Called to Simplicity
By Tim O’Brien
What does it mean to feel called to simplicity?
Humor me a moment and look up an image if you can.
It’s “Sassetta” by Stefano di Giovanni. The Madonna of Humility.
Earlier this fall, I traveled to Rome for the Canonizations of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis. It was the day before the Canonization Mass, I was at the Vatican Museum, and I had just exited the Sistine Chapel. My charger wasn’t working and my phone had run out of battery. No distractions, just God speaking to me through the beauty before me. I turned the corner and saw “Sassetta,” which depicts the Virgin Mary sitting on the ground, rather than a throne, and I was struck by her gaze on her Son. The simplicity of the painting spoke to me. A mother and her son. Our Mother and our Father. It was in this moment that I knew then and there, what it meant to be called to simplicity.
I needn’t look further. For humility and simplicity are intertwined.
I reflected back to my time in Cap Corps and reflected on the times in which I was fed in the simplicity of the year. I was given what I needed for the journey.
“The Cap Corps year is a year set aside,” as Fr. Dave preached in his welcome homily last year. It was a year in which we would step into simplicity, among other pillars of community, prayer, and service – everything we would need for the journey. Jesus was, in a very real sense, calling on us as he called on St. Martin of Tours, to surrender our cloak. For it is in surrendering, that we can run to Him more freely.
During the year, there were countless ways in which I wasn’t initially aware of in which God was asking me to surrender more. It was in the letting go, that I could see how God was calling me closer to Him. Calling on me to run to Him. As we formed community together, our gifts melded together for how we would pray, serve, and lead each other to Christ.
Leaning into the Capuchin way, I saw more closely the beauty of simplicity present in the Order. I came to appreciate their littleness, much like St. Therese of Lisieux. The littleness of showing up for one another whether it be for counsel, for laughter, for a dose of humility, or to help get a bird out of the attic (thanks Br. Ryan), means that a Brother is well-equipped to show up along the way.
Along my way in life, I have found that it is when I set aside my worries, my fears, and my doubts that I come to see God more fully. And I am at peace when I respond to God’s attempts of drawing me in. This much was true when, Br. Stephen instructed me to “pay attention to where the peace is" during a one-on-one.
A simple phrase, really, to pay attention to where the peace is - but a simple phrase that has had a profound impact on me. For my heart is restless until it rests in Him.
