

This liturgical geography connects monks in Louisiana, Australia, or anywhere else to the same cosmic calendar. Australians marking the Feast of St. Brigid in early February, or celebrating the Assumption in midsummer, are joining a worldwide community attuned to the pulse of creation. The blessing of the fields on Rogation Days, the harvest thanksgiving in autumn, and the blessing of seeds before planting all carry an environmental dimension often overlooked in secular culture. Even ancient systems that sought to align human decisions with natural cycles, such as those described in guides to Chinese horoscope guidance, share something of this instinct for harmony with the turning year.

Monastic gardens themselves become small liturgies. A herb bed laid out in the shape of a cross, a vineyard planted in rows aligned to the rising sun, a beehive named for the psalm that speaks of the honeycomb — these are not whimsical gestures but embodied theology. They remind the monk that every act of cultivation is also an act of prayer, and that every prayer is also a commitment to care for the soil beneath the chapel floor.

Modern tensions in a land of plenty

Australia is a wealthy country with one of the highest per-capita ecological footprints in the world. The average household generates around 1.5 tonnes of waste per year, and the demand for rare minerals, beef, and exported resources places constant pressure on remote ecosystems. Recycling rates have improved over the last decade, but landfill remains a stubborn reality in regional centres like Wagga Wagga and Mount Isa.

Within this context, the monastic witness can sound either quaint or prophetic. To a Brisbane commuter sipping a flat white from a single-use cup, the idea of a monk rising at 3 a.m. to milk a goat may seem impossibly distant. Yet the same commuter may find, on a quiet weekend retreat, that the rhythm of work and prayer draws them back to a forgotten centre. Some Australians find this rhythm in surf culture, where long paddles and patient waiting for waves teach a kind of attentiveness not unlike the monastic horarium. Others find it in bushwalking, permaculture workshops, or the slow food movement.

It is worth noting that systems of chance have always fascinated human beings, and the urge to find order within chaos has a long history. Some curious readers have explored how an RTP slot machine works only to discover that outcomes are settled in advance and then delivered in irregular rhythms. Others have looked into the mechanics of roulette systems and found a similar lesson: the wheel turns, the ball falls where it falls, and the wise player learns to walk away. The monastic response to such unpredictability is not to chase it, but to accept it as part of a larger order — one in which rain falls on the just and the unjust, and seasons turn regardless of human wishes.

Education, hospitality, and the next generation

A monastery that closes its gates becomes a museum. One that opens them becomes a school. The community at Plaisance, like other Benedictine houses, welcomes retreatants, school groups, and visitors who come for prayer, confession, or simply quiet. In doing so, it shares not only its chapels but also its gardens, its orchards, and the patient work of bees among the rosemary hedges.

Schools visiting monasteries in Australia often come from Catholic primary schools in Melbourne, Sydney, and regional dioceses. They learn how olives become oil, how honey is harvested, how compost transforms kitchen scraps into dark, fragrant soil. These lessons are quietly revolutionary, for they teach children that food comes from somewhere, that waste has consequences, and that care for creation is not an optional extra to faith. The same children may later join Clean Up Australia Day, support Landcare Australia, or vote for policies that protect wilderness.

Visitors to a working monastery can participate in several ways:

For those drawn to a deeper commitment, the path of the oblate offers a way to live the monastic spirit within ordinary family and work life. Oblates seek to attend daily consultations of Holy Scripture, pray parts of the Liturgy of the Hours as they can, and support their monastery with presence and generosity. In a nation as vast and varied as Australia, this scattered community of oblates forms a kind of distributed garden, each member cultivating their own small patch of earth with attention and gratitude.

If you feel called to support the work of Mother of the Redeemer Monastery — whether through prayer, donation, or visiting the community in Plaisance — we invite you to explore the rest of our website and consider joining us in this quiet labour of love.