On Sunday, Bishop Ignatie of Huși officiated the Divine Liturgy at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Sibiu.
During his sermon, the bishop explained the Gospel passage from Matthew 6:22-34, emphasizing the simple way people should relate to everything around them.
Simplicity
Bishop Ignatie stressed that Christ’s call for simplicity reminds us of a virtue lost in today’s technology-dominated society.
“Christ asks us to have that simple—uncomplicated—look that generates an equally simple mindset. When I use this adjective, I do not mean its pejorative connotation—when we say someone is simple, it is equivalent to saying they are less intelligent,” noted Bishop Ignatie.
“I refer to that simplicity we identify in everything beautiful around us. Beauty, in all its forms—whether we see it in people, nature, or things—is always accompanied by simplicity. Everything beautiful can only be simple; what is simple is evidently beautiful.”
“Saint Paul encouraged the Corinthians to have the simplicity and innocence of Christ. To better understand what this simplicity means, we should think of children, who take things in their essence and reality without adding unnecessary interpretations as adults do.”
“To be a simple person, to see things in this way—which generates a straightforward and pure mindset—means to take things as they are in their essence, in their most true and profound reality.”
Sin, the root of complicating one’s existence
His Grace noted that “all the confusion, disorientation, and relativization of what we live are because we no longer grasp the essence (the reality) or, as Saint Maximus the Confessor tells us in the Philokalia, to grasp the reason of the thing in itself—what that thing (situation, context, or person) wants to convey to us, without us adding aspects or nuances that belong to our soul.”
“Sin always generates illusions. Sin does not live in reality, has nothing to do with the truth, and is always a lie and a perpetuation of an illusion. The more we let sin and passion inhabit us, the less we can see what is real, the essence, or the simplicity of a thing, a situation, or a thought,” stated Bishop Ignatie.
“It is so sad that we have become so complicated that the simple gestures coming from those around us connotate in our minds in a way that the one who conveys them did not even think of.”
The consequence of a malicious approach to everything happening around us is that “we will become malicious and cunning people ourselves.”
“It is not by mere chance that one of the Philokalic Fathers, Saint John Climacus, dedicated a few passages in word 24 to simplicity—what it means to be a simple person, to take things in their reality. This Philokalic Father tells us that simplicity is the soul’s habit free from complicated (various) thoughts, which has become unwavering (the soul) towards non-malicious thinking. Non-malice is a serene state of the soul, freed from any cunning thought. The throne of simplicity is a gentle soul.”
“If we manage to read the entire Gospel passage in this key, we will find that we cannot serve both God and mammon because the devil always complicates things, entangling them very much. God, when we feel His presence and work, helps us see things in their simplicity,” emphasized His Grace Bishop Ignatie.
Healing stress
Bishop Ignatie recalled the words of Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, who said: “Simplify your life to eliminate stress!”
“We must take care of what we will eat, what we will wear, and how we prepare professionally to provide for our living, to establish a family. We make the effort but must leave the concern for success to God.”
“Why do we experience anxiety and become anguished? Because we imagine fears that do not exist, fears that drain us, like vampires, of the energy we should put into good things.”
The hierarch explained that all these illusions come from the idea that we own something, but neither our health nor material goods belong to us.
“We are obsessed with controlling everything and those around us, but we cannot because we cannot replace God. We cannot control our health—we can maintain it and take care of it, but we cannot control it. We cannot control our material possessions. We can work and become greedy and corrupt, but we will lose everything; we cannot control anything.”
His Grace Bishop Ignatie stated: “Truth never imposes itself through pride or force. When we want to share the truth with those around us, it has a special humility and suppleness, and it enters the soul of those around us without any effort on our part.”
The more we complicate things, the more we enter a fog that prevents us from seeing the light. We get entangled, losing the meaning of life.
Guidance
Bishop Ignatie offered several pieces of advice for simplifying our view of things.
“Always seek beauty because there you will find simplicity! If we look towards the ugly, it is tangled, and it tangles us, hinders our lives, and puts so many obstacles that we end up not finding the meaning of our lives and, therefore, live in a state of disorientation, not knowing which path to follow.”
“Christ, who urges us to embrace the simplicity and innocence of life, should be the One who changes our lives—especially our mentality and the way we see things and people around us.”
“The Liturgy is one of the services that truly teaches us what simplicity means. To reach the simplicity we see in the Liturgy, we need to see where the essence is and why we participate in the service,” explained Bishop Ignatie of Huși.
“How many of you have thought that by coming to the Liturgy, we should make an effort to see what God wants to tell us, not what we want to tell God? Most of the time, we believe: I go to the Lord’s house to talk to Him. But, in fact, we talk more about ourselves; we are selfish.”
His Grace concluded with the passage: “Sure, the Lord, in His humility, listens to us too, those of us who are less wise. But this is not why we come to the Liturgy. We come to see what He wants to tell us, not what we want to tell Him. If we focus on what the Lord wants to tell us, we will truly discover what we should tell ourselves, to our own conscience.”
Photo: Diocese of Huși
Source: basilica.ro