The Incarnation of Christ was of such cosmic significance it altered and shook the heavens. A star appeared. The2nd Chapter of the Gospel of Luke tells us that a heavenly host appeared to shepherds at the time of Christ's birth: "And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angels, praising God and saying: 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.'" The angelic host spoke of an earthly peace for people within themselves and toward others. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary comments on this passage of Scripture:
"The angels' revelation of the meaning of Jesus is accepted by lowly shepherds and pondered by Mary, who models for believers the necessity of reflecting upon and embodying peace."
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The Holy Family by Juan Simón Gutiérrez, 1680 |
I think Godly peace is most at home in human simplicity and simpleness. Perhaps that's why the angelic host appeared to shepherds, and Jesus was born into a humble family.
Recently I watched a documentary about the cloistered Carmelite
nuns at Wolverhampton, in the west midlands of England. One nun said simplicity
can bring truth to people. It is true if you are searching for truth.
Jesus said, "I am the way and the
truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me."
Our interior life must remain as simple and quiet
as possible if we are to be sensitive to the presence of the Holy Spirit and
the Word of truth. Christ is the Word that is God. The psalmist wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "Be
still and know, that I am God." Our interior life must not be cluttered by the cares and
worries that incessantly clamour for our attention. We
must learn to be still even in the storms of life and trust God unreservedly.

There is wisdom and truth to be found in simplicity. It can be discovered in
solitudes of cloistered environments. My solitudes have often come from being
shut-in my little house during brittle, snowbound Canadian winters. I have advanced
multiple sclerosis so I dare not venture out in my wheelchair. Days are short
and nights are long. I wait in stillness for Christ. He comes to me with gentle
peace.
Our technological world can distract us with the allure and promise of
pleasures. Pope Francis wrote that a "technological society has succeeded
in multiplying occasions of pleasure yet found it very difficult to engender joy." It
is in joy that we encounter God. He is the source and meaning to our lives and
humanity.
Joy can be traced back to the simpleness of our earliest life. We did not know how to express our first encounters with this sense of ecstasy. They
simply came for a fleeting moment – from far beyond us – then vanished
without warning. Life became ordinary again. We were left with a vague yearning for somewhere
or something we did not know. We knew we were known and loved before our
beginnings when Something or Someone was with us and loved us.
This primordial knowledge was inexplicable (it still is) yet joy bore witness
to it. C.S. Lewis wrote about being surprised by this divine joy in his
wonderful little book, Surprised by Joy
and again in his essay entitled "The
Weight of Glory."
I think it has something to do with what the
Scriptures reveal about God: "He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can
fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

In matters of simplicity and joy, babies and small children have much to teach
their elders. There is a difference between simplicity and simpleness.
Simplicity is a way of being while simpleness is a state of being. It
embarrasses me to mention this primordial joy or ecstasy but I think that if
your reach back to your earliest memory you will discover what it was there. C.S.
Lewis said this about the spiritual experiences of small children:
“From our own childhoods we remember that before
our elders thought us capable of “understanding” anything, we already had
spiritual experiences as pure and momentous as any we have undergone since, ...
From Christianity itself we learn there is a level ― in the long run
the only level of importance ― on which the learned and the adult
have no advantage at all over the simple and the child.”
Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as
little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." Notice
that Christ said childlike not childish. Just as small children completely
trust their parents, we are called completely trust Christ and be obedient to
him and His word.
I have spent much of my adult life trying to recapture the joy I knew as a
small child. In a strange and unexpected way, chronic and serious neurological
disease has blessed me in that regard. By losing my health, my career at an
early age, and my sense of self-sufficiency, extraneous things in my life have
been stripped away,
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Thomas a Kempis
(1380-1471) |
leaving only that which is essential. Thomas a Kempis
wrote:
"Sometimes it is to our advantage to endure misfortunes
and adversities, for they make us enter our inner selves and acknowledge that
we are in a place of exile and that we ought not to rely on anything in this
world."
Those words resonate with me. I am an old man now. More thirty years of
serious neurological disease have turned me inward to seek the reality of the
unseen.
The Apostle Paul said:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our
outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being is being renewed day by
day.
For our light affliction, which is but a moment, is working for us a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things
that are seen, but the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are
temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
All I have left that means anything to me is Divine
love, which kindles both simplicity and spiritual simpleness. Together they
provide fertile ground for joy to take root and blossom as my constant
possession in eternity.
MDP
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