Benedictine monks and nuns learn early in their initiation into the monastic life that this life is characterised by the ever-renewed effort to 'listen' to God. Their life of humble, loving, serviceable obedience presupposes their determination to give themselves completely to 'searching for God'. Like the Apostle Paul they 'want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death' (NRSV Phil 3:10); they set out 'to submit to their superior in all obedience for the love of God, imitating the Lord of whom the Apostle says: He became obedient even to death' (Phil 2:8; Rule of St Benedict 7:34). All of which is possible and sustainable only when prayer is becoming progressively pure and purifying, interior and transformative, unifying and unitive.