Readings for the First Sunday of Advent.
Jesus admonishes us, “Beware your hearts don’t become drowsy from anxieties…be vigilant and pray at all times” (Luke 21:34, 36). How do we pray at all times? How do we maintain vigilance? A seventeenth-century French mystic steps forward to provide us with timeless guidance. His name is Jean-Pierre de Caussade and he wrote a spiritual classic called Abandonment to Divine Providence.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade was a Jesuit priest who lived from 1675 – 1751. He lived and served in and around Toulouse, France. Primarily, Caussade was a teacher. Eventually, he started preaching missions and served as the spiritual teacher and confessor for the Sisters of the Visitation at a convent in Nancy. These sisters revered him and kept copies of his letters. These writings became the book Abandonment to Divine Providence, also known as The Sacrament of the Present Moment.
For Caussade, the sacrament of the present moment means accepting the divine presence within by means of interior prayer. The present moment always calls us to abandon ourselves to God within. It is a concrete way to apply Jesus’ teaching on constant vigilance and perpetual prayer.
The will of God is what is happening right now with all its duties, experiences, burdens, inspirations, and relationships. He advises us to accept God in everything the present moment contains. The present moment includes both the tiny little things we do each day like washing the dishes or driving to work. Through the sacrament of the present moment, God asks us to follow the divine will in the ordinary little things of our lives: picking the kids up from school, making dinner, and interacting with family and friends. De Caussade says, “The present moment is always filled with infinite treasure.”
The present moment gives concrete shape to God’s will for us. It could not be more accessible. For, God’s will for me is right here, right now. What I am doing and experiencing in this very moment is what God wants for me. I surrender to God now, not later. It is not something to put off for another time. Surrender is now, to God in whatever is happening right now. “In this state of joyful self-surrender, the only rule is the present moment.” For, God is in the present moment.
Above all, the sacrament of the present moment means accepting the Mystery of God within or an abiding in the divine presence through interior prayer. Abandoning oneself to God means a “general forgetfulness of everything at which one arrives through the habit of letting drop our useless thoughts, so that, for some time, one may pass whole days without thinking, as it seems, of anything at all…which is called emptiness of the spirit and of the intelligence; it is also called being in nothingness.” Self-abandonment is interior silence or non-thinking nothingness within. Living the state of full surrender means living in this spaceless space. We simplify our interior by releasing reflections on past, present, future. Instead of looking at what we are or will do, we sink into the mystery and forget self entirely, abiding in the divine goodness moment by moment, whatever happens.
Caussade writes, “The state of full surrender is a certain combination of faith, hope, and love in one single action that unites the soul to God and his will. United, these three virtues together form one single act, the raising of our hearts to God and our surrender to his divine work.” The acceptance of God’s will in the now requires interior silence. Here is the heart of the abandonment to God in the present moment that Caussade teaches.