STABILITY
I was invited recently to give a short talk at Benedict’s Well, which is an online meditation group organised by the World Community for Christian Meditation and which meets weekly each Monday morning. I was asked to talk about being an oblate who is connected to a monastery as, although the WCCM follows the Rule of St Benedict and have their own oblates, they are not linked to any particular monastery themselves.
In preparing the talk, I reflected on my pathway to my own monastery, Ealing Abbey. In my reflections a word came to mind: stability. This led me to consider what the monastic vow of stability might mean for an oblate.
Stability requires a deep personal commitment. Members of the WCCM and those of us who are oblates of a monastery are trying live a daily commitment to the Holy Rule and this is an expression of our personal commitment to Christ. Our commitment, as we know, is a daily one: as the Father of all monks, the desert father, St Anthony said every day, ‘Today I begin.’
For our monastic sisters and brothers, however, their commitment to the Holy Rule and therefore to Christ involves committing themselves to living in a community by a vow of stability for life. But what does stability mean for oblates who live in the world and who make promises but do not take vows?
I suggest that stability for us oblates means fidelity to our monastery, even though we may be unable to visit often because of long distance. Perhaps we may not be able to visit at all, because of medical or other personal circumstances. The possibility of online meetings does mean we can at least visit occasionally via the internet however. Our fidelity is of a different character from our monastic brothers and sisters but can be as deep and enduring. For we are hopefully oblates for life.
Moreover our monastery is our spiritual home, even though we do not live there. Our Abbot Primate, Timothy Dolan, suggested this in his talk at the International Oblates Congress in Rome last September. His phrase ‘spiritual home’ seems to me to illuminate the particular relationship between the oblate and their monastery. The phrase implies not only a deep connection but a deep belonging and beyond that, a deep joy and peace. It also suggests a care and concern for our monastic community, including our oblate sisters and brothers, expressed above all else in prayer.
Esther de Waal provides a more psychological meaning for stability in her introduction to the edition of the Holy Rule I use in my daily reading – the translation by Abbot Parry of Ampleforth (Gracewing). She suggests that stability is ‘a commitment to not trying to run away, to escape from the place where one finds oneself.’ The place where we have found ourselves is both our monastery and our oblate vocation.
Our oblate vocation gives us a Benedictine framework to our personal lives and through this it is possible to gradually develop a greater stability as a person. I have fond this in my own life.
Moreover, God is nurturing deep within us a sacred space, a tabernacle, a tent where we meet Him (as He is within our monastic sisters and brothers). This creates within us a deep peace and, just as St Benedict is anxious throughout his Rule to maintain and preserve peace within his community and therefore peace within the hearts of his brethren, so we must try to protect this deep peace within ourselves.
Ultimately stability means opening oneself to that peace, a peace which the world cannot give as Jesus tells us, and not running away from it. Indeed, as St Benedict continually urges us, we should run towards it.
Neil Zoladkiewicz
Oblate of Ealing Abbey
