SIMPLE GOD FOR A SIMPLE HEART

Mt 11:25-27

A dear friend of mine, Sr. Annie Petta, O. Carm., once complained, “Father, it is so difficult to catch you! It is easier for me to get the pope than you.” Of course, it is easy for her to get an audience with the pope because she is a good friend of Archbishop Marini, the pope’s master of ceremonies. But I smiled and said, “Sister, only the pure of heart can see me.”

There are many times when we exhaust every logical reasoning and scientific method to understand the ways of God, but to no avail. Our intelligence and wisdom simply cannot grasp Him. He is beyond our reach. That is no surprise, for He is God. Unless He allows Himself to be within our reach, we cannot reach Him. Until He reveals Himself to us, we cannot know Him.

But God is within the reach of children. He reveals Himself to all, but only the simple-hearted can know Him. He is accessible to all, but only the pure of heart see Him. Not the clever and the learned, but children.

One of the reasons why we fail to experience fully the graciousness of God is our exclusive reliance on logic and technique. Grace does not go by logic and technique. Miracles do not follow scientific method or learned reasoning. Grace is always an absurdity for the world. Miracles are foolishness for the clever and impossibilities for the learned. When we are simple-hearted and pure of heart, we recognize everything to be grace, a miracle, a blessing from God. We get excited over even the simplest things because in them we also see and come to know more about God.

To be simple-hearted is to be surprised even by simple miracles that happen everyday, such as the rising of the sun, the blooming of a flower, the availability of air around us. To be pure of heart means to be single-hearted. It is to be focused on God and to focus everything on God. It is not only to have God in our hearts, but to have our hearts in God.

When I told Sr. Annie that only the pure of heart can see me, I was, of course, just joking. But when Jesus said that only the childlike can know God and, in the Beatitudes, only the pure of heart shall see God, He was not joking. He was telling the truth. Let us, therefore, strive to remain childlike. Let us be simple-hearted and pure of heart.

God is too simple for my complicated heart.