Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [44]
As a rule, we are only too ready, under the impact of everyday life, to slide from the God-seeking central attitude we have adopted in prayer. We are quick to slip out of our festive garment and to relapse into a purely natural, dull, unloving attitude from which to react to the diverse situations of life. There is even a type of people, markedly discontinuous and wanting in consciousness, who show changes so abrupt and radical as to create the impression of a change of personal identity. Such people are apt suddenly to apply standards entirely different from their previous ones; they unexpectedly lose their taste for what fascinated them but a moment before; they show themselves insensitive to an appeal that has until now seemed to carry much weight with them. It might indeed be said of such a person that two souls (or more) live in his breast.
To this type of behavior true simplicity forms a glaring contrast. It implies a basic identity with oneself, meaning, not only a solid preservation of the essential direction towards Christ, once acquired, but a structural trait of continuity. So far as we possess this virtue, we always keep in contact with what we have formerly recognized to be valid. We do not alter our essential attitude even in relation to single persons and things or to single values and truths, unless an objective change should actually arise which may legitimately account for such a modification.
Continuity exclusively toward one natural good may threaten simplicity
A person confined within his natural attitude may not squander his interests on a multitude of trivial irrelevancies: he may concentrate upon an important cause, consecrate himself to a noble vocation, or be overwhelmed with a great love. However, he will then be exhausted, as it were, by that one thing, valuable, maybe, but yet only one among many human concerns. Everything else is obscured, and he cannot afford to pay adequate attention even to a genuine good if it be unconnected with the thing which now engrosses his interest.
True simplicity empowers man
It is not so with true simplicity, involving an exclusive devotion to the unum necessarium alone. With this, new forces spring up in man; an abundance of spiritual intensity arises from his participation in the life of Christ. New torrents are released, of which he knew nothing before; he is now enabled to react adequately, in a far greater measure than in his former life, to human individualities and the manifoldness of situations. It is a state of mind entirely different from the obsession of blind zeal which compels one to talk always about the one thing one is absorbed in, without regard to the situation and without applying the necessary discretion. Rather we become able, in the attitude of true simplicity, patiently to penetrate every situation, lend ear to every person, and attend to every task.
How inexhaustible becomes thereby the capacity for devoting ourselves to our fellow creatures and to their legitimate cares. Only think of the saints: St. Paul, for example, when he says, “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?” (2 Cor. 11:29). This is a measure of love which transcends all natural categories. Or again, what a never relaxing intensity in attending to a variety of high tasks do we find in St. Albert the Great, adding the immensity of his scientific work to his monastic duties and his episcopal functions! With a similar intent we may point to the life of a St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
From the natural standpoint, such a simultaneity of nobly performed duties might well seem impossible. But the saints could achieve such an abundance of life precisely because they were simple