Reflection On Benedictine Stability

1381 Words3 Pages

Denis Mahmic
4/8/14
Humanities

Paper II Topic: Reflection on Benedictine Stability

Stability: the quality or state of being stable. Many people have their own definition of what being stable means. Some people might think that being stable is to have enough money to support their family. Another might think that being stable is to live in one place for the rest of their life. Saint Benedict has his own thinking of what stability means in a monastery. Throughout my lifetime I have observed how stability has operated within my own life.
Stability for Saint Benedict inculpates the commitment to nest out the rest of someone’s life in a community that is in monastery in which they are introduced. In order to have stability no one moves away from the monastery to another monastery, or from one place to another place.
Stability refers to the significance of community and the significance of commitment in life. For a nun or monk it mentions the pledge to the monastery where they will live there for the rest of their lives. Since we are not a part of a monastic organization, we can make our oath of stability to our families, to our trust in our community, and to our global and local communities as well. We should even be stable to our fellow friends along the journey of faith. Our promise of stability also conveys to our current crisis in our environment. We need to be devoted to the earth and learn how to be good representative of that which God has given us.
The first text in which St. benedict talks about stability is through travel in 1:10-11, where he blames gyrovagues for “drifting from region to region” (1:10) “these wandering monks are always on the move, never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appeti...

... middle of paper ...

...h. Benedict would want someone to be a part of one church for the rest of their lives and not try and find a higher quality one. Happiness is in our fingertips and salvation is at hand if we practice stability. Through Tomaine’s aspect of stability I have realized that many of them operate within my own life. I need to live in the now and not in the past. I also realized that through my relationship with god, I have met challenges in life and have created great relationships on all accounts. I believe that I should not take great relationships for granted because they might crumble if I do. I also learned that through stability and perseverance I have hung on to life when it was doubtful. In modern times we need to live in a world of Stability and practice Benedict’s way of being stable. By doing this, the relationship with god and the world will be incredible.

Open Document