Detachment and simplicity

            THESE virtues may not be popular these days—in fact, they are unpopular, as in, ignored if not disliked and hated—and that’s why we have to bring them up from time to time, for they are actually important and indispensable in our life.

            The gospel is filled with reminders and encouragements for us to live these virtues. Just one passage to prove the point:  

            “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.

            “But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Mk 10,29-31)

            We have to relish these words because, since they were spoken by Christ, they will always come true. They never fail, they are no mere bluff. It’s worthwhile to build our hope on them and to make them give shape and direction to our thoughts, desires, words and actions.

            If we bother to study the lives of saints, then we will see how these words are indeed effective. We should try to give more attention to saints than to media-hyped idols and celebrities, since the former truly give more authentic witness to our life’s true character than the latter.

            It’s not that we have to reject our parents, the family, our business and other earthly affairs we have. Our Lord himself commands us to honor our parents and to subdue the earth. We just have to learn how to love our parents and to get involved in our temporal concerns properly.

            That means that while we have to love our parents and others as much as possible and get seriously immersed in our earthly affairs, we just have to see to it that our heart and mind are solely for our Lord, that our motives are nothing other than love for God and love for others which should go together.

            We cannot underestimate our duty to love our parents, since our parents are our first link to God and to life itself and also the first representatives of God to us, especially in our upbringing and education. But our love for our parents should start and end with God. It should not replace our love for God.

            Neither can we underrate our duty to love others, since loving them is a concrete manifestation of our love for God. We just have to see to it that our love for others truly leads us to God, and not away from him, as when we just use them or take advantage of them. That would corrupt our love for others.

            As to our involvement in the earthly and temporal affairs, like our profession, business and politics, etc., we have to understand that God wants us to immersed in them without getting lost as to the purpose of our participation there.

            These earthly affairs are our paths to God. They are not avenues to pursue merely personal goals. Everything has to be related to God.

            The virtues of detachment and simplicity help us to keep our proper focus on God. They help us to keep our intimacy and closeness with God, which is important if we are to survive spiritually and morally in our world today, full of temptations and distractions.

            These virtues are not just a matter of self-denial and of keeping a kind of low-profile in life. They, in fact, can sometimes require us to be assertive and to do things in a big scale or in public or in a very artistic or trail-blazing way.

            They simply ask us to keep our heart whole for God and for authentic loving, instead of being entangled with earthly if not personal and self-oriented things. And this is a big challenge to us nowadays, since we are constantly tempted to be merely worldly and egoistic.

            They keep us properly anchored, enjoying a sense of stability along the flow of life that is getting increasingly rapid and complicated.

            We have to examine ourselves frequently to see if our heart is still with God or is it already held hostage by something or someone else. Let’s be firm in our belief that what we give up for God is nothing compared to what we will gain from him even now.