A monk commits to a life structured around the vows of stability, binding him to one monastery for life, conversion of manners, conversatio morum, a commitment to ongoing spiritual transformation, and obedience to his abbot, following the Rule of Saint Benedict, composed around the sixth century and the foundational text for the great majority of Western monasticism ever since. The Rule organizes monastic life around a daily cycle of communal prayer, the Divine Office, sung at set hours through the day and night, together with manual labor and sacred reading, lectio divina, a balance the Rule's own maxim ora et labora, pray and work, summarizes, though that exact phrase is a later gloss rather than the Rule's own wording.
Benedictine stability distinguishes a monk sharply from a mendicant friar: rather than being posted among a province's many houses by superiors, a monk professes vows to a specific monastery and ordinarily remains there for life, a commitment intended to root spiritual growth in long-term community life and a fixed place rather than in mobility or itinerant ministry, and one that has shaped the Rule's detailed provisions for how the community itself, rather than any external authority, is to manage its own internal life, including the election of its abbot.