Maintaining Stability Both In and Outside the Workplace

Our ongoing focus on stability in the workplace should extend to outside the workplace as well. "Outside" refers to times when we're not in our usual space. While many of us, since the Covid Mess that began in 2020, have plied our trade at home, that's not our reference here. The fact is, whether in a work space outside or inside the home, our disciplined and diligent performance should basically be the same.

For years I worked outside the home working for others. When I began my own business - before the Covid Mess began - I worked both at home and in an outside office in space I rented. Since the Mess, I stopped commuting to the office as no one then or since has had the desire to meet in my downtown space. Calls and Zooms have served my business well. 

The point of all this: Combined with the business travel I'd done over the years, the importance of keeping an ordered and stable environment no matter where I work naturally emerged. 

In his Rule, St. Benedict distinctly addresses monks who are outside the walls of the monastery. For monks, working outside the enclosure of the monastery is pretty much a bigger deal than working in multiple environments might be for any of us. So this issue is distinctly addressed not once, but twice. The first time it came up in the Rule, the emphasis was on relatively close distance - simply being outside the walls: performing outside work that precluded attending the praying of the Office with the rest of the monks. The second time, St. Benedict separately considers monks who are sent on a journey - so they're gone for more than a day.

Such a journey would be unusual. Therefore there's a call to pray for one who is absent, with the emphasis on the welfare of his soul. So during the regular daily praying of the Office:

"...let there be a commemoration of all absent brethren."

And when any traveler returns:

"...let them on the day they return, at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God (the chanting of the Office), lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and ask the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road by the seeing or hearing of something evil or by idle talk."

If you think this is something peculiar to monks, my experience has been that such "evil or idle talk" may very well be encountered during business travel. Temptations may tug at us, possibly lead us astray, especially if we've left our senses unguarded and our imagination unrestrained. Ideally this never happens, but it might. Heck, it happens to monks. So St. Benedict follows this with:

" Nor let anyone presume to tell another what he has seen or heard outside the monastery, because this causes very great harm. But if anyone presume to do so, let him undergo the Punishment of the Rule."

We Catholic men at work need to take what St. Benedict relates here seriously. Living outside the enclosure of a monastery as we do doesn't mean we let ourselves be exposed to every incursion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, right? The care and concern St. Benedict has for his monks applies to us as well. 

(In our post discussing the previous entry of the Rule, we list some detailed suggestions on how we might best protect ourselves from the temptations that may come our way on the road.)

If you're someone who has to travel a lot for business, whether on day trips or overnight, this and the previous entry in the Rule shouldn't be dismissed as something meant exclusively for monks. And if we're serious about establishing and maintaining a calm, peaceful, stable and, yes, holy, environment for our daily work, St. Benedict's words will serve us well.