I’m reading the book, Holy Simplicity, by Raoul Plus. It’s become one of my all-time favorites virtually overnight. What he writes reminds me of the childlike faith and trust Eileen George—and most famously, St. Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”—demonstrated so masterfully.
In the book, Fr. Plus quotes the Abbe Long-Hasselmans, a “highly distinguished priest of Marseilles who… blamed himself… for an injurious tendency to introspection”:
I am completely worn out by so many complications. I used to think them a sign of profoundness; but the living spirit is not to be found there. God is infinitely simple. My complexity—all complexity—is born of a mixture: I want to combine God—the highest asceticism—with the world, the most subtle pleasures. Naturally that is no simple undertaking… Simple as the dove: I belong to God.
I live for God. This is pleasing to God—I will do it; this is not pleasing to God—I will not do it.
And I am perfectly certain that I shall lose nothing: a simple soul strikes a clearer, more compelling note. A complex soul pleases itself only, and that not for long; it interests others, again not for long—and then it wearies everybody.
The task is not so much to learn as to unlearn: one must put aside conventions and ready-made phrases; see our Lord as He is and lay ourselves at His feet as we really are.
Our society sure could use some of that simplicity the good Abbe speaks of. I mean, for crying out loud, we can’t even agree on the definition of the most basic terms anymore, like “Christian” or “woman.” Abortion is healthcare, and sin is nonexistent. True simplicity, I think, would be to listen to our conscience, that tiny built-in voice that tells us exactly what is right and wrong in God’s eyes, and then act on it. Simple as that. Of course, simple and easy are not always the same thing.
Only when we’re like little children before the Lord will we enter the kingdom of Heaven, says Jesus. That’s what holy simplicity is like. That’s what I want to be like. Please, VatiGod*, grant me simplicity of heart, so that I may be able to love and adore you in a way a child loves and adores its father.
Just stumbled over this timely quote from St. (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina, one of my favorite Saints: “Prayer is the best armor we have, it is the key which opens the heart of God.”
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Everything today seems to fall under the motto of “childlike faith.” This excerpt from Fr. Basil Maturin from the book, Spiritual Guidelines for Souls Seeking God, blows my mind:
It does indeed produce an entire change in the whole conception of the Christian life when one passes from under the law of prohibitions to live under the benign influences of the law of the Beatitudes. One ceases merely to strive against particular sins and begins truly to live and to grow in holiness. It is a veritable conversion…
There are those who have not yet entered into this view of life and who consequently are timid, fearful, always dreading evil that they fear will overmaster them; there is in their life little of Christian liberty and expansiveness and no joy. A vast part of their nature remains untouched by grace. There are the germs of virtues in them that have never been developed; they hold back through fear from many a sphere of usefulness; there is a constant introspection and self-analysis; they seem never to be able to get out of themselves; they live in an atmosphere of spiritual self-consciousness. There is no such thing possible for them as self-abandonment in trustful love, but always a restless sense of insecurity; there is no confidence in God or in the power of His grace. Their thought of God is rather as judge than Savior. …
And then there comes a change; they pass into another atmosphere where love reigns, where positive action takes the place of mere watchfulness and self-restraint; they launch out into the deep, put forth their powers, and strive to live rather than not to die—to do good rather than not to do evil, to put forth all their strength and energy in the loving service of God and man.
Amazing.