There are few figures as influential in the development of Christian culture as St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism. The monasteries he founded and the Rule he wrote for them have shaped the religious life of the Church for centuries, and his musings on prayer, work, and community life are of timeless value. This St. Benedict Collection contains the Rule in its entirety, as well as the biographical Life of St. Benedict written by St. Gregory the Great. Captured in these works is above all a life radically ordered toward God, and in this way Benedict provides a paradigm of Christian living from which believers of any vocation can learn.