Today’s first readings focus on our need to focus on the providence of God as well as to embrace the cross (our commitments) of Jesus if we wish to partake of our new creation in Christ. Here are a few thoughts of St. Francis on the value of simplicity in becoming Christ-like:
Simplicity is nothing else but a pure and simple act of charity. This act of simple charity has only one aim and one desire: to love God. (Conf. Coneiro, 96-7) Simplicity is a virtue. Truly simple persons spend their time with the Lord. Learn from the dove to love God in the simplicity of your heart. Doves have only one single partner for whom they do everything. They are quite certain of their love and happy to be in each other’s company. That is, obtain in yourselves an increase of divine love through the simplicity of your heart. (Conf. Coneiro, 97)
Simplicity removes from our hearts all the worry and anxiety that we have searching to know the art of loving God. The only way we can experience and grow in the love of God is to start doing the things that please God. Simplicity includes all the means prescribed to each person, according to one’s particular vocation, to acquire God’s love. (Conf. Coneiro, 98)
Simplicity is opposed to all kinds of subtlety, cheating and duplicity, which are ways we deceive our neighbor. Simplicity requires that our interior disposition match our exterior behavior. This does not imply that we ought to necessarily reveal exteriorly all our interior feelings. God’s love requires that we admit our agitated feelings so that we are able with God’s love to transform them so that they serve God’s good and wholesome purpose.. (Conf. Coneiro, 99-100). This is to say that by cooperating with God’s grace through the use of reason and our free will all of our destructive feelings become transformed through virtuous acts of doing God’s will.
On the one hand we are told to take great care of our perfection and progress, and on the other hand not to think about it. The misery of the human spirit is that it never follows the middle course, but usually runs to extremes. It is these extremes that we must avoid. (Conf. Coneiro, p.103). In the end, true simplicity seeks our well-being in letting ourselves be led and directed absolutely by God’s Spirit. (Ibid)
