Stability

Extract

To a generation born and bred to conditions notoriously unstable there should be something singularly attractive, if at the same time somewhat elusive, in the thought of stability. Most people will instinctively think of it in its possible application to international, social, economic and financial affairs; to religious, and more particularly to Benedictines, it may more naturally suggest the vow of stability which was St Benedict's most far-reaching contribution to western monasticism. Yet the two aspects are more closely connected than may at first sight appear, the one in fact springs naturally from the other. In both connections there is implied a continuity, a stability, of contact with the source and origin, the Fons et Origo, of all things, a dimly-realised perception of a model and exemplar in accordance with which man and his world are to be ordered and fashioned.