The knowledge that monks and nuns value most is not knowledge about God gained from books but actual experience of the living God acquired over many years of fidelity to a life of prayer, renunciation, and love of neighbor. Such learning is "sapiential" (to taste), it is intuitive—a knowledge of the heart more than the head and it is acquired only with sacrifice and persevering effort.

Featured here are a sampling of sayings of monks who lived in the deserts of Egypt, our Cistercian forebears, and some of our contemporary Cistercian teachers.