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THE REV. J. P. DE CAUSSADE, in "Holy Abandonment." "The moment we desire God and His will, that moment we enjoy them, and our enjoyment corresponds to the order of our desires." What though the bough beneath thee break? Remember, thou hast wings. To enter into the will of God is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience.
Père De Caussade proceeds to say: "But instead of respecting the mystery of Thy words and hearing Thy voice in all the occurrences of life, they only see therein chance, the acts, the caprice of men; they find fault with everything; they would add to, diminish, reform.
"A good will has nothing to fear," says Père De Caussade; "it can but fall under that all-powerful hand which guides and sustains it in all its wanderings. It is this divine Hand which draws it toward the goal when it has wandered therefrom, which restores it to the path.
He recovered sufficiently to proceed to the waters of St. Antonin for the recovery of his health, when he was seized, together with his two guides or bearers, by the burgess guard of the town of Caussade. The three brothers Grenier endeavoured to intercede for them; but the mayor of Caussade, proud of his capture, sent the whole of the prisoners to gaol.
The argument of Père De Caussade one equally entitled to consideration is that God reveals himself to us now, in ordinary events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in the great events of history or in the Holy Scriptures.
"O Divine Action," Père De Caussade exclaims, "I will cease to prescribe to Thee hours or methods; Thou shalt be ever welcome. O Divine Action, Thou seemest to have revealed to me Thy immensity. I will walk henceforth in Thy infinity. No longer will I seek Thee within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint, or a sublime thought.
"Can the divine will err?" questions Père De Caussade. "Can anything that it sends be amiss? But I have this to do; I need such a thing; I have been deprived of the necessary means; that man thwarts me in such good works; this illness overtakes me when I most need my health."
"When the will of God reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her," says Père De Caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the Lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she has learned to practice that self-abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will."
But next to the Scriptures no book served him so well during his illness as Abandonment, or Entire Surrender to Divine Providence, a small posthumous treatise of Father P. J. Caussade, S.J., edited and published by Father H. Ramière, S.J., with a strong defence of the author's doctrine by way of preface.
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