Renouncing all to gain all

Renouncing All to Gain All

Those who wish to enjoy the abundance of all goods have but one thing to do: to purify their heart, to detach themselves from created things and abandon themselves entirely to God. In this purity and this abandonment they will find everything. Let others, Lord, ask all sorts of gifts from you, multiplying their words and their prayers; as for me, I will ask one gift only, and I have only this one prayer to make to you. Give me a pure heart! 

O you who are of pure heart! How happy you are. You see God in your heart through the vivacity of your faith. You see him in everything and at every moment working within you and without. You are in all things his subject and his instrument. He leads you in everything and to everything. Often you do not think about it, but he thinks for you. It is enough that you desire what happens and ought to happen to you by his command. He knows how to prepare you for it. In your salutary blindness, you hunt about to discover this desire in yourself and you cannot see it. He sees it well enough. But how simple you are! Do you not know what a well-disposed heart is? It is nothing but a heart where God is found…. 

What greater happiness than to possess God and be possessed by him! The heart sleeps peacefully on the breast of Providence, playing with the divine wisdom like an innocent child without anxiety about the journey which continues without interruption, and in spite of rocks and pirates and continual storms pursues its even way.

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, s.j.

Father de Caussade († 1751) was a French Jesuit priest, a writer, and a revered spiritual director. [From Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, Algar Thorold, Tr., Fr. John Joyce, s.j., Ed. © 1959, Templegate, Springfield, IL. Used with permission.]