At a time when many Catholic communities diminish and die, it matters to remember that others thrive and continue to transmit a living wisdom. One example is the Trappist community of Vitorchiano, wonderfully alive. Mother Cristiana Piccardo, abbess of the house 1964-88 once wrote: ‘An anguishing phenomenon [of modern society] is the intense compartmentalisation we everywhere observe. In every sphere of our lives as individuals and as societies, procedures are marked by compartmentalised specialisation. To have an illness diagnosed, we must consult a dozen different specialists; to get it cured we must move in and out of rigorously structured sectors of help and treatment in clearly differentiated units. It is not specialisation as such that is the problem, but the loss of a unitary vision of life, of man, and of the world. We may obtain specific items of information, but we have lost the ability to integrate these into a wider picture of the mystery of personhood, into the unitary complexity of man, of life.’ The monastic life well lived witnesses to this unitary vision and helps us to recover it.