The evangelical counsels are called counsels because they are not precepts of the Lord but advice that He gives in particular areas that conduce to holiness. For example, the area of human sexuality is deeply affected by sin and death. The codes of canon law, taken as a whole, probably number some two thousand pages and two thirds of that is about marriage. Thus, it is easy to see the counsel in this particular area to be a simplification. In a similar, acquisitiveness is also a major problem in human life. We tend to neglect the important, weighty matters (related to the salvation of our souls) to attend to comparatively frivolous questions like amassing wealth for our retirements. Thus too, the evangelical counsel of poverty is seen as a simplification. Again, similarly, human willfulness is perceived to be a serious problem. Here again, the counsel of obedience can be seen as a simplification.
The Lord knows that if we are to succeed and cross the "ocean of this life" coming to everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven, He is going to have to make our salvation easier. He is going to have to simplify it for us. This is precisely what He is doing with the evangelical counsels. They may not be things that we can fully embrace in our lives, because of our particular state and the obligations that are incumbent on us because of our state. Nevertheless, we all should embrace them TO SOME EXTENT, and to whatever extent we do embrace them, we will find our lives wondrously and blessedly simplified.
So, I asked myself, what is the best example of this perspective of the evangelical counsels as "simplification." Well, as I pondered that question, my thoughts ceaselessly came back to the life and story of one man, St. Alexius, who is called the Man of God, who died on 17 March 460. Alexius, according to his hagiography, was born into a wealthy Roman patrician family. When he grew to be marriageable age, his father arranged for him to be married to a virtuous Christian woman from another patrician family. The day of the wedding came, they were married, but Alexius apparently excused himself from the table and celebration and... disappeared. No one had any idea what had happened to him. In fact, he had fled from his father's house and his city. He lived the next eighteen years in a Syrian monastery. Then, in the course of a failed attempt to go on pilgrimage to a shrine somewhere else in the Mediterranean world, his ship was blown off course and, after a series of adventures and misadventures finally came to Rome. Living in Rome as a beggar, he was recognized as a holy man and was taken in by his own parents and his bride, who had continued to live with his parents after his departure. None of them recognized him, because his appearance and manners had so changed. He was given a place, a cubbyhole beneath the main stairs of the house, where he could sleep, provided that he spent his time everyday teaching catechism to the children of the house and its neighbors. Finally, after living in this way for seventeen years, they found the saint's body in his cubbyhole. Underneath his body was a letter he had written explaining who he was and expressing his love for his family and his wife, who survived him by a number of years.
St. Alexius shows us poverty. He was heir apparent to a sizable fortune and senatorial rank. He eschewed all of that and inherited in this life a cubbyhole and the education of a bunch of children not his own.
St. Alexius shows us chastity. Even though he got married, his marriage was never consummated. In the monastery, as well as during his life under the stairs, he seemed to others to be as innocent and simple as a child. In fact, in the Eastern Church he is regarded to be the very first of the class of saints referred to as "the fools for Christ's sake."
St. Alexius shows us obedience. In the Syrian monastery he was especially known for this virtue, and during his life under the stairs in his parents' house he was very obedient to all the demands that the household put upon him.
Alexius could have had a privileged, wealthy and comfortable life, but a very complicated life. Alexius used Jesus' evangelical counsels to simplify his life, eliminate what was not necessary and prioritize what was truly important. The evangelical counsels can do just the same for each one of us in the proportion to which we choose to use them.
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