The Meaning of Monastic Stability

Saint Benedict of Nursia

 

 THE MEANING OF MONASTIC STABILITY

Monastics take a vow of stability. It was a reaction of established monasteries at the time of Saint Benedict or the fifth to sixth centuries against the commonplace abuse of vagrants he called “gyrovagues.”

“It seems that running away is a tendency imbued in our modern culture.  People seem to seek refuge anywhere but in the present place and moment.  Often it is an escape into the world of social media, endless video games, or ‘doomscrolling.’  But all these activities represent a flight from the here-and-now. Is there a solution to this situation of constant flight?

“Saint Benedict recognized the flight problem in his own age.  He founded the Benedictines and, in a sense, all the communities that follow his rule (such as the Cistercians, the Trappists, the Camaldolese, the Sylvestrines, and the Olivetans).

“…His famous ‘Rule,’ written in the 540’s, starts, not with a discourse on monastic virtues nor a summary of services to be performed by the monks. Rather, it begins with a description of four classes of monks to be found in the West.  Two of these classes are good, one is bad, and one is terrible, he says.

“The good monks, says Benedict, are the cenobites and the anchorites. The cenobites (from Greek words meaning common life) are your average, run-of-the-mill monks: they live in a monastery under the direction of an abbot. The anchorites, on the other hand, are hermits.

“…hermits live on their own, not because they can’t stand living with other people, but rather because, they have been strengthened by the trials of living in community. The trials of community living have thus prepared them to live alone.

“Unfortunately, Benedict also denounces two classes of monks who are troublesome.

“…The fourth class of monks are the gyrovagues (literally, one who wanders in circles) or landlopers. As he describes them, these monks ‘who keep going their whole life long from one province to another, staying three or four days at a time in different cells as guests. Always roving and never settled, they indulge their passions and the cravings of their appetite…’

“…They do not remain fixed in a place but instead go about relying on the charity of different monasteries. …for this reason, Benedict’s Rule introduced a vow of stability.”

https://catholicstand.com/stability-is-more-than-just-staying-in-one-place/

—Fr. Nathaniel Dreyer, “Stability is More Than Just Staying in One Place,” Catholic Stand, June 27, 2026

Underlying the vow of stability is a self-evident principle of Christian spirituality—a monk commits not only to a particular place but especially to the monastic community resident in that location in order to deepen their relationship with God through habitual prayer, practice charity with the members of the monastic community, to some extent with monastery visitors as well, and in doing so advance in holiness.

The virtue of stability is an aspect of the virtue of perseverance. By staying in one place, with all its attendant ups and downs and inevitable difficulties and trials, the monk remains steadfast in their ascetical struggle. They do not run away from the cross.

“Stability protects the monk from the flux of society and roots him in a particular monastic household by mutual commitments of support.

“…The vow of stability roots us in a particular place - this monastery - and commits the monk to a specific group of people, a family of relationships that require care if they’re to develop beyond the merely superficial.”

https://www.saintmeinrad.edu/seminary-blog/echoes-from-the-bell-tower/stability-a-vow-to-stay-put/

—Fr. Adrian Burke, OSB, “Stability: A Vow to ‘Stay Put,’” Saint Meinrad, August 31, 2023

“One Benedictine community [Our Lady of the Mississippi Trappistine Cistercian Abbey] describes their vow this way:

“We vow to remain all our life with our local community. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning the practices of love: acknowledging one’s own offensive behavior, giving up one’s preferences, forgiving.”

https://blog.adw.org/2012/07/a-reflection-on-the-benedictine-vow-of-stability/

—Msgr. Charles Pope, “A Reflection On the Benedictine Vow of Stability,” Community in Mission: Creating a Culture of Encounter, July 12, 2012

Besides gyrovagues, Saint Benedict’s Rule takes aim at sarabaites—slackers who refuse to commit themselves to a rule under an abbot. They seek to satisfy their self-will in opposition to the very purpose of monastic life, that is, submission to the will of God according to a monastic charism.

“The origin of the word is unclear, but it might derive from the Aramaic word for rebel. This would be appropriate, since these monks are precisely that: rebels.

“Living in groups of two or three, these monks, ‘…have been tried by no rule under the hand of a master, as gold is tried in the fire; but, soft as lead, and still keeping faith with the world by their works, they are known to belie God by their tonsure. Living in two’s and three’s, or even singly, without a shepherd, enclosed, not in the Lord’s sheepfold, but in their own, the gratification of their desires is law unto them; because what they choose to do they call holy, but what they dislike they hold to be unlawful.’

“Could anything be worse than this?  The answer to this question is yes. 

“…The sarabaites were bad, but Benedict claims that the gyrovagues are ‘in every way worse.’”

—Dreyer, op. cit.

Sarabaites and gyrovagues were among the reprehensible pretenders to monastic life during the early Middle Ages.

Monastic stability entails some degree of economic stability, which is sometimes taken for granted.

Monastic stability presupposes the economic viability of a specific location. Monastic community must be able not only to survive but also insofar as possible to thrive, not as an end but as a means, because when economic concerns are dealt with adequately, the members of a community are enabled to devote their foremost attention to their paramount purpose—the spirit of unceasing prayer, the worship of God, the witness of fervent asceticism, and tireless works of charity, all according to the monastic charism.  

In the absence of economic viability, monastic community, simply, dies.

Monastic stability is impossible without monks, in the first place. Monasteries and the stability that go with them disappear when monastic vocations decline.

“In 1630, as the number of pilgrims increased, the archbishop of Mainz, Anselm Casimir Wambolt von Umstadt, to whose district the area belonged at the time, brought the Capuchins to Engelberg and ordered the construction of a monastery for them.

“In 1828, by order of King Louis I of Bavaria, the monastery was taken over by the Franciscans of the Franciscan Province of Bavaria.

“In recent years, only two brothers had lived in the monastery. The decision to close the monastery is due to ‘the lack of young monks for the order, which makes it increasingly difficult to adequately maintain the current 26 Franciscan communities in Germany,’ the Franciscans noted.

“In a statement to the German Catholic news website katholisch.de, Friar Othmar Brüggemann said: ‘Ultimately, the closure of monasteries in our country is more of a German phenomenon than a European one. The number of Franciscans is decreasing in our country, but we are growing all over the world – like in Africa or Vietnam.’

“‘The Diocese of Würzburg is also looking for a new community to occupy the Engelberg Monastery, so that the site is not abandoned,’ said Friar Othmar Brüggemann.

“The Franciscan explained that, due to an ‘emergency situation’ at the Engelberg monastery, ‘the brothers have left for other places and we, the two remaining priests, are needed elsewhere’.

“In fact, ‘until recently, there were three of us here at the Engelberg monastery,’ recalled Friar Othmar. ‘But our third friar had to be transferred in mid-January due to illness. Now there are only two of us. When one is traveling, the other is usually left alone. That’s not a good number.’”

https://www.gaudiumpress.ca/the-closing-of-monasteries-is-a-german-and-european-phenomenon/

—Gaudium Press English Edition, “The Closing of Monasteries,” GaudiumPress, February 14, 2024

Monastic stability continues to be relevant to contemporary life. It should be lived in a way that recapitulates the past but does not copy it exactly.

“To spend a few days in a monastery is to discover how much time we who live in the outside world spend going from one place to another, contending with traffic, running errands, shopping, or going to a job. In monastic life, everything is in one place: home, work, family, church, leisure time; in a sense, one is presented with the frightening opportunity to ‘be’ rather than to ‘do’. This is a radical departure in understanding the human person from what we live out in the world. In being freed up from all the distractions and efforts involved in simply living day-to-day in the world, one is confronted with big questions and big challenges. The freedom that stability provides not only encourages but necessitates change, growth, conversion.

“An analogy for this is to think of the monk as being like a tree, rather than a rock. He is ‘planted’ within the community, in a particular place, the monastery. In order to flourish, however, he must grow and adapt to the way of life of the community and he must continue to grow as the other members of the community grow. He is not a rock placed there that remains unchanging. Stability paradoxically encourages change. This is the point that St. Benedict makes in his description of the gyrovague; in moving from place to place constantly, chasing after satisfaction of his own desires, the gyrovague has no need for growth.

“In many ways, this reveals how our own culture is a gyrovague culture. …There are always new things to see and do, new destinations to travel to, and new people to meet.

“In contrast to this, the life of stability boldly promises the possibility of boredom, detachment, familiarity, simplicity, and intimacy. Stability takes away empty novelty and proposes personal growth in holiness and love; it takes away entertainment and proposes appreciation of simplicity; it takes away networking and proposes love of God and of monastic brothers; it takes away distraction and proposes self-knowledge and attention to God’s voice in the Scriptures, the prayers of the liturgy, and his presence in the Sacraments.

“…How might one live stability out in the world? This is a particularly challenging question, as it has both spiritual and practical dimensions to it. The spiritual dimension shows that it requires an abundance of faith, and hope, and charity. On a practical level, it entails conscious effort to foster community, starting with one’s family and branching out from there to one’s neighbors, or co-parishioners, or coworkers. A most obvious place is to look at marriage and to embrace the deep spiritual dimensions of marriage in its sacramental reality as a source of holiness and an encounter with God’s love for us. Perhaps it might involve becoming familiar with a religious community or a monastery and pursuing membership there in a lay association or a third order. It might entail embracing a spirit of hospitality or service to neighbors. …they point toward the same sort of selflessness that can be found in…life [of monastic stability].”

https://aleteia.org/2014/04/21/holiness-in-place-the-counterculture-of-stability/

—Colin O’Brien, “Holiness in Place: The Counterculture of Stability,” Aleteia.org, April 21, 2014