Keep It Simple: The Busy Catholic's Guide to Growing Closer to God - Softcover

Emmanuel De Gibergues

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1928832113 ISBN 13: 9781928832119

Publisher: Sophia Inst Pr, 2000

Synopsis

The simple way to God - for folks without time for elaborate devotions and methods! At last — a spiritual book for Catholics who have to devote more time to making dinner and picking up the kids than to meditation and prayer! Essential (and easy) reading for busy Catholics, Keep It Simple shows you how to grow closer to God in the things you already do every day, without burdening you with numerous devotions or complicated methods.

Author Emmanuel de Gibergues explores the virtue of simplicity — that is, having the single intention of pleasing God in all that you do. You’ll learn what a difference simplicity can make for you — as it did for our Lord and our Lady. You’ll come to recognize the signs of true simplicity and find out how to practice simplicity toward God and in your life’s activities. Even better, you’ll find the secrets of practicing simplicity within yourself — a deceptively difficult spiritual discipline that de Gibergues makes easy here.

As this book helps you bring the calming and transforming virtue of simplicity into every part of your life, you’ll become better able to direct all things to God and learn new ways to be attentive to His presence in your life. Don’t rush through life without the saving message of these pages! Keep It Simple reveals to you true simplicity - how it isn’t willful ignorance or simple-mindedness; your intentions - are they pure? Why this could be the most important question you’ll ever answer; two advantages of simplicity - what you’ll gain by clearing your life of complications; how simplicity can make you generous, courageous, and more loving; failure: your attitude toward it may be crippling your spiritual life. Find out how; the most dreaded enemy of your soul’s progress - is it keeping you from deepening your happiness and love for God?; two indispensable qualities for beginners in the spiritual life: do you have them?; and much more to help you simplify your life and come closer to God!

About this title

About the Author

Emmanuel de Gibergues was a bishop who, despite his many cares for the Church in France, was able to set forth — with a wonderfully gentle spirit — the sublime virtue of holy simplicity.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Cultivate the spirit of simplicity Why does the Gospel present to us the dove as the model and ideal of Christian simplicity, saying, “Be ye simple as doves”? To understand this, we must have a clear idea of what simplicity really is. Simplicity, or purity of intention, consists in keeping before yourself, in all your thoughts, words, and acts, one and the same end, one and the same object - namely, the pleasing of God, or, more accurately, the doing of His will. Thus understood, simplicity appears to us as a virtue at once essential and far-reaching. “Man was created for God,” says St. Ignatius at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, in that first meditation, which he justly calls fundamental, because it is the foundation of the whole Christian order. These admirable Exercises are based entirely upon this first profound truth; they are, as it were, but its commentary and development. God is, in effect, the sole veritable end, the last end of man. If man sees only God, seeks only God, attaches himself only to God; if he voluntarily directs toward God his thoughts, his words, his acts, and his whole life; if, in some sort, he passes amid creatures without pausing, if he fails to find in them his repose as in an end, but desires to rest only in God - then he is in the way of truth and order; he is righteous and holy, because he is perfectly simple. The catechism expresses the same idea in saying, “Man is created to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him, and thus to reach eternal life.” Now, how do we refer to God our thoughts, words, and actions? By our intention - that is, by the motive that determines our will freely to produce them. Our operations and our actions considered in themselves, independent of the motive that has prompted them, have, properly speaking, no moral value; they are bodies without souls. The moral value is in us, in our free will, which is the soul of all that we do and gives to our actions their meaning and their worth. Men judge us according to the exterior, according to the words that they hear and the actions that they see. This is why they are so often unjust, severe, and ill-natured. But God judges us according to what He sees within; He looks on our heart, our will, our motive, and our intention, and it is according to these that He approves or blames, rewards or punishes. Such is the meaning of these words in the Gospel: “If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome. But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be darksome.” The eye signifies intention, for, just as the eye directs our steps, so does the intention guide the movements of our soul; the intention is the eye of our soul. If our soul looks toward God, if it freely directs toward Him our thoughts, words, and actions, then all that we do, all that we say, and all that we think becomes by this very fact supernatural and good. The Gospel expresses this in saying, “Thy whole body shall be lightsome.”

Thus, the merit of human actions lies wholly in the intention. Our actions have simply the value of our intention. In affirming this, the Gospel overthrows pharisaism, and at the same time substitutes the religion of the spirit and the veritable kingdom of God that is within us. Thenceforth, simplicity becomes the soul of the spiritual life, since it consists precisely in purity of intention. Simplicity gives to the life of the spirit all its depth and value. The simple soul is ever pleasing to God, because it ever looks toward Him, and seeks for Him always, having no ambition other than to do His will in order to procure His glory. To be simple is to see, love, and desire God in all creatures and in all things; it is to unify one’s life with God.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sophia Inst Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1928832113
• ISBN 13: 9781928832119
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 146