Constancy

Of all the various laws, ideas, and formulae one can find in physics, none are so commonsensical and obvious to the layman than that of Entropy. To understand Entropy, in its most basic form, is to understand that everything in the material world, when left alone, is always and in all places breaking down, dissolving, becoming less orderly. It is the polar opposite of progress, though paradoxically often mistaken for it. In fine, Entropy says, “people die, things fall apart, ‘all is vanity and vexation of spirit.’”

This reality, far from being limited purely to the study of physics and of thermodynamics, is evidently a good way of describing and thinking about matters in our day-to-day—in our society, in our jobs, and in our social lives. Without intervention, all these things eventually slide towards disorder. If we don’t keep up with our friends, it’s likely we’ll lose them or grow distant. If we don’t keep on top of school or work, things break down. If we don’t actively work to better our community and society, it degenerates. The fact of Entropy is so obvious, it can seem pointless even to point it out.

Observing this fact, however, enables us to gain a further insight into how we should live our lives, and forces us (should we consider the matter with due gravity) into one of two places: hope or despair. We either despair—seeing that all things are passing, that “all is vanity,” that there is nothing lasting, that life and all our creations are like a sandcastle doomed to be lost with the tide, that we should say with Job, “naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither”— or we hope, we find a supernatural hope, a hope in God so great that we might even finish Job’s lamentation in the same way he did, declaring, “the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” Even now we are the subjects of St. Peter’s prayer, who intercedes for us in the heavenly court with the words of his first epistle, “the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”

In Christ, we are simply not given any reason to despair. Our Maker spoke words of comfort to the prophet Jeremiah, “before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” From before the beginning God not only sanctifies us (that is, sets us apart), but ordains us (that is, directs us towards an end). God forms us in the womb, sets us apart for His service, moves us towards our end, and helps us to imitate Him in all things. God stands with us ready to provide grace and help in cooperating with Him in the plan of His Providence and in the turns of fate, enabling us by His constancy to ourselves be constant, that after we “have suffered a while,” we might be made settled and established—not to be moved and dissolved by the forces of sin and of Entropy, but to build our house “upon the rock” that is Christ.

Until, by the mercy and love of God, we might be given the infinite privilege of beatitude, we are called to imitate the constancy of God in our own lives and in our own relationships with others. “Observe constancy” is the motto of my family going back five-hundred years: be constant in your dealings, in your friendships, in your prayer, in your service, in your submission. Keep faith with God, with others, and with yourself. In this way can one be truly happy and imitate Christ, who was constant and true even unto His death on the Cross. Be constant with God even as God is constant with us. Should we turn often to Him in prayer, then just as we find in Him a rock from which flows the water of life, so can we be to others—be they friends, family, loved ones, or strangers—sources of stability and strength. How important is this especially for men who would be husbands! Constancy and stability in Christ and towards the world are necessary for these men who are charged by St. Paul to be to their wives as is Christ to the Church—to be there for the Beloved Disciple to lean upon, to be a source of calm in the midst of the storm, to be willing to lay down their lives in an instant for the sake of the ones they love and protect.

So it is that constancy is necessary for the Christian—it is implicit in all the virtues, theological or cardinal, whether it be faith, hope, or charity, none can be practiced to their fullest extent if one lacks constancy. In a modern world characterized primarily by the effects of Entropy, the Christian can often be distinguished especially by this serene quality of stability. Only in God can we find the divine aid needed to overcome the worldly Entropy we find surrounding us, to find the strength required to persevere in Grace, and to obtain the grace of final perseverance requisite for eternal beatitude—eternal constancy.