Modern Christian Monasticism: Life in the World or a Retreat from the World? 

Pavilion 4.2

How is it possible to completely fulfill the commandments of the Gospel? How can we live in the world and yet be “not of this world”? Questions like these have always presented themselves to Christians. Those who have chosen the Christian way have, since the very beginning, understood that every Christian is a loner, and not of this world. In the end of the 3^rd and beginning of the 4^th century, monasticism presented itself as one possible answer to questions of this sort. But a memory of the “general monasticism” of all Christians also never completely disappeared.