Less Is More

Pope Francis’ 76-page encyclical has an astounding 246 sections ending with his prayers for us.   In a way, he tells us to stop and smell the roses.  He insists we don’t need a large bouquet – just a few on which to focus and enjoy.  The smell is just as sweet.  “Living life to the full” doesn’t mean shop until we drop.   It means “less can be more.”  He tells us:

222. Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption.

We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more.” A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment.

To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfillment.  Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little.

It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack. This implies avoiding the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures.

223. Such sobriety, when lived freely and consciously, is liberating. It is not a lesser life or one lived with less intensity.

On the contrary, it is a way of living life to the full.  In reality, those who enjoy more and live better each moment are those who have given up dipping here and there, always on the look-out for what they do not have. They experience what it means to appreciate each person and each thing, learning familiarity with the simplest things and how to enjoy them.

So they are able to shed unsatisfied needs, reducing their obsessiveness and weariness. Even living on little, they can live a lot, above all when they cultivate other pleasures and find satisfaction in fraternal encounters, in service, in developing their gifts, in music and art, in contact with nature, in prayer.

Happiness means knowing how to limit some needs which only diminish us, and being open to the many different possibilities which life can offer.

Less is more.  His is a good and meaningful although difficult message of Christian spirituality he asks us to embrace: learn to be happy with little for the good of our planet and the multitudes of poor who share our beleaguered planet with us.

Deacon David Pierce