Naturalness and Simplicity

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

The Messiah came into the Temple in His Mother’s arms. No one would have paid much attention to the young couple who were taking a little Child to present Him to the Lord.

The mothers had to wait for the priest at the East Gate. Our Lady went there with the other women and waited for her turn when the priest would take her Son in his arms. Joseph was by her side, ready to pay the ransom.

The ceremony of Mary’s purification and the ransom of the Child from service to the Temple was no different in appearance from what normally happened on those occasions.

The whole of Mary’s life is permeated with a deep simplicity. She always carries out her vocation as Mother of the Redeemer naturally. She appears in her cousin Elizabeth’s house to help and look after her during those three months (Luke 1:39-40).

She prepares the swaddling clothes and everything for her Son. She lives for thirty years with Jesus, never tiring of looking at Him, dealing with Him with great love and with complete simplicity.

When she obtains His first miracle from her Son in Cana, she does it so naturally that not even the bride and groom realize what a wonderful event has taken place. She never makes a show of her special privileges.

St. Josemaría in The Way says, “Mary, the most holy Mother of God, passes unnoticed as just one more among the women of her town. Learn from her how to live with naturalness” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 499).

Our Lady’s simplicity and naturalness made her humanly very particularly welcoming and attractive. Jesus, her Son, during the thirty years of His hidden life, was always the model of simplicity. When He begins to preach the good news, He doesn’t carry out a noisy, spectacular activity. Jesus is simplicity itself in His birth, in the presentation in the Temple, or when He manifests His divinity through the miracles which God alone can work.

Our Savior shuns all show and vain glory and false theatrical gestures. He makes Himself accessible to all; to the incurably sick and the most abandoned, who come to Him trustingly to beg the remedy for their infirmities; to the Apostles who ask Him the meaning of the parables; to the little children who embrace Him confidently.

Simplicity is a sign of humility. It is radically opposed to anything false, artificial, or deceitful. It is also a very necessary virtue for our dealings with God, for spiritual guidance, and for our daily life with those around us.

We are told in The Way, “Naturalness. Let your lives as Christian men, as Christian women—your salt and your light—flow spontaneously, without anything odd or absurd; always carry with you our spirit of simplicity” (ibid., Point 379).

We are told in St. Matthew, “If your eye is clear, the whole body will be lit up” (cf. Matt. 6:22). Simplicity demands clarity, transparency, and a right intention which preserves us from living a double life, from serving two masters: God and ourselves.

Simplicity also requires a strong will which leads us to choose what is good, and controls the disorderly tendencies of a life exclusively of the senses, and it dominates whatever is disordered and complicated in every person. One writer says the simple person judges events, persons, and things with a right judgment illumined by faith, not by momentary impressions (cf. I. Celaya, Simplicity).

Simplicity is a consequence and characteristic of the spiritual childhood to which Our Lord calls us, especially during these days when we are contemplating His birth and hidden life.

We’re told in St. Matthew, “Believe me, unless you become like little children again, in simplicity and innocence, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

We go to Our Lord like children, without pretense or show, because we know that He doesn’t pay attention to external appearances, but “reads the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). We feel Our Lord’s loving glance upon us, which invites us to be authentic, to act with simplicity in His presence, to speak to Him in a personal, direct, and trusting prayer.

That is why we have to avoid any formality in our relationship with God, although, St. Josemaría says, “piety has its own good manners” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 541), which leads us to be refined, especially in the liturgy. But respect is not just being conventional, nor is it a purely external attitude. It is rooted in true piety of the heart.

In our ascetical struggle, we have to acknowledge what we are really like and accept our limitations, knowing that God sees them and takes them into account. Far from worrying us, this should lead us to trust Him more, asking His help to overcome our defects and to achieve the aims which we see are currently necessary in our interior life—those points we’re following up more closely in our particular and general examinations of conscience.

If we are simple before God we will know how to be simple with those whom we meet every day: our relations, friends, and colleagues. The simple person is one who acts and speaks in complete harmony with what he thinks and desires. He is a person who shows himself as he is, without trying to appear to be what he’s not, or to have what he does not have.

It always gives one great joy to meet a straightforward soul, without nooks and crannies, someone we can trust, like Nathaniel who earned Our Lord’s praise: “Here comes one who belongs to the true Israel; there is no falsehood in him” (John 1:47).

On the other hand, elsewhere Our Lord puts us on guard against “false prophets, men who come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matt. 7:15), against those who think one thing and do another.

In everyday life, any complication places an obstacle between ourselves and others and takes us away from God.

St. Josemaría says in The Way, “That pose and that self-satisfied manner don’t suit you at all; they are easily seen to be affected. Try, at least, to use them neither with God, nor with your director, nor with your brothers; and between them and you there will be one barrier less” (J. Escrivá, ibid., Point 47).

In a special way, we have to show ourselves with complete simplicity in prayer, in spiritual guidance, and in Confession, speaking clearly and transparently with the desire that we be known well, avoiding general statements and half-truths, and beating about the bush, without hiding anything.

Our Lord wants us to show plainly what is happening to us on the inside: our joys, our worries, the underlying reasons for our conduct.

Simplicity and naturalness are extremely attractive virtues. To see this we just have to look at Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We need to know that these are difficult virtues, because pride gives us an exaggerated idea of ourselves, making us want to appear before others as more than we are or have.

We so often feel humiliated because we want to be the center of attention or to enjoy the esteem of those around us; because we don’t admit that at times we do things badly; because we are not content to act and to pass unnoticed; because we seek the compensation of a word of praise or gratitude.

We complicate our lives very often because we don’t accept our limitations and because we take ourselves too seriously. Pride can lead us to talk too much about ourselves, to think almost exclusively about our personal problems, or to try to attract attention—sometimes in complicated, obscure ways.

It can even make us pretend to have non-existent illnesses or joys and sorrows which don’t correspond to our state of mind.

Affectation, boasting, hypocrisy, and lies are all opposed to simplicity, and therefore to friendship. They also make it difficult to live harmoniously with others. They are a real obstacle to a harmonious family life.

The simplicity Our Lord teaches is not naiveté. “Remember,” He says in St. Matthew, “I am sending you out to be like sheep among wolves. You must then be prudent as serpents and yet innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16).

We Christians have to go through the world with these two virtues—simplicity and prudence—which mutually perfect each other.

To be simple, we have to be careful to have a right intention in our actions, which should be directed to God. Only in this way can we overcome our complicated feelings, our momentary impressions, or the confused life of the senses. Together with a right intention, we need clear, concise—brutal if necessary—sincerity, to expose our weaknesses without trying to hide or deny them.

In The Way, St. Josemaría says, “Look: the Apostles, for all their evident and undeniable defects, were sincere…transparent. You too have evident and undeniable defects. May you not lack simplicity” (J. Escrivá, ibid., Point 932).

When we meditate on the life of Jesus, we realize that the greater part of His existence was spent in the obscurity of a village which was hardly known even in His own country. We understand how some of His neighbors said, “Go to Judea, so that thy disciples also may see your doings. Nobody is content to act in secret if he wishes to make himself known at large” (John 7:3-4).

The value of Our Lord’s actions was always infinite, and He gave the same glory to His Father when He was sawing wood as when He was raising a dead man, and when the crowds were following Him, praising God.

Many events had taken place in the world during those thirty years which Jesus spent in Nazareth. The peace of Augustus had come to an end and the Roman legions were preparing to resist the onslaught of the barbarians. In Judea, Archelaus had been sent into exile for his innumerable crimes. In Rome, the Senate had declared Octavian Augustus to be a god.

But the Son of God was then actually in a little village, some ninety miles from Jerusalem. He lived in an ordinary house, probably made of sundried bricks like the rest, with His Mother, Mary, because Joseph must have died by this time.

What did God-made-Man do in that place? He worked, like all the other men in the village. He was no different from them in anything striking, because He was also one of them. He was Perfect God and Perfect Man.

We can’t forget that the temporal existence of the Son of God consisted of His hidden life as well as His apostolic life.

When Jesus returns later to Nazareth, His fellow countrymen are amazed at His wisdom and the wonders reported of Him. They know Him because of His job, and because He is the son of Mary.

“What is the meaning of this wisdom that has been given him? ... Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (cf. Mark 6:2-3).

St. Matthew tells us elsewhere what they thought of Christ in His village. They have seen Him work every day, for many years. That is why they emphasize His job.

We also see from Our Lord’s preaching that He knows the world of work very well. He knows it as someone who has experienced it firsthand, so He uses many examples of people working.

In those years of His hidden life at Nazareth, Jesus is teaching us the value of ordinary life as a means of holiness. In Christ Is Passing By, St. Josemaría says: “The ordinary life of a man among his fellows is not something dull and uninteresting. It is there that the Lord wants the vast majority of his children to achieve sanctity” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 110).

Our days can be sanctified if they are like those of Jesus in those years of His hidden, simple life in Nazareth: if we work conscientiously, and remain in God’s presence while working; if we live charity with those around us; if we accept contradictions without complaining; if our professional and social relations are a way of helping others and bringing them close to God.

If we contemplate the life of Jesus during these years without any external brilliance we will see Him working well, with nothing done badly, filling the hours with intense work. We can imagine Our Lord gathering up His tools, leaving everything tidy, with a pleasant greeting for the neighbor who comes in to order something.

He will have the same greeting for those who are not very friendly, or whose conversation is not very agreeable. Jesus would be known for doing things in this way, because “He has done well in all his doings” (Mark 7:37), including material things.

All who came near Him would feel moved to be better and would receive the help of Christ’s silent prayer.

Our Lord’s job was not outstanding. It wasn’t light or easy, nor was there in it a great future from a human point of view. But Jesus loved His daily work and taught us to love ours, because if we do not, it is impossible to sanctify it. One writer says, “For when one does not love work, it is not possible to find any other kind of satisfaction in it, no matter how one tries to turn to something else” (Federico Suarez, Joseph of Nazareth).

Our Lord also felt the weariness and fatigue of daily work, and experienced the monotony of days which were always the same, with nothing of special interest. This consideration is also a great help to us, because “the sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves in the present condition of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do (cf. John 17:4).

“This work of salvation has been accomplished through suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day (cf. Luke 9:23) in the activity that he is called to perform” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Laborem exercens, Point 27, September 14, 1981).

Jesus, during those thirty years of hidden life, is the model we should imitate in our life as ordinary people who work every day with naturalness and simplicity.

The Second Vatican Council says in Lumen gentium, “When we contemplate Our Lord we have a deeper understanding of the obligation that is ours to work well. We cannot pretend to sanctify badly done work.

“We have to learn to find God in our human occupations, to help our fellow citizens, and to contribute towards raising the standards of the whole of society and of creation” (Vatican II, cf. Lumen gentium, Point 41, November 21, 1964).

Someone who is bad at their job—a student who doesn’t study, a shoemaker whose work is slipshod—if they don’t change and improve, they cannot attain sanctity in the middle of the world.

We have to win heaven with our ordinary work. As Gaudium et spes says, “We need, then, to try to imitate Jesus whose labor with his hands greatly ennobled the dignity of work” (Vatican II, cf. Gaudium et spes, Point 67, December 7, 1965).

To sanctify our tasks, we have to bear in mind that “a Christian should do all honest human work…with the greatest perfection possible…with professional competence, and done for love of God’s will as a service to mankind.

“Human work done in this manner,” said St. Josemaría, “no matter how humble or insignificant it may seem, helps to shape the world in a Christian way. The world’s divine dimension is made more visible and our human labor is thus incorporated into the marvelous work of Creation and Redemption. It is raised to the order of grace. It is sanctified and becomes God’s work” (J. Escrivá, Conversations, Point 10).

We can ask Our Lord that we might put that virtue of naturalness and simplicity into everything that we do. To learn how to be simple, we just need to contemplate Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in all the scenes of the infancy of Our Lord, in the midst of their ordinary life at work.

We can ask them to make us like children before God, that we may talk to Him personally, without anonymity, without fear.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

UI