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We must consciously yield to the elevating power of values

Of such deep experiences we must make the most so as to detach ourselves from transient goods. We must seize the offer of God contained in that gift-like descent upon us of a high value, and, yielding to its attraction, ascend to a new point of vantage, where we shall be past many things which have previously confined us within the zone of the petty. We must not resist this shattering of a more trivial world where we have found a snug and cozy home for our everyday existence. We must evince a perpetual and alert willingness to follow this upward pull instead of fearfully and slothfully barricading our hearts against it. “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8).

It does not suffice to accept that detachment from lower and more irrelevant things as a gift; we must actively cooperate with it, and assent to it once for all. Otherwise, the effect of that deep experience towards making us free and simple will be confined to its actual duration, as of a psychic episode. Above all, whenever a high human good exercises its releasing effect upon us, we must consciously evoke and experience its manifold relations to God, in order that it may lead us before the face of God. That elevation above petty terrestrial goods must take root in our soul as a permanent attitude of sursum corda, of eagerness to let ourselves be borne aloft to God.

If, invoking Jesus’ assistance and imitating His example, we undergo these experiences in a spirit that enables us to penetrate not merely into the specific content of the high goods in question but into the very presence of the “Father of all lights” (a condition for fully comprehending that specific content itself), then all these experiences will become milestones along our path to true simplicity. Every such gift placed in our lives by God entails an obligation for us to change, to soar upwards, to extricate ourselves from certain meshes, and to acquire greater freedom for God.

Heroism is impossible without true simplicity of soul

Without the possession of true simplicity, no true heroism is possible. Such heroism implies that we are ready to sacrifice, without reserve, all lower goods to a higher one; that we gladly sell all we possess in order to buy the land where the treasure is buried. Heroism in a man means that he does not glance sidewards but straight ahead; not hesitating to cast away, with one gesture, all the scrap heap of trifles, amenities, dependencies, and considerations that hamper him whenever he hears the call of a high value, and the more so, when the unum necessarium challenges him with its high demand.

The heroic man is simple, and in his heroic act becomes the simpler. Every heroic act is the victory of a dominant aim over a multitude of petty ties and distractions. All experiences which enlarge our hearts, which expand and embolden our souls, and which render us able to sacrifice inferior things heroically—as does, above all, a great love under Jesus—contribute to our achieving true simplicity. What we must seek is a general readiness to give away lower things for the sake of higher ones, according to the divinely sanctioned legitimate order of values, and in this sense, ultimately, even to abandon any and every high good for the sake of the highest one—that is, Christ.

This pursuit of simplicity makes it imperative for us to lead a collected life. Certainly, recollection—the process of collecting ourselves—is not only a corollary of true simplicity but, more generally, one of the most important elements in our transformation in Christ. Therefore, a more extensive study of this subject follows. But even at first glance its close relationship to simplicity must be perceptible. Like simplicity, recollection implies a process of integration and unification, as contrasted to dispersion and dissipation. The very same words of Our Lord that stress the primacy of contemplation also contain an admonition to true simplicity, which