In 2025, the Congregation of the Mission around the world will celebrate the 400th anniversary of its founding by St. Vincent de Paul. To commemorate that milestone, Fr. Ray Van Dorpe, C.M., is writing a monthly blog on the Vincentian vows and virtues. This month, we discuss the vow of stability.
The fourth vow that Vincentians take is the vow of stability. This vow is not generally familiar to most people and needs a bit of explanation, but it is key to understanding what makes a Vincentian.
When he took on the ministry of evangelizing the poor country people of France, St. Vincent found other priests who shared his desire to do this important work. However, many of them, facing the realities of the work left, and either returned to their dioceses or joined other religious orders. Vincent saw that the Congregation would need more than the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to hold his men together. His wise addition of the vow of stability meant that from the beginning, the men who entered the Congregation of the Mission would vow to evangelize the poor, in the Congregation of the Mission, for the whole of their lives. In many ways, Vincent considered stability the one vow that connected all the others.
“All of us have made in the Company the resolution to live and die in it; we’ve brought to it all that we have – body, soul, will, ability, industry, and the rest. Why? To do what Jesus Christ did, to save the world. And how? By means of the connection there is among us and the offering we’ve made to live and die in this Company, and to give to this all that we are and all that we do.” (CCD 12:196)
Besides being the “glue” that holds the community together, the vow of stability has a personal dimension. It calls the individual Vincentian to constantly strengthen his vocation by modeling himself (as with the other vows) on Jesus Christ. As Christ was absolutely faithful to the mission given to him by his heavenly Father, so the confrere is called to imitate Christ’s fidelity, even in the face of hardships and disappointments. Vincent often reminded his confreres who were having doubts about their vocation to remember that most of the difficulties we face in life are passing, and that they will find the same or similar difficulties while living and working in a diocese or another religious order. When the going gets tough, the vow of stability can strengthen the confrere and give him the benefit of a longer perspective.
While the term “stability” can connote a sense of being stationary or unchanging, it actually calls the Vincentians in the 21st century to a dynamic life of fidelity to living the Gospel of Jesus Christ and following him by evangelizing the poor for the entirety of one’s life. Vincentians are often asked what “C.M.” stands for. With tongue in cheek, some confreres will reply, “It means we are Constantly Moving!” As faithful followers of Jesus Christ and St. Vincent de Paul, that humorous answer is not far from the truth!