Stability
REFLECTIONS ON A SPIRITUAL CLASSIC
A Group Exercise
Benedict of Nursia (480-547) was the founder of the Benedictine order. His famous Rule of St. Benedict - itself a spiritual classic - was a guide for the conduct of early Christian communities at a time when the
In the selection that follows Esther de Waal (Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict) interprets Benedict's teaching on stability for contemporary Christian living. Stability is a theme seldom discussed in today's church.
"Stability is a matter of commitment to situations and to persons. Stability is rooted in the biblical concept of steadfastness. One of the revelations to the Hebrews was the faithfulness of God. God is utterly reliable; he keeps his side of the covenant. It is on this given that our own stability depends.
Without stability we cannot know our true selves. For we are pulled apart by so many conflicting demands, so many things deserving of our attention, that often it seems as though the center cannot hold. Instead of the bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another, stability means accepting this particular community, this place and these people -- this and no other -- as the way to God. Contentment and fulfillment do not consist in constant change, and true happiness cannot be found other than in this place and this time. Stability is achieved through perseverance, through holding on even under great strain, without weakening or trying to escape. It involves endurance, a virtue we rarely talk about today.
An important application of stability is persevering in loving, human relationships, whatever the tests and challenges. Many people find themselves in a situation of enclosure, in a marriage or a career from which they long to escape - perhaps by actually running away, perhaps by resorting to the daydreaming which begins with that insidious little phrase, "If only. . ." Family life that is boring, a marriage that has grown stale, an office job that has become deadening, are all too familiar. Our difficulty lies in the way in which we fail to meet these demands with anything more than the mere grudging minimum that will never allow them to become creative.
Stability means accepting the monotonous and making it work for us, not against us. Stability says there must be no evasion, no pining for the grass that appears greener elsewhere - whether that be another mate or another ministry. Stability will not allow us to evade the truth of whatever we have to do to prove the will of God, however dreary and boring and apparently unfruitful that may seem to us at present. Stability recognizes a 'no-escape clause' in those relationships to which God has called us. It means I must know who I am and not run away from myself or abandon those relationships into which I have entered, believing them to be the will of God for my life. Rather, I must cling to the Cross, for at the foot thereof everything ultimately will be resolved and the inner coherence of all my painful experiences will be made plain.
Stability, in sum, is our response to that promise which reassures us that He is faithful and steadfast; and that we should 'never lose hope in God's mercy' (4.74)."