Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence , livre ebook

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348 pages

English

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Probably the greatest classic on surrendering our wills to Divine Providence (God's will). Filled with beautiful, penetrating insights, an incredibly rich store of Catholic wisdom. Shows how sanctity is to be attained amidst our common daily activities when performed to perfection and for the love of God. Written to help those who despair of ever becoming holy. A great and famous classic! 480 pgs,

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Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

Catholic Church

Christianity

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Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	01 mars 1993
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781618902733
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Nihil Obstat: Adrianus van Vliet, S.T.D. Censor Deputatus Imprimatur: E. Morrogh Bernard Vicar General Westminster February 14, 1959
This translation copyright © 1959 by Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd. This edition published by arrangement with Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.
Apart from the “Spiritual Counsels” (Part II, Book VIII), newly translated by Father John Joyce, S.J., the writings of Father de Caussade here collected in one volume have previously been published separately: Part I under the title Self-abandonment to Divine Providence (1933); Part II, Books I-III, under The Spiritual Letters of Father J. P. de Caussade, S.J. (1934); Part II, Books IV-V, under Ordeals of Souls (1936); Part II, Books VI-VII under Comfort in Ordeals (1937). The Introduction by Dom David Knowles originally appeared in the first of these four volumes.
Cover design by Milo Persic, milo.persic@gmail.com.
Front cover art: A man prays against dramatic sunset ; photo © Andrew Penner; istockphoto.
ISBN: 978-0-89555-312-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 86-51602
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
TAN Books An Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC Charlotte, North Carolina 2012
INTRODUCTION
B Y D OM D AVID K NOWLES
T HE treatise on Self-abandonment is a spiritual classic of the first order. It was a mannerism of Lord Macaulay to erect in every department of history and letters a hierarchy of excellence—the half-dozen greatest Athenians, the five greatest epic poems, and so forth—a poor substitute, so his detractors say, for true criticism. We all do the like at times, I imagine, and if we set ourselves to choose the ten greatest spiritual guides since St. Bernard—a magnificent list, indeed, including St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross and St. Francis de Sales—it would without a doubt be necessary to find a place for Père de Caussade. Certainly few apart from the saints have received such unstinted praise from all parts of the Church of today. In France two of the judges best qualified to speak, Père Garrigou-Lagrange and M. Henri Bremond, have repeatedly spoken of him in terms of reverent admiration. A still greater testimony, as well to the depth and sureness of his teaching as to his value as a living, helping force, is experience itself. How many souls, both in France and (though in smaller numbers) in this country, have found in Caussade their greatest stay—perhaps their only resource—at a particular period of their spiritual life. How many others have found, not this, but—sure token of a classic—a steady friendship to which they can return again and again, not at a period of crisis but during the ordinary flow of life. L’Abandon then is a book for all those who, in St. Benedict’s words, truly seek God. It has been translated and printed not to be explained or to be criticized, but to be read, and for the majority of readers of the kind Caussade would have desired, no introduction is necessary.
Yet since he is still an unknown figure to many Englishmen; since to some who read widely he is bound to challenge comparison with others; since, in fine, despite his discursive exterior he has a clearly defined doctrine for us to learn, there seems room for a word of introduction which endeavors to give, in his own words, the main lines of his teaching, and to indicate what masters he himself appears to have been willing to follow.
I. Very little is known of the life of Caussade, and since Abbot Chapman has set out this little in an article in the Dublin Review in January 1931 (which also appeared as an introduction to Caussade’s Dialogues on Prayer ), 1 we may pass at once to consider his spiritual teaching. It has come down to us in three books: L’Abandon ; the above-mentioned treatise in the form of dialogues on prayer; and a considerable number of letters to a small group of correspondents, almost all religious of the Visitation. The treatise and the letters, although they throw very valuable light on Caussade’s mind, do not add in any essentials to the teaching of L’Abandon , which, as in form it is undoubtedly his masterpiece, so in matter is the very kernel of his doctrine.
Père de Caussade’s spiritual teaching was derived from two extremely pure sources, St. Francis de Sales and St. John of the Cross. That he should be beholden to St. Francis was only to have been expected. Bremond has shown us how deep was St. Francis’s influence on French religious thought in the century that followed his death, and Caussade received this influence from at least two different directions. We know from his own words how great was the influence of Bossuet upon him. Bossuet, though by no means wholly Salesian, knew St. Francis well and took from him a number of leading ideas. Several of these, and above all abandonment to divine Providence and confidence in God, are precisely those which most attract Caussade. But another source of influence was probably still more potent. Caussade, like all directors, must have learnt much from his penitents, and these were, for the most part, nuns of the Visitation. He would naturally wish to express himself in an idiom with which they were familiar and steep himself in the writings of their lawgiver, and we are not surprised to find many traces of resemblance, both doctrinal and verbal, between him and St. Francis. 2 Indeed, the two phrases which recur most frequently in his treatises and letters—abandonment to divine Providence and the value of the present moment—are peculiarly Salesian, and it is noteworthy that whereas the Carmelite school, following St. Teresa and St. John, when speaking of the death to self use by choice the evangelical words “poverty,” “renunciation” and “death,” Caussade instinctively turns to “abandonment,” “trust” and “acquiescence.” Yet in speaking of Salesian influence we must make a distinction. The mode of expression, as is well known, if not the whole method, of St. Francis underwent a remarkable development as the result of his experience with the Visitation at Annecy, and in particular with the way of helplessness and desolation by which St. Jane Frances was led. The deepest and most intimate chapters of the Love of God are of an entirely different color—one had almost said, of an entirely different culture—from the Introduction , the early letters and even some of the Conferences . It is to this later period, the Visitandine, Chantal period, that Caussade is related, and the tone of L’Abandon is in many places almost precisely that of the deepest chapters of the Love of God .
The second great source of Caussade’s doctrine is the school of Carmel, and especially St. John of the Cross. During his maturity the long-dormant interest of the Church as a whole had been reawakened by St. John’s canonization in 1726. In Spain a serious attempt was made to print a critical edition of his works, and in any case his doctrine was now placed beyond the breath of calumny. There are specific references to him in the dialogues on prayer, but one does not get the impression that Caussade used him as a guiding textbook, and I am not aware that Caussade was thrown often into direct contact with Carmelites. Nevertheless, his mystical theology, as we shall see, squares exactly with the scheme set out in the Ascent and the Dark Night and treated as classic by the Carmelite theologians. This agreement is all the more remarkable because it is implicit rather than explicit. Caussade does not, of preference, throw the same aspects or moments of the spiritual life into high light; his compositions are not in the same key as St. John’s; he has not that peculiar Carmelite family likeness which Anne of Jesus, let us say, shares both with St. John and with St. Teresa of Lisieux. Yet I think there can be no doubt that his doctrine, as formulated in L’Abandon , can be equated with St. John’s far more fully than can St. Francis’s or Père Grou’s. Perhaps equation is not the best term, Caussade’s achievement is rather one of synthesis. He, and he alone of the great French spiritual writers, superimposes on the Salesian teaching of self-abandonment and simplicity the typically Carmelite emphasis on grace as a dynamic force, enlightening and cleansing the soul.
We look, and, so far as I am aware, we look in vain, for another source of influence on Caussade. Within his own Society, and in France, there had been a succession of eminent directors who drew their inspiration from the great Lallemant. Caussade cannot, one would think, have been unaware of this tradition or unsympathetic to it. His outlook is, in fact, very close to that of the Lallemant school, and not at all close to that of Rodriguez and Bourdaloue. Yet so far as I have noticed he makes no direct reference to Lallemant; certainly there is in L’Abandon no trace of emphasis on the points so dear to Lallemant himself—the sharp opposition of active and contemplative, the exposition of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the insistence on the need for a “second conversion.”
We may now look a little more closely at the leading ideas of Caussade’s teaching, and the whole system into which they fit. Chief amongst them is, of course, the one which gives its title to the present treatise—the word Caussade has made peculiarly his own— L’Abandon . 1 The translator has decided to render this by the compound English word “self-abandonment.” This is probably as near as our language can get to the French word, but his readers must ultimately learn from Caussade’s whole body of teaching the full meaning of the term. For the moment, it is important to remember that “self-abandonment” does not for him directly signify the active, ascetic renun