Just outside the Indiana farmhouse where I lived as a young man stood several large mulberry trees that seemed like members of our family.
Then one day, these beloved trees endured a three-hour attack by a uniformed professional crew wielding chain saws and hydraulic ladders. The crew sawed, trimmed, and pruned, transforming a large, leafy mass into a skeleton of a few stark, naked limbs.
I felt certain the trees would never recover from the assault; but the following spring they grew larger and fuller than ever before, bursting forth in an extravagant display of flowers, leaves and mulberries. Instead of killing off my beloved trees, the process of pruning helped them blossom into their fullest productivity.
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What’s good for mulberry trees is good for us, too. And Francis of Assisi’s model of Christian simplicity provides a time-tested way we can prune our lives.
If we allow our lives to be pruned so that we forsake our love for unnecessary possessions, this process can trim back our unproductive growth and prepare us for a joyful life of fruitfulness and productivity.
FRANCIS ON SIMPLICITYFrancis spent the first 24 years of his life in luxury and indulgence. He converted to a life of rugged simplicity after experiencing a life-changing mystical encounter with Jesus, who had told His own disciples:
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or stow away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26, NIV).
Francis saw simplicity as an antidote to our sometimes unquenchable hunger for accumulating wealth and possessions, a hunger which often hinders both human community and union with God.
Here’s how later generations Franciscans stated his philosophy: “Simple living … takes shape by reducing material needs, by curbing a thirst for possessions and the domineering power that comes from ownership, and by using all of God’s gifts in a spirit of generosity, justice and moderation.”
THREE MODELS FOR SIMPLE LIVINGWhen monks in the Christian tradition talk about simple living, they’re usually talking about one of three basic models that appear in the pages of the New Testament. These three biblical models have much to do with why monks live the way they do and why monasteries have developed in the ways they have.
1. The “mendicant” modelThe earliest Christian model for living a life of simplicity is found in Jesus’ teaching on poverty in the gospel of Matthew. In Matthew Chapter 10, Jesus sent out His disciples on a mission to spread His gospel. These disciples were told not to take gold, silver, copper, bags, changes of clothes or sandals, or even a walking staff.