Amid the complexities of life today, we have to stay humble and simple because that’s the way to handle these complexities. When we are humble and simple we know how to blend openness, tolerance, and versatility on the one hand, and to stick to the truth in charity on the other hand.
Remember Christ telling his disciples: “Look, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” (Mt 10,16)
We can interpret this as Christ telling us we can only be shrewd and clever like snakes, capable of being open, tolerant, and versatile to any complicated situation today when we remain humble and simple like doves. A humility and a simplicity that won’t lead us to be shrewd and clever like serpents wouldn’t be true humility and simplicity. They would simply be the fake ones.
It’s genuine humility and simplicity that enables us to face the complexities of life because these are the virtues that liken and identify us with Christ. And with Christ, we can tackle anything.
Remember that we are told that with God nothing is impossible. In other words, only with these virtues can we be “capax Dei,” capable of being like God, sharing his power and wisdom. With God, we can handle anything.
Perhaps that’s the reason why Christ said: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt 11,29-30)
This is a mysterious and intriguing kind of reasoning that Christ is telling us. He is not giving us an indication that is meant to tackle purely natural situations and predicaments.
We have to realize that our life doesn’t only have material, temporal, and natural dimensions. It has an eminently spiritual and supernatural character for which the spiritual and supernatural means are more important and necessary than the natural ones.
We just have to activate our faith to be able to put ourselves in the proper condition to face life’s challenges. And that faith tells us to be humble and simple always.
Humility and simplicity are the virtues that would make us acknowledge that we are nothing without God. They open our soul for the grace of God to enter. And it’s this grace that transforms us, irrespective of our human impotencies, mistakes, and errors, into becoming God’s children.
And with God’s grace in our soul because of our humility and simplicity, we can receive the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. We can believe natural truths not only difficult to discover but also hard to understand. Even more, it’s humility and simplicity that enables us to believe supernatural truths where there’s no way for us to fully understand them, much less, explain in a human way.
It’s humility and simplicity that enables us to be like Christ, to be ‘alter Christus,’ who is the pattern of our humanity and the redeemer of our damaged humanity. It’s when we are humble and simple that we can manage to bear and to suffer all things, and to love even our enemies, offering forgiveness to our offenders, just like what Christ did and continues to do.
It would be a disaster to us if we respond to the complex challenges of our times with our own version of convoluted self-justifications. This happens when we start thinking, judging, reasoning, and concluding without God or, worse, when we think God's clear commandments are already obsolete, irrelevant, a drag to our interests, etc.