Simplicity in the Life of the Gospels

By Norman Beaupre

Fulfilling and soul-stirring, this book brings to Christian spirituality a literary perspective cultivated through thirty years of teaching on the part of the author. He is neither a theologian nor an exegete but he brings to life the results of many years of reading and research into the life of the gospels through the concept of simplicity, an

• Language: English
• Publisher: CMD
• Release date: Sep 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952046872

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Copyright © 2020 by Norman Beaupre

All right reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodies in critical article and reviews.

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From the same author:

L’Enclume et le couteau, The Life and Works of Adelard Coté, Folk Artist, NMDC, Manchester, N.H., 1982. Reprint by Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2007.

Le Petit Mangeur de Fleurs, Éd. JCL, Chicoutimi, Québec, 1999.

Lumineau, Éd. JCL, Chicoutimi, Québec, 2002.

Marginal Enemies, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2004.

Deux Femmes, Deux Rêves, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2005.

La Souillonne, Monologue sur scène, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2006.

Before All Dignity Is Lost, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2006.

Trails Within: Meditations on the walking trails at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2007.

La Souillonne, deusse, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2008.

The Boy with the Blue Cap----Van Gogh in Arles, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2008.

Voix Francophones de chez nous, contes et histoires, Une anthologie Franco-Américaine par Normand Beaupré et autres, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2009.

La Souillonne, English translation by the author, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2009.

The Man with the Easel of Horn---The Life and Works of ÉMILE FRIANT, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2010.

The Little Eater of Bleeding Hearts, English translation by the author, Llumina Press, Coral Springs, FL, 2010.

For Deacon Roger Normand, my good friend, as one who lives the simple life of the gospel by his generosity and compassion.

Contents

Preface

1. Simplicity And Words

2. Life In The Gospels

3. Spirituality And Reflection

4. Simplicity In The Gospels

5. The Synoptic Gospels

6. The Sheep Into The Midst Of Wolves

7. Jesus The Healer

8. The Mission

9. The Parables

10. The Gospel According To John

11. The Passion And Death Of Christ

12. The Resurrection

13. Gathering It All Together

Selected Bibliography

Ametur Cor Jesu

Ametur Cor Mariae

Preface

I started to think about writing this particular work on simplicity in the gospels after someone told me that I should write a spiritual book. You would be good at it, she said. You have the skills and the ideas, and besides, you have a deep spiritual life. Yes, I have the skills and a limited number of ideas, but I didn’t exactly know about the deep spiritual dimension of my life to which she referred. How does one measure the depth of one’s spirituality? All I know is that I have been trying to fathom the within of me while searching for and weighing the concept of spirituality with which I have been struggling for so many years. Possibly as long as I have been living, and will continue to live. For you see, I’ve always been an introspective person beginning with a perspicacious childhood, and developing into a soul-searching adulthood. I can see things that others may not always see the way I see them. Like seeing the under layers of things. Probably because I was always the curious child, and never grew out of it. For as long as I can remember, I have been intrigued by the concept of soul. The teaching nuns always referred to soul and its salvation. That’s why we had to work so hard at being good and following the ten commandments that we were forced to learn by rote. The catechism had to be learned by heart, word for word without skipping a beat. We had to be ready to answer correctly the questions asked of us even if we did not always know what we were spewing out. One of the words that I could not define was soul. I asked the teacher, one day, what it meant, and she said that it was the immortal thing inside each one of us, and that God spoke to each one through the soul. Only if we were in the state of grace. State of what? State of being without sin, she replied. But what is sin? It’s when you offend God, she said. Didn’t you learn that before your first communion? she asked, somewhat bewildered. I insisted, how do you offend God? Well, by not following the commandments, she added. How was I to follow each commandment if I didn’t know what they all meant, like Thou shall not fornicate? And what about Thou shall not kill? Was killing an insect against the fifth commandment? The bell rang, and that saved the good nun from answering some very difficult questions especially in explaining fornication to an eight year-old. I was left with the same question about soul. With time, I added to the complexity of the concept of soul by reading about it, and got no straight answer. Oh, there were all kinds of explanations given, but none to satisfy me. None that were clear cut and right on the money. I was expecting the right answer, but I was left with a term linked to my spirituality that I could not define. Much later on, I attempted to link soul to creativity. I linked soul to the esthetic qualities in our lives that stimulate us, as human beings, to imagine creatively, and at the same time discover the anima deep within. My book, Trails Within, Meditations on the Walking Trails of the Ghost Ranch at Abiquiu, New Mexico deals with such a concept, soul as the creative power in all of us, potential as well as active.

In college, I was fascinated with philosophy and theology, and later on, literature. Why? Because they gave me thoughts that I could deal with in an exploratory way, and with a sense of fathomable dimensions. It caused me to think. So many students saw these disciplines simply as obstacles to overcome, or hurdles in their getting an A in a given course. I was not unlike those students who wanted to achieve, and I have to accept the fact that my GPA was very important to me in college. I struggled to work very hard at getting the coveted A. It’s later on that I realized what was more important to me was the learning I had achieved while struggling for grades. I worked hard in all of my courses while trying to learn and, at the same time, achieve superior grades. I was never satisfied with the average, and especially not with the mediocre. But later on, it dawned on me that what I had gotten was an education, a formation of the mind and soul thanks to the study of the liberal arts. I had learned how to look into things and assess their values in my life. Furthermore, my liberal arts education proved profitable and useful to me since I was not just looking for a job. Later on, my job was teaching, and I continued to learn while enriching my life and the lives of those who studied under me. Not only had I gotten the ideas but, more importantly, I had gotten the tools for thinking and expressing myself. Thinking, analyzing, appreciating art and beauty, be it in poetry or the fine arts, and more importantly to me, the mastery of words. Not that I did not have words at my disposal before entering college, but I was introduced to a whole gamut of words by the teachers, and especially through reading. I must say that some teachers were better at it than others. They revealed a passion for words and reading. They became the models of sincere learning, as far as I was concerned. You see, when I was young, and for a very long time, I hated reading. Sure, I read comic books and the thin pamphlet we got in school called The Messenger. But I did not like reading. It’s ironic, since I call myself a writer today. I’ve often asked myself why I did not like reading then. I think it’s because I associated reading with schoolwork, and I hated schoolwork, especially homework. I found it too mechanical and tedious. Copying things as an assignment was always a dreary exercise for me. And, I never liked memorization and especially rote memorization for tests and quizzes. That’s probably why, as a college professor, I preferred giving essays on tests, especially on mid-terms and finals, since I figured I was giving students a chance to express themselves in thoughts and in words. Besides, it gave them an opportunity to argue their point of view on a given question. Of course, it meant a lot more corrections for me but that was all right. Learning, for me, was not mechanically answering a quiz with one memorized word or two, but putting down reasons in arguing a point, and coming up with a sound conclusion. It was also a foil to cheating. Forget the many tricks used in cheating on tests and quizzes such as, writing answers in the palm of your hand or the cuff of a shirt sleeve or even the corner of a handkerchief and so many other places connived by astute and resourceful students. If only they had put all of that effort and energy into studying, I used to tell them.

I loved learning, but I much preferred learning through the imaginative. As far as I can remember, I was a child of the imagination. I loved movies, fairy tales on the radio, walking through the woods and imagining things such as little birds sleeping inside the pods of milkweeds. And when I opened the pods to see what was inside with my own eyes, I was surprised and even deceived that the reality of things was quite different from my imaginings. There were no little birds inside the milkweed pods, only silk-like threads all tightly bundled up in a cone-like mass. I dared not tell anyone about my imaginings because I didn’t want them to think I was crazy. It’s only after I got to be enthused about literature that I realized poetry and novels were good vehicles for the imagination. Some people, over the centuries, had expressed things that I had only begun to imagine. They even opened up for me a whole new world of imagining things. And they had used the tool of words. Words that became so useful and powerful for one destined to become a teacher and, later on, a writer. And so, one of the most important tools in my educated life are words. What they mean, how to use them, and especially how to use words to do analyses. Analysis helps one to go deep inside of things, be they words themselves, ideas, or the way things work. Beyond the surface of things.

Words have been my tool of existence as an author and teacher for many years. Words are very important and useful to me. They’re not just casual acquaintances like people who cross our lives momentarily. I was blessed with words in two languages, French and English, since I grew up bilingual. And, if you love words, then words become your very best friends in the formulation of ideas and feelings. Later on, I would be able to find the shades of meaning with words, comparing both French and English. Translation became a challenge for me, and I reveled in it finding the right word for the right meaning. Some choose their words very carefully, while others simply do not pay too much attention to the selection and the meaning of each word in expressing themselves. Words just roll off their tongue wet and slippery like the thoughts they try to express. All words are good as all thoughts are good. All feelings are good too, but good is not enough for the plenitude of thought and feelings. Some are content with just the good, the common, ordinary, plain and drab expression of what they have to say. Ideas well conceived must be expressed clearly and effectively, since ideas and words go hand in hand if they are to be meaningful and vibrant. With time, I became increasingly interested, if not fascinated, with metaphors since they conveyed not only words and ideas but images. Similes were fine but comparisons are limiting, as far as the splendor of images are concerned. I learned that metaphors were the tool par excellence for poets, the forgers of words and images. ‘The blood of the sun’ is much more powerful than the sun was red like blood, I think. It goes right to the very core of imagery. I realized then that I was a sensual person. I captured things easily with my senses and reveled in them. I could see things and imagine things that simple words could not convey to me. I thoroughly agree with Baudelaire that "La magie suggestive des mots/ the suggestive magic of words is the most effective and stimulating way of getting to the very heart of what is conveyed. By suggesting concretely and sensually what the author wants to say, many levels of imagery can be conjured up like magic. If the metaphor suggests an image, then other images can be linked to that one, and another image and another image and so on. If a poet knows how to use suggestive words, then he can offer various ways of seeing things that the reader might not have thought of. Once the image clicks in the mind, then connections are made, and the suggested image is rendered possible. The poet then becomes the suggester" and not the writer who simply defines or outlines things. There is a connection that is established between poet and poet-reader since both are forger of words. One forges-creates and the other forges-imagines.

Of course, when one knows exactly what to say, meaning that the ideas are clear and well thought out, measured like timing in a sequence of music or dance, then the words must come out well measured too, if one aims for the plenitude of thoughts and feelings. But, what exactly is plenitude? Well, it conveys the sense of fullness and a reaching for higher levels of simplicity. Simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean the lowest common denominator. No. When one attains a plenitude of things such as words, then one has mastered the various levels of simplicity. One must work very hard to attain the full measure of simplicity. Then what is simplicity? one might ask. That’s the big question. And where does one look for simplicity? Does it exist? I believe it does. One has to search for it in speeches, literature, poetry, essays, in architecture and the fine arts, in other forms of communication and expression, as well as human actions. Simplicity is hard to define; simplicity is.

I choose to look for simplicity in Christ’s gospels since I strongly believe that Christ was a master of words and simplicity. I also choose to look for simplicity in the gospels and not of the gospels. As I read the many articles and books on the subject of simplicity and the gospels, I find that so many writers and theologians have centered on the simplicity of the gospels. I already know that the gospels are, in themselves, simple in their approach to life within Christ’s teaching. That’s the way Christ intended them to be. After all, it’s the good tidings of the Savior, and not a collection of philosophical and theological thoughts meant to argue such and such a point. If one is to believe that the gospels were divinely inspired, then the breath [I like the French word, souffle, an onomatopoeic word] of the Spirit on the receptive minds of the evangelists must have worked in such a way as to inspire simplicity so as to render things uncomplicated and humanly simple. I also believe that the evangelists, apostles and disciples of Christ, were fundamentally simple beings, and they kept their simplicity throughout their lives, although divinely inspired in their mission of evangelization. I say although when I should be saying because. Christ with and through the Spirit used earthen vessels to transmit and perpetuate the good tidings. Without humanity created in its earthen vessel, there would have been no need for a savior, and without the Savior, there would have been no new covenant of the gospels. The earthen vessel that is humanity would have remained indefinitely cracked if not broken. The cross became the glue that mended the earthen vessel.

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