Clairity's Place on "Stability and Community"

Clairity, over at Clairity's Place, reflects on St. Benedict's true contribution to the Church: institutionalized stability.

Behold!

Along with his rule of obedience and conversion of life, he introduced the vow of stability which tied his monks to their monasteries. This vow was a built-in antidote to the kind of spiritual wandering that caters to personal taste. Stability meant that no man was left behind. Even when monasteries were attacked and burned to the ground, the monks rebuilt and replanted their crops and continued. Around the monastery, families settled down and built their lives again. Stability was responsible for preserving and rebuilding a new society out of the ruins of a fallen civilization.

But why is this stability so important? Without it, we can't live the communal life through which we best live our Christianity. Without community, we live in isolation, longing for the God that has told us, "When two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst."

As long as we can flit according to our whims, we cannot experience the satisfaction of a complete belonging which embraces us in every circumstance, even the most difficult. We can build nothing this way, because we never get past the ephemeral to reach into the core of living. We can only know the universal by living deeply the particular. This belonging that stability represents underlines our necessary dependence, our true condition in front of God, but also before the human community. For all our illusions of competence, we are each of us dependent on others for our most basic material and spiritual needs. And our continuous restlessness is in fact a desire for God who alone can fill our hearts as we stop still and let Him.

If we're to live our faith, we need to take the incarnation seriously. Our Lord's decision to live among us as one of us is his profound affirmation of fellowship. He chose to live in community because that's how he manifests the very life the Blessed Trinity share.

Stability allows community to prosper. When we stay, we come to know those with whom we stay. When we stay, we share our lives through the passage of time. We learn how to live with those neighbors that find new ways of pressing our buttons. We face a sea of opportunities to forgive and seek forgiveness. We can constantly pour out our hearts in charity. If we want to experience genuine community with another soul, we need to put in the time. The commitment to stay ensures that we put in that time.