PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

There is a certain grace hidden in the work of one’s hands. The monk who labors daily with simple tasks discovers that manual work is not a distraction from prayer but a bridge into it. The hands become the teachers of the heart. They guide the mind down from the restless heights of abstraction and return it to the concrete world that God Himself called good. The Desert Fathers understood this deeply. Abba Anthony said, “A monk should always have some kind of handiwork, so th