Office for Vocations

A letter from Fr Jean-Pierre de Caussade to
A RELIGIOUS SISTER 3
◊◊◊
When you have neither time nor inclination to read, try to keep yourself
simply in peace in the presence of God… Humble yourself with the
consideration of the inefficacy of your own resolutions, and look upon yourself
as having so far done nothing. The less confidence you place in yourself, the
more easy will it become to have entire confidence in the mercy of God alone,
through the merits of Jesus Christ. This is that solid and perfect confidence
which completely annihilates self-love by withdrawing all those resources upon
which it was accustomed to rely. There could be nothing more salutary for some
souls than this kind of martyrdom…

The more these sacrifices touch us to the quick, and the more they make
us die to ourselves, and detach us from all consolation, and sensible support, the
closer they draw us to God and unite us to Him. This union is all the more
meritorious in being hidden and further out of the range of the senses. Self-love,
therefore, has no share in it, since it cannot feed on what it can neither know nor
feel…

You must remember that in almost everyone there is such a depth of selflove,

weakness and misery, that it would be impossible for us to recognize any
gift of God in ourselves without being exposed to spoil and corrupt it by
imperceptible feelings of self-complacency. In this way we appropriate as our
own the graces of God, and are pleased with ourselves for being in such or such a
state… Therefore, God, seeing the innermost recesses of the heart, and being
infinitely jealous of His glory, is obliged…to convince us, by our own experience,
of our utter weakness. It is for this purpose that He conceals from us nearly all
His gifts and graces…

For my part I can bear witness to this constant action of divine
Providence. God has so completely hidden from those who have appealed to me,
the gifts and graces with which he has loaded them, that they cannot see their
own progress, nor their patience, humility and abandonment, nor even their
love of God… They can hardly help weeping at the supposed absence of these
virtues and at their want of generosity in their sufferings… God withdraws what
He had given, but He does not take it away to deprive us of it absolutely. He
withdraws it to give it back in a better way, after it has been purified from this
malicious appropriation made by us without our perceiving it…

In this terrible state, one simple “Fiat,” uttered very earnestly in spite of
the repugnance experienced in the soul, is an assurance of real and solid
progress. Then there remains nothing but bare faith in God, that is to say, an
obscure faith despoiled of all sensible devotion, and residing in the will… “We
draw near to God by faith,”… “The just man lives by faith.” All this ought to
convince you that it is not in anger but in mercy and in very great mercy that
God deprives you more than others. It is because He is more jealous of the
possession of your whole heart and all your confidence…

3
Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Abandonment to Divine Providence. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Company, 1921. 192-193.