Across cultures and centuries, humanity has kept creating communities of people whose full-time vocation is literally to hold the rest of us in compassion. Perhaps that tells us something important about what human beings need most.

Imagine trying to explain monks and nuns to someone who had never encountered religion: healthy, capable adults who voluntarily give up wealth, careers, romance and many ordinary comforts so they can spend much of their lives praying, meditating, studying, chanting and living in community.

The obvious question would be: Why? What practical purpose could possibly justify dedicating an entire human life to contemplation?

This is not merely a Christian phenomenon either. Buddhism also has monasteries. Hinduism has ashrams. Jainism has monks. Many spiritual traditions have preserved communities of people whose primary work is not producing goods, leading governments or accumulating wealth. Their work is interior. Given what we know about the fickleness and wandering nature of most humans, that should make us curious.

Civilizations could not preserve institutions such as these for thousands of years without believing they accomplish something worth preserving.

Christianity itself recognizes more than one form of religious vocation. Many people use the words nun and sister interchangeably, but they are not quite the same thing. A sister is typically a member of a religious community who lives and works among the wider world. She may teach in schools, serve in hospitals, advocate for justice, care for the poor, counsel the grieving or accompany people through some of life’s most difficult moments. Sisters are visible. Their vocation is one of service in society.

A nun, by contrast, is usually part of a contemplative order. She lives within a monastery or cloister, dedicating herself primarily to prayer, worship, meditation, study and communal life. While there are exceptions, nuns generally do not spend their days running schools or hospitals. Their ministry is quieter. More hidden. Their work is contemplation itself.

The same distinction exists among many Christian men. Some monks spend nearly their entire lives within monastic communities, following rhythms of prayer that have remained largely unchanged for centuries.

Buddhism preserves a remarkably similar calling. Its monks and nuns — known in many traditions as bhikkhus and bhikkhunis — dedicate themselves to meditation, ethical living, study, spiritual discipline and compassionate service. Some teach extensively in the wider world. Others spend much of their lives in monasteries devoted primarily to contemplation.

Different traditions. Different robes. Different prayers. Yet often the same vocation. While the rest of us hurry through traffic, answer emails, pay bills, scroll through headlines and navigate the endless noise of modern life, there are men and women who rise before dawn, gather in silence, chant ancient words, sit in meditation, tend gardens, study sacred texts and spend hours holding the world in their hearts.

It’s easy in our accomplishment-oriented culture to ask what practical purpose this serves. What are they producing? What measurable outcome results from a life devoted to contemplation?

Yet perhaps those questions reveal more about us than they do about them. We live in an age that prizes visibility, productivity and measurable results. We instinctively assume that value comes from doing.

Contemplative traditions have always proposed another possibility: perhaps there is also value in simply being.

The nun kneeling in prayer before sunrise may never cure a disease. The monk sitting in meditation may never write legislation. They may never become wealthy, famous or influential. Yet they participate in a different kind of labor. In their own energetic way, they work to preserve humanity’s compassion water table.

For thousands of years, generation after generation has concluded that there is value in setting aside some people whose primary task is not to build the world, but to bless it.

Contrary to what many people assume, most contemplatives are not spending their days praying that everyone becomes a member of their religion. Certainly, they love their traditions. They have devoted their lives to them. But if one actually listens to the prayers and aspirations that emerge from monasteries around the world, a different picture appears.

Again and again, the intentions are remarkably simple. May the sick find healing. May those who suffer find comfort. May wisdom guide us. May peace prevail. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings dwell in peace. A surprising amount of contemplative life sounds less like recruitment and more like universal goodwill.

The cloistered nun praying for a child she will never meet has no need to know whether that child is Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or anything else. The prayer is offered because the child exists.

The Buddhist monk cultivating loving-kindness has no requirement that the recipient share his beliefs. Compassion does not ask for credentials. The blessing is offered because suffering exists.

Humanity has quietly built a global network of compassion. Most of us simply never notice it.

At this very moment, somewhere in the world, there are people praying for you. Others are meditating for you. Others are chanting for the well-being of all beings, which includes you. They do not know your name. They do not know your political party, your income, your accomplishments, your failures, your orientation or your theology. They know only that you belong to this fragile human family. And so they offer their blessing.

Whether one believes that prayer literally changes the universe is, in some ways, beside the point. The deeper truth may be that these communities preserve something every civilization eventually discovers it needs. A living reminder that care can exist without transaction.

No invoice follows their prayers. No subscription is required. No algorithm rewards their attention. They simply continue, day after day, year after year, century after century, quietly wishing well-being upon a world that often forgets they exist.

We hear about religion when it is at its loudest, most political, most controversial or most visible. We rarely hear about the thousands upon thousands of people who have quietly devoted their lives to hoping on behalf of total strangers that they may be healthy, peaceful, fulfilled and free.

In an age obsessed with being seen, there is something profoundly moving about people who devote their lives to loving people they will never meet.

Perhaps that is the real gift of monasteries. Not that they withdraw from the world. But that from hidden places they keep alive one of humanity’s oldest and most essential practices: blessing people from whom they expect absolutely nothing in return.

Whether or not prayer changes the world, it undeniably changes the one who prays. Day after day, it trains the heart away from fear, away from resentment, away from endless self-concern, and toward compassion.

Perhaps that, too, is part of the monastery’s gift. It stands as a reminder that compassion is not merely an emotion. It is a discipline. A practice. A way of being that must be cultivated if it is to endure.

Therefore, the greatest question monks and nuns leave the rest of us with is not whether prayer works. It is whether we might spend a little more of our own lives blessing people we will never meet. Because if strangers have quietly dedicated centuries to holding the rest of us in compassion, perhaps the least we can do is continue that blessing onward.

Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister of the First Church of Lancaster at the Bulfinch Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, progressive theologian and essayist on optimistic spirituality in the Information Age. Follow him on Substack, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.