Jean Pierre de Caussade 1675-1751

Though he wrote very little, the influence of this Jesuit priest is immense. Of Jean Pierre de Caussade’s childhood nothing is known. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Toulouse in 1693, aged eighteen. He was ordained priest in 1705 and professed in 1708. From 1708-14 he taught grammer, logic and physics in their college in Toulouse. He gave up teaching to become a  missioner, confessor and preacher. He worked in Rodez, Montauban, Auch, Clermont, Puy, Beauvais and Lorraine between 1715-31. He was sent to be the spiritual director at the Jesuit house in Albi for two years, but then returned to Nancy as superior for seven years. He renewed his contacts with the nuns of the Order of the Visitation there. It is thanks to these nuns, who kept notes and records of his addresses, sermons, letters and directions to them, that we have his more famous book  Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence. It is a compilation done by E J Strickland and edited by Fr. J Ramière.

In 1741 de Caussade wrote his only book, Instructions spirituelles, en forme de dialogues, sur les divers états d’oraison, suivant la doctrine de Bossuet (translated as On Prayer). In this he defends the mystical understanding of the Christian faith, which had in some senses received a bad press as a result of the attacks on Molinos, Madame Guyon and Quietism, but is very careful to do so in a strictly orthodox manner - according to the doctrine of Bossuet. Bishop Bossuet of Meaux had been heavily involved with the investigations into Madame Guyon.

Fr de Caussade’s message owes much to his great teachers St Francis de Sales and St John of the Cross, both very pure sources, and is in line with the Carmelite style of understanding. It teaches moving away from reliance on strong feelings in prayer to a simple, as in fundamental, reliance upon God’s goodness. Perhaps the most recent exemplar of this is the great St Thérèse of Lisieux.

According to David Knowles, de Caussade’s main thesis is that ‘God and the soul perform together a work the success of which depends on the divine Workman, and can be compromised  only by the soul’s infidelity.’  If one stops to think of the phenomenal wonder of this for even a moment, our priorities change.  Less important becomes our preferences, more essential becomes the need to do the will of our Father in heaven. ‘God permits your slight infidelities to give you a deeper conviction of your weakness, and gradually to destroy in you that unhappy self-esteem, presumption and secret self-confidence which would never otherwise allow you to acquire true humility of heart.’ As Archbishop Rowan Williams has written, ‘To be good without humility is to be condemned to a really wretched life.’

Fr de Caussade did not invent, but he certainly popularized the phrases  Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence and  The Sacrament  of  the Present  Moment. In beautiful language that is warm and clear, he expressed the most profound teaching on the nature of human living.
Bibliography

We do well to remember that he was writing not for new Christians but for professed religious of many years in the life of prayer. This does not mean that we should abandon all attempts to understand this pure, Christian mystical teaching. Julian of Norwich taught that one of the ‘three medicines of salvation’ was an intense longing with our will for the will of God to be done in our lives. Reading de Caussade may greatly strengthen that desire.

As with so many wise spiritual counsellors, de Caussade’s ideas are best approached through his letters. Unfortunately these are not easily found; modern versions of  Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence,such as the Fontana edition and Kitty Muggeridge’s translation only contain the Books I & II of his treatise. One has to go to the Burns and Oates, 1962 edition of the same title or earlier to find his letters of direction and advice enclosed.

In this passage to the saintly Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil we are reminded of Isaiah 30.15,(‘Your salvation lay in conversion and tranquility, your strength, in complete trust.’The Jerusalem Bible);

‘We must submit to God in all things and about all things; as to the state and condition in which he has placed us, the good or evil circumstances that He has allotted us, and even as to the character, mind, nature, temperament, and inclinations with which He has endowed us. Practise yourself, therefore, in being patient with regard to yourself and in this perfect submission to the divine will.’

His gentle yet powerfully strengthening care consistently shines through:  ‘You say you do not know how to pray. Experience has taught me that persons of good will who speak in this way know better than others how to pray, because their prayer is more simple and humble, but because of its simplicity it escapes their observation.’ Again, ‘You explain yourself in a manner which might be misunderstood by those who have no experience of this state of prayer (of recollection). You say that you do nothing ... but your soul acts so quietly that you do not perceive your own interior acts of assent and adhesion to the impression of the Holy Spirit.’ ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote but we need this manner of contemplative prayer to celebrate it.
The Revd Neil Broadbent

Ed. Robert Llewelyn, The Fire of Divine Love, Readings from J.P. de Caussade, Burns & Oates, 1995. J.P. de Caussade, Self-abandonment to Divine Providence, Fontana, 1971. J.P. de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence, The Catholic Records Press, Exeter, 1921. J.P. de Caussade, On Prayer,  Burns & Oates,  Second Edition