Abandonment; or, Absolute Surrender to Divine Providence · 23 of 35
Book Third, Chapter I. God Himself guides Souls who wholly abandon themselves to Him.
Sacrificate sacrificium justitiæ et sperate in Domino: Sacrifice, saith the prophet, a sacrifice of justice and hope in the Lord. That is to say that the grand and solid foundation of the spiritual life is to give one’s self to God to be the subject of His good pleasure in all things, interiorly as well as exteriorly, and to so utterly forget self that we regard it as a thing sold and delivered, to which we have no longer any right; so that our joy consists wholly in the good pleasure of God, and His honor and glory are our sole contentment.
This foundation laid, the soul has but to pass her life rejoicing that God is God, abandoning herself so completely to His good pleasure that she is equally content to do one thing as another, according as this good pleasure directs, never even pausing to reflect upon the disposition which is made of her by the will of God.
Self-abandonment! this, then, is the grand duty which remains to be fulfilled after one has faithfully acquitted himself of all the obligations of his state. The perfection with which this grand duty is accomplished is the measure of one’s sanctity.
A holy soul is a soul who, with the aid of grace, freely abandons herself to the divine will. All that follows this pure self-abandonment is the work of God and not of man. God asks nothing more of this soul than to blindly receive all that He sends, in a spirit of submission and universal indifference to the instruments of His will; the rest He determines and chooses according to His designs for the soul as an architect arranges and selects his materials according to the edifice he would construct.
In all things, therefore, we must love God and His order; we must love it as it is presented to us without desiring more. It is for God, not for us, to determine the objects of our submission, and what He sends is best for the soul. What a grand epitome of spirituality is this maxim of pure and absolute self-abandonment to the will of God! Self-abandonment, that continual forgetfulness of self which leaves the soul free to eternally love and obey God, untroubled by those fears, reflections, regrets, and anxieties which the care of one’s own perfection and salvation gives! Since God offers to take upon Himself the care of our affairs, let us once for all abandon them to His infinite wisdom, that we may never more be occupied with aught but Him and His interests.
Arise, then, my soul; let us walk with uplifted head above all that is passing about us and within us, ever content with God—content with what He does with us, and with what He gives us to do. Let us beware of imprudently falling a prey to those numerous disquieting reflections which, like so many tangled labyrinths, entrap the mind into useless, endless wanderings. Let us avoid this snare of self-love by springing over it, and not by following its interminable windings.
Onward, my soul, through weariness, sickness, dryness, infirmities of temper, weakness of mind, snares of the devil and of men, their suspicions, jealousies, evil thoughts, and prejudices! Let us soar like the eagle above all these clouds, our eyes fixed upon the Sun of Justice, and its rays which are our obligations. Doubtless we may feel these trials; it does not depend upon us to be insensible to them. But let us remember that our life is not a life of sentiment. Let us live in this superior part of the soul where God and His will work out for us an ever uniform, equable, immutable eternity. In this wholly spiritual dwelling where the Uncreated, the Ineffable, the Infinite holds the soul immeasurably separated from all shadows and created atoms, reigns perpetual calm, even though the senses be the prey of tempests. We have learned to rise above the senses; their restlessness, their disquiet, their comings and goings, and their hundred transformations disturb us no more than the clouds which darken the sky for a moment and disappear. We know that in the region of the senses all things are like the wind, without sequence or order, in continual vicissitude. God’s will forms the eternal charm of the heart in the state of faith, just as in the state of glory it shall constitute its true happiness; and this glorious state of the heart will influence the whole material being at present a prey to terrors and temptations. Under these appearances, however terrible they may be, the action of God, giving to the material being a facility wholly divine, will cause it to shine like the sun; for the faculties of the sensitive soul and those of the body are prepared here below like gold, iron, flax, and stone. And like these different substances they will attain the purity and splendor of their form only after they have passed through many processes and suffered loss and destruction. All that we endure here below at the hand of God is intended as a preparation for our future state.
The faithful soul who knows the secret of God’s ways dwells in perfect peace; and all that transpires within her, so far from alarming, only reassures her. Intimately convinced that it is God who guides her, she accepts everything as a grace, and lives wholly forgetful of self, the object upon which God labors, that she may think only of the work committed to her care. Her love unceasingly animates the courage which enables her to faithfully and carefully fulfil her obligations.
Except the sins of a self-abandoned soul, which are light, and even converted to her good by the divine will, there is nothing distinctly manifest in her but the action of grace. And this action is distinctly manifest in all those painful or consoling impressions by means of which the divine will unceasingly works the soul’s good. I use the term “distinctly manifest,” for of all that transpires within the soul, these impressions are what it best distinguishes. To find God under all these appearances is the great art of faith; to make everything a means of uniting one’s self with God is the exercise of faith.
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