Eleventh Station ~ Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

Eleventh Station 

Eleventh Station St. Emma Monastery

Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

As the three nails were driven home into the wood, fastening Him to it irrevocably Christ gave Himself to all those men and women who in the years to come would nail themselves to 

His cross by the three vows of religion: 

poverty, chastity and obedience; 

{We take: conversion of life, stability and obedience, in our Monastic tradition.} 

those wise ones who know the weakness of human nature, who know how easily the will can falter when the sweetness of the first consolation of prayer is over; how hard and bleak the winter of the spirit when its springtide and its summer and harvesting seem passed for ever; how hard to go on faithfully clinging to the Christ  life with only one's own weak will to drive one.

  Christ, receiving the nails, gave Himself to those men and women who would nail themselves by the binding vows to Himself upon the cross, who would have the ability to remain true to their chosen life because their hands and feet are put into His hands and feet, and they are held onto the cross by the nails that held Him.

The Way of the Cross by Caryll Houselander

The Obedience of Mary

The humility of our Divine Savior and His most blessed Mother was always accompanied by a perfect obedience.  Obedience had such a power over both of them that they would rather have died, and even by death on a cross, than fail to obey.  Our Lord died the Cross through obedience.  And Our Lady -- what remarkable acts of obedience did she not make at the very hour of the death of her Son, who was the Heart of her heart?  In no way whatever did she resist the will of the Heavenly Father, but rather remained firm and constant at the foot of the Cross, completely submissive to the divine pleasure.  We can use the words of St. Paul for obedience as we have for humility:  Our Lord became obedient to death, even to death on a Cross.  He never did anything throughout His entire life except through obedience, which He Himself made know to us when He said:  It is not My own will that I have come down from Heaven, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.  Therefore, always and in order to follow it, and not for a time, but always and even unto death.

As to Our Lady, examine and consider the whole course of her life.  You will find there nothing but obedience.  She so esteemed this virtue that, although she had made a vow of virginity, she nevertheless submitted herself to the command that was given her to marry.  Ever afterwards she persevered in obedience, as we see today, since she comes to the Temple to obey the law of purification, even though there was no necessity for her to observe it, nor her Son either, as we have already mentioned in the first point.  Her obedience was purely voluntary.  It was not less for being voluntary and unnecessary.  She so dearly loved this virtue, which her sacred Son had engrafted as a divine graft on the trunk of holy humility, that she recommended no other...  This virtue is the inseparable companion of humility.  One is never found without the other, for humility makes us submit to obedience.

In The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales on Our Lady

What Stability Does - Part II

Stability encourages the skill of looking for the best in the other person.  Negativite thoughts and judgments are easy, and negatiave pronouncemednts may make us feel better or even superior for a while.  But in the end, all it does is separate us in hurtful ways.  Stability, on the other hand, enables us to look for the good in each person.

Stability also brings a call for forgiveness.  When we choose to be in a community -- whatever that community is -- there are bound to be differences and often little quirks about other people that annoy or anger us.  There can also be major disagreements.  Living in a community puts before us the opportunity to practice forgiveness.

Our commitment to stay put helps us move beyond those temporary blips on the screen of life to embrace the bigger picture.

St. Benedict's Toolbox

The Nuts and Bolts of

Everyday Benedictine Living

by Jane Tomaine

What Stability Does - Part I

Stability calls us to work out our problems with the people who are a part of our lives.  When we flee physically or emotionally, we only bring our old problems with us into the new situation or relationship.  The truth is, if I don't work out my problem with this person, I'll end up working out the same problem with the next person.  Best to stay put and work things out!

Stability prevents us from running away from necessary development.  Progress is not possible without growth pangs.  We think it is, however, and respond by projecting our inner dissatisfactions on the community.  We blame others for the negativity we experience in ourselves.  Stability keeps us from being buffeted about by our moods or doubts.  We surrender them to God and seek God in the situation before us.  We can recognize that our passing moods don't necessarily represent the true desires of our hearts.  Such thinking can help us stay put until balance returns.

St. Benedict's Toolbox

The Nuts and Bolts of

Everyday Benedictine Living

by Jane Tomaine

What Is Benedictine Stability? - Part II

Benedictine stability is as countercultural in our day as it was in Benedict's.  Our culture says, "Don't get tied down.  Keep your options open.  Be free.  If it doesn't work (whatever "it" is), bag it.  Go on to something or someone else."  Stability takes a different approach.

Stability is a promise to stay put with the people with whom God has placed us.  Stability is staying put right there, knowing that Christ is at our side to help us.  Stability recognizes that there are times when God may place us in a situation not so much for what we can personally get out of it, but for what we can give to others.

Esther de Waal writes that a life guided by stability has both an exterior and an interior dimension.  The purpose of the exterior dimension -- staying in a place, relationship, or situation -- is to establish what she calls "stability of the heart."  That means being content where we are because we believe that God placed us there and is with us in every part of our life.  Where I am is important and counts because it is where God wants me.  Stability of the heart is important in our mobile culture.... we...carry with us a core that is constant -- our rootedness in Christ.  From that center we draw strength.

St. Benedict's Toolbox

The Nuts and Bolts of

Everyday Benedictine Living

by Jane Tomaine

What Is Benedictine Stability? - Part I

Stabilis is derived from the Latine word stare, meaning to stand, to stand up, or to be still.  From this comes the figurative meaing to be firm, to stand fast, to endure, to persevere, to be rooted.  The essential feature is resting on a solid foundation, fixed by strong and unshakable roots.  In a nutshell, stability is the action of staying put, remaining steadfast and faithful to the situation in which God has placed us.  It is persistently sticking with a situation, with people, and with God.

Monastic stability, as described by Benedict and as practiced by Benedictine women and men, is first and foremost a commitment to a place and a group of people in the belief that it is this place and these people who will help them find God.  The English Benedictine Basil Cardinal Hume wrote this of stability:

We give ourselves to God in a particular way of life, in a particular place, with particular companions.  This is our way:  in this Community, with this work, with these problems, with these shortcomings.  The inner meaning of stability is that we embrace life as we find it, knowing that this, and not any other, is our way to God.

...Stability is saying "Yes" to God's will for me in the place where I believe God has placed me and with the task that I believe God has given me to do.  In this we follow Jesus, who embraced the task that God gave to him. 

St. Benedict's Toolbox

The Nuts and Bolts of

Everyday Benedictine Living

by Jane Tomaine

The Scriptural Roots of Benedictine Stability

Faithfulness to place and community... is the mian ingredient in the Benedictine vow of stability.  It's a faithfulness expressed through action and it's biblical in its derivation.  All stability, the Bible tells us, is possible because God is faithful.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, hesed is the word given for God's faithfulness:  we turn from God but God does not turn from us.  We run after other gods, yet God reaches out to us to draw us back again.  The Divine Presence is constantly with us even when we choose to ignore this Presence.  Sin separates us from God through our own actions, yet our actions don't determine God's actions.  In spite of everything, God stays with us.

God's faithfulness to us is the model for Benedictine stability.  Benedict says that we can be faithful because God is faithful...  God in Christ is our Rock and as Christians, we want to put on Christ and become a rock, too.  We want to have a firm and solid center at the core of our being so that we can withstand the unpredictability and transience of our world.  What makes us stead is having a heart that rests in God...  Stability also means to remain, abide, be united to, live in, dwell in, or stay with.

St. Benedict's Toolbox

The Nuts and Bolts of

Everyday Benedictine Living

by Jane Tomaine

Stability of Heart

The spiritual value of stability lies in commitment.  Like everything else in monastic life, stability works best when it is wholehearted, without escape hatches or preserves of autonomy.  Having committed boht spiritual and material fate to a particular community, a Benedictine has a stake in keeping the community focused on what they are meant to be about.  She must be faithful to the work of God, lectio divina, personal prayer.  She has committed herself to being present to her sisters in the monastery.  She works in support of their life together.  She attends chapters and community meetings, welcomes guests and newcomers to the community.  She helps to care for those who are ill or in distress, and helps to bury the dead.  She works at seeing Christ in the people with whom she lives.  Where better to find him?

from Prayer and Community:  The Benedictine Tradition

by Columba Stewart, OSB

Thoughts on Obedience, Part III

Fear-filled, grudging obedience or obedience eroded by subtl murmuring, is not the obedience of those who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ and his obedience.

from The Gift of Saint Benedict

Introduced by Verna A. Holyhead SGS

Thoughts on Obedience, Part II

To a society that values collaboratin, consultatin, and team ministry, Benedict has much to offer.  He recognizes the significance of listening to our sisters and brothers through whom the call of God also comes.  Not only obedience to the learder of the community, the abbot, but mutual obedience to its members, one to the other, is called 'a blessing', an acknowledgment that everyone has some wisdom, and no one has it all.  Benedict stresses that whenever important matters are to be decieded, the abbot must call together the whole community and ask for the counsel of each one, even and especially the youngest.  All must tune the ears of their hearts to the Rule and not be arrogant, prejudiced or deaf to each other's words.  Although the decision rests with the abbot, right judgment requires him to ponder the counsel offered.

from The Gift of Saint Benedict

introduced by Verna A. Holyhead SGS

Thoughts on Obedience, Part I

Benedict begins his Rule with the word: 'Listen', a listening with 'the ear of the heart'.  To listen (obaudire) is to obey, and obedience is the third promise which a Benedictine professes.  It is, firstly, a call to hear and respond to the word of God.  The word is most explicit in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and in his good news.  It is to him that Benedict summons his followrs to return by the 'labor of obedience' in order to fight for and establish God's reign over the territory of the human heart.

from The Gift of Saint Benedict

introduced by Verna A. Holyhead SGS

Thoughts on Stability, Part V

The soldier's stabilitas consists in 'standing" (stare) in spite of the enemy who attempts to cut him down, and in 'holding his ground' instead of running away.  This warlike vocabulary, which Saint Cyprian makes abundant use of in his exhortations to martyrs, reappears whenever Benedict depicts his novice face to face with the demands of the Rule and 'still standing firm'.  Thse successive decisions to 'stand firm' prefigure and prepare the great commitment to standing firm one's whole life long which will be made at profession.

from Reading Saint Benedict, Reflections on the Rule

by Adalbert de Vogüé



Thoughts on Stability, Part IV

In the end I am brought back, of course, to Christ himself and to his example, the willingness to endure faithfully and with patience, patientia, to remind me that this means both waiting and suffering.  What makes this possible?  The faithfulness of God.  God is faithful to the covenant, and I know I can rely on him...  My stability is possible in the end because of the certain, guaranteed, steadfastness of God.

Esther de Wall

A Life-Giving Way

in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Stability, Part III

[To people outside of a monastic community, the three Benedictine vows of stability, obedience, and conversion of life appear to be] three promises that together form one whole process.  They ask me to enter into a dynamic commitment that simultaneously holds me still (stability) and moves me forward (continual conversion) with all the time God, and not my own self, as the point of reference (obedience, listening intently).

Esther de Waal

A Life-Giving Way

in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Stability, Part II

When you are feeling strong, do not be complacent, but call to God with the prophet and say:  "When my strength fails me, do not abandom me" (Ps. 70:9).  And in time of temptation be consoled and say with the bride:  "Draw me after you, and we shall run in the odor of your ointments" (Ps. 33:2).  Thus you will not lose hope in bad times, nor will foresight disert you in good times, and amid both the prosperity and adversity of changing times you will retian  a certain image of eternity -- that is, this inviolable and unshakable constancy of a stable soul -- blessing the Lord at every moment.  In this way you claim for yourself, even amid the doubtful events and inevitable deficiencies of ths changing world, a certain status of lasting unchangeability while you being to renew and reform yourself according to the ancient pattern of likeness to the eternal God, "in whom there is neither alteration nor the shadow of change" (Jas 1:17).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

On the Song of Songs

in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Stability, Part I

By digging deeply they alertly examne their consciences so that nothing sordid may lie hidden within them.  They carefully probe all the depths of their hearts for the hiding places of empty thoughts and draw them out with the hand of conscientious discretion so that they can prepare a firm and restful throne within themselves for that strong rock, who is Christ.  And through his presence they persevere amid the fearful adversities of this world amid the allurements as well.

St. Bede

Homiles on the Gosepls

in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Obedience, Part V

Obedience depends on listening so totally and openly to the other that through them we discern the face, the voice of Christ himself.  This is the root of that obedience that we show to one another.

Esther de Waal, A Life-giving Way

in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Obedience, Part IV

Christ's obedience was obedience unto death.  This gives me the perspective.  I am being asked to let go of something in me that must die before the new can be born.  Two things help to make this possible:  that the motive force is love;
that I do it in imitation of Christ.

Esther de Waal, A Life-Giving Way

found in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Obedience, Part III

Mere outward compliance will not do.  Obedience should come cheerfully, freely, and gladly.  It is only when I remind myself that obedience is ob-audiens, listening intently to God rather than listening to my own self, that what Benedict is telling me -- even though it may still seem difficult -- is not impossible, for it is a response of love to love.

Esther de Waal, A Life-Giving Way

found in Essential Monastic Wisdom

Thoughts on Obedience, Part II

Monastic obedience exists not to make yes-men and efficient bureaucrats who can be used in institutional politeics, but to liberate the hearts and minds into the lucid and terrible darkness of contemplation that no tongue can explain and no rationalization can account for.

~ Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action

in Essential Monastic Wisdom