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Abandonment to Divine ProvidencebyJean-Pierre de Caussade(excerpts)"Consider your life, and you will see that it consists of countless triflingactions. Yet God is quite satisfied with them for doing them as they should bedone is the part we have to play in our striving for perfection . . . The designsof God—what he chooses to do, his will, his actions, and his grace—are all one andthe same thing, all working together to enable us to reach perfection. Andperfections is neither more nor less than the soul’s faithful co-operation withGod. This co-operation begins, grows and comes to fruition in our souls sosecretly that we are not aware of it.""What God arranges for us to experience at each moment is the best and holiestthing that could happen to us.""All our learning should consist of finding out what God has planned for us ateach moment. Anything we read which is not chosen for us by God is harmful. Wereceive grace through the will of God, and this grace works within us through ourreading and through everything else we do. Without God, all our theorizing andreading are useless, and, as they are without the light-giving power of God, allthey do is drain the heart and fill the mind. ""For example, if it is God’s will that the present moment should be spent inreading, then reading will exert a mystical power in the depths of the soul; butif he wishes us to abandon reading for the duty of contemplation, then it iscontemplation which will work on our souls and reading, would be useless anddetrimental . . .""All things owe their nature, their reality and their strength to the will of God,which adapts them so they benefit our souls.""Now, contemplation produces this close union to us with God, as indeed do otheracts, provided, of course, that they part of God’s plan for us. Yet contemplationstands supreme, for it is the most effective means of achieving this union, if Godwill it.""We should regard all creatures as very feeble tools serving his purpose; weshould realize, too, that we are in want of nothing and that his continual carefor us makes him give us everything that is good and proper. If we had faith, weshould be grateful to all creatures, cherish them and thank them silently fortheir good will in helping us, by God’s design, toward perfection.""If we never ceased to live the life of faith, our intercourse with God wouldnever be interrupted and we should talk with him face to face."If we lived the life of faith without intermission we should have an uninterruptedcommerce with God and a constant familiar intercourse with Him."When we speak it is the air which transmits our thoughts and our words, and soall our actions and our sufferings would be the medium through which we heard theexpression of God’s will. They would, as it were, give his Word substance andvisible expression, and all that happened to us would be seen as holy and mostexcellent.""It is faith which interprets God for us. Without its light we should not evenknow that God was speaking, but would hear only the confused, meaningless babble
 
of creatures.""Every moment reveals God to us. Faith is our light in this life. By it we knowthe truth without seeing it, we are put in touch with what we cannot feel,recognize what we cannot see, and view the world stripped of all itssuperficialities. Faith unlocks God’s treasury. It is the key to all the vastnessof his wisdom. The hollowness of all created things is disclosed by faith, and itis by faith that God makes his presence plain everywhere. Faith tears aside theveil so that we can see the everlasting truth.""It is incredible that although we have been warned time and time again that allthe affairs of the world are but shadows and mysteries to be understood only byfaith, we still persist in looking at them as if they had an intrinsic value andreality. The result is that everything remains a riddle to us. We behave likefools. What we should do is gaze at the principle, the source and the origin ofall things. Then we should find that everything has a supernatural quality,something divine about it that can lead us onward to holiness.""If we persist in living according to what we see and feel, we shall wander likeimbeciles through a maze shrouded with darkness and phantasmagoria. Yet, by faith,we should know God and be able to live for him alone, ignoring all the frivolitiesof external things.""If we live by faith, we shall judge things very differently from the way peopledo who rely on the evidence of their senses and so remain unaware of the pricelesstreasure hidden under appearances.""We can only be well instructed by the words which God utters expressly for us. Noone becomes learned in the science of God either by the reading of books, or bythe inquisitive investigation of history. The science that is acquired by suchmeans is vain and confused, producing much pride. That which instructs us is whathappens from one moment to another producing in us that experimental science whichJesus Christ Himself willed to acquire before instructing others.""O unknown Love! it seems as if Your wonders were finished and nothing remainedbut to copy Your ancient works, and to quote Your past discourses! And no one seesthat Your inexhaustible activity is a source of new thoughts, of fresh sufferingsand further actions: of new Patriarchs, Apostles, Prophets, and Saints who have noneed to copy the lives and writings of the others, but only to live in perpetualabandonment to Your secret operations. We hear of nothing on all sides but ‘thefirst centuries,’ ‘the time of the Saints.’ What a strange way of talking! Is notall time a succession of the effects of the divine operation, working at everyinstant, filling, sanctifying, and supernaturalising them all? Has there ever beenan ancient method of abandonment to this operation which is now out of season? Hadthe Saints of the first ages any other secret than that of becoming from moment tomoment whatever the divine power willed to make them? And will this power cease topour forth its glory on the souls which abandon themselves to it without reserve.""Therefore it is not within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint,or in some sublime idea that I ought to seek You. These are but drops of thatocean which is poured out over every creature and in which they are all immersed.They are mere atoms that disappear in this deep abyss.""Is there any creature whose action can equal that of God? Why then should I go tocreatures for help since all that happens to me is the work of His uncreatedhand?""It is not necessary that you should understand what it has said to others, nor to
 
repeat the words intended only for them and which you have overheard, but you,yourself, will receive from it what is best for you.""In souls abandoned to God everything is efficacious, everything is a sermon andapostolic. God imparts to their silence, to their repose, to their detachment, totheir words, gestures, etc., a certain virtue which, unknown to them, works in thehearts of those around them; and, as they are guided by the occasional actions ofothers who are made use of by grace to instruct them without their knowledge, inthe same way, they, in their turn, are made use of for the support and guidance ofothers without any direct acquaintance with them, or understanding to thateffect.""O blessed annihilation! O unreserved submission! through you is God drawn intothe centre of the heart. Let the faculties then be what they will, provided, Lord,that I possess You. Do what You will with this insignificant creature; whether itworks, becomes inspired, or becomes the subject of Your impressions, it is allone. All is yours, all is from You and for You.""It is necessary to remark that there are souls that God keeps hidden and littlein their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Far from giving them strikingqualities, His design for them is that they should remain in obscurity. They wouldbe deceived if they desired to attempt a different way. If they are wellinstructed they will recognise that fidelity to their nothingness is their rightpath, and they will find peace in their lowliness. The only difference, therefore,in their way and that of, apparently, more favoured souls, is the difference theymake for themselves by the amount of their love and submission to the will of God;for, if they surpass in these virtues the souls that appear to work more than theyexteriorly, their sanctity is, without doubt, so much the greater. This shows thateach soul ought to content itself with the duties of its state, and the over-ruling of Providence; clearly God exacts this equally from all."" It is by union with the will of God that we enjoy and possess Him; and it is anillusion to endeavour to obtain this divine enjoyment by any other means.""All ways should be esteemed and loved, because in each we should behold thatwhich is ordained by God accommodating itself to each individual soul, andselecting the most suitable method of effecting by it the divine union. The dutyof the soul is to submit to this choice, and to make none for itself; and thiswithout dispensing itself from esteeming and loving this adorable will in its workin others.""At each moment we have to practise some virtue.""And a stone that is destined to become a crucifix or a statue without knowing it,if it were asked, ‘What is happening to you?’ would reply if it could speak, ‘Donot ask me, I only know one thing, and that is, to remain immovable in the handsof my master, to love him, and to endure all that he inflicts upon me. As for theend for which I am destined, it is his business to understand how it is to beaccomplished; I am as ignorant of what he is doing as of what I am destined tobecome; all I know is that his work is the best, and the most perfect that couldbe, and I receive each blow of the chisel as the most excellent thing that couldhappen to me, although, truth to tell, each blow, in my opinion, causes the ideaof ruin, destruction, and disfigure-ment. But that is not my affair; content withthe present moment, I think of nothing but my duty, and I endure the work of thisclever master without knowing, or occupying myself about it.’""In this state they give up to God all their rights over themselves, over theirwords, actions, thoughts, and proceedings; over the employment of their time and
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