Work and Pray

A documentary film that captures the aural and visual power of music, Work and Pray examines the role of sacred music within contemporary culture.

Work and Pray, written and produced by Margot Fassler, transports the viewer to the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and offers a glimpse into the work, prayer, and music that center this religious community. The nuns of this abbey believe that prayer and sacred music are as vital to human life as physical sustenance. Music shapes the work they do in community, just as work, in its own turn, becomes a form of prayer. Footage of this striking abbey and interviews with the women who live there offer an eye-opening view of one kind of monastic life and the Benedictine philosophy that forms its foundation. Footage of a Vespers service during Advent introduces the practice of monastic psalmody and its ways of shaping memory and imagination.