Vigils Reading – Weekday

Simplicity and Openness2
from the Collected Works of Saint Rafael Arnaiz

One must walk so many tortured paths to arrive at simplicity. Complication is such an uncomfortable thing…and we human beings like to complicate everything for ourselves. Often, if we fail to practice virtue, it’s because our complicated nature rejects what is simple. Often, we fail to appreciate the magnificence hidden within an act of simplicity, because we look for greatness in complicated things; we judge the magnificence of things based on their difficulty…I clearly see that what seemed dark and complicated to me before is actually rather simple and straightforward.

Virtue…God…the interior life, how difficult I thought it was to live that! It’s not that I’m virtuous now, or that I have a completely clear knowledge of God and spiritual life, but I’ve realized that you get there without complications or complexities, without clever philosophy, without technical challenges. I’ve come to see that you reach God in precisely the opposite manner. You come to know Him through simplicity of heart and being uncomplicated. There’s nothing difficult about acts of love…What’s truly difficult is wanting to know God by searching out His mysteries. The former leads us to God, and the latter does not…

So, then, why do we lack virtue at times? Because we aren’t simple; because we complicate our desires; because everything we want is made difficult by our weak will, which gets carried away by whatever is pleasing, comfortable, and unnecessary, and often by its passions. We lack virtue not because it is difficult, but because we don’t want it. We lack patience…because we don’t want it. We lack temperance…because we don’t want it. We lack chastity…for the same reason. We would be saints if we wanted to be…it’s much harder to become an engineer than it is to become a saint. If only we had faith!

The interior life…the spiritual life, a life of prayer. “My God! That must be difficult!” But it’s not at all. Get rid of everything in your heart that’s in the way, and you’ll find God there. That’s it. Often we look for things that aren’t there, and on the other hand we’ll walk right by a treasure without seeing it…We look for Him in a whole tangled mess of things, and to us, the more complicated they are, the better. And all the while, we are carrying God around inside of us, yet we don’t look for Him there. Collect yourself within…gaze upon your nothingness, gaze upon the nothingness of the world, place yourself at the foot of the cross, and if you are simple, you will see God.

Behold, the life of prayer. We don’t need to add something that’s already there. Rather, we need to get rid of what is in the way. I say “something that’s already there” because I assume the soul to be in a state of God’s grace, but if God is not present there at times, it’s because we don’t want that. We have such a great big heap of interests, distractions, affinities, vain desires, pretensions…we have so much of the world inside of us that God is driven away…But all we have to do is want Him, and God will fill the soul again in such a way that you’d have to be blind not to see it.

If a soul wants to live according to God’s ways…it must be rid of everything that is not Him…and that is it. It’s quite easy. If we wanted to, and if we asked God with simplicity, we would make great progress in the spiritual life. If we wanted to be saints, we would be…But we’re such fools that we don’t want to…We prefer to waste time on stupid vanities. We’ll regret that someday.

But I am very happy, because I have come to see that everything is simple and straightforward…and this is within my reach. May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary come to my aid. Amen.

2Saint Rafael Arnaiz. The Collected Works. Ed. Sr. Maria Gonzalo-Garcia, OCSO. Trans. Catherine Addington. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2022. 542-544.