St Thomas Aquinas is known for his profound doctrine about the nature of God. For him, what lies at the heart of the nature of God is simplicity. This means that in God there are no parts, no change, no confusion. For us humans, the call to holiness involves a growth towards simplicity in our lives.

We may recall how, during the 1960’s, young people in various countries led a movement back to simplicity in life. They were rejecting their parents’ emphasis on the production and accumulation of goods. Hippies, as they called them, soon realized the tremendous difficulties in going ‘back to nature’.

That period of recent European history represents a continuing search in the twentieth century for a way of life that is simple. This trend explains why many people, even nowadays, are finding that they need to clear out all the accumulated litter of their lives. They yearn to allow themselves for the first time in a long while to see the world in a clear vision. This is not easy. For many of us in affluent societies, the situation is such that we have so many things that we’ve lost sight of their use. Immediate satisfaction of superficial needs has dominated our lives. There are even shops that specialise in selling things that have virtually no practical use. To free ourselves from this situation, it is imperative to know how to stop and reflect. The number of choices we face is always getting higher. We need to change from blind consumers to educated consumers, with a firm conviction that, in society, higher number of educated consumers will ultimately push towards a responsible economy.

How should we proceed? The way forward is clear. Buy fewer things, only those that are essential. Decide for yourself what you need. Outsmart the advertisments by recognizing the superficiality of their rhetoric. Find pride in coping with less rather than with more. Strangely enough, religion itself may be associated with a life-style that is far from simple. Religion is sometimes associated with complex institutions replete with rules and rituals. Many of these may end up complicating our lives instead of liberating us.

St Ignatius writes that all things on the face of the earth are created for the use of human beings, to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they were created. It follows, he says, that we ought to use these things to the extent that they help us towards our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it. For St.Ignatius, the expression ‘ all things on the face of the earth’ means literally all things: not only those that we find in nature, but also those we produce ourselves through the use of our reason and technology. This point therefore should make us reflect on our use not only of food and drink, but also of all instruments, gadgets, and innumerable other items imposed on us by aggressive advertising. Ignatius based his doctrine on the end we seek. This should be the major criterion for a simplification of our life-style. And what is the end we seek? St Augustine reminds us that our human heart is always seeking. Nothing seems to be large enough to satisfy our deepest longing. Our heart is made for God. We will only find rest when we rest in God.

(Credit to author Fr Louis Caruana SJ – source CIS newsletter Oct 2005)