Self-abandonment to divine providence

Anita and I had what I would call a quiet faith. We did not belong to a church and, although we talked about faith, Christ and God ad nauseum, we rarely spoke of those things to other people.

So, upon Anita’s death, I find that God is using this situation to task me with two things. 1) Share more of our faith (especially Anita’s) with others in hope to inspire. 2) Deepen my own relationship with God by being constantly mindful of His presence.

I am so blessed to follow in the footsteps of Anita! She left me her own annotated bible and many books that she used as inspiration. Several jumped out at me as I began the task of constant mindfulness and the first one I started was The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade.

De Caussade was an obscure Jesuit priest in southern France in the early 1700s. He was the spiritual guide for a group of nuns and his lectures and letters were gathered and later published as The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Now, I’ve only started this book but already several things have jumped out at me.

This was a book that Anita was going back to in the month before her death (she had read it and studied it previously). Straight away in translator Kitty Muggeridge’s preface, Anita highlighted the core of de Caussade’s instructions.

His [de Caussade's] doctorine requires an active, not a passive, surrender in body and soul of our will to the will of God.
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‘Self-abandonment to divine providence’ implies a dynamic surrender of ourselves to the will of God. Self-love, self-esteem and pride blind and deafen the soul and can even pollute our good deeds and good will. The self and the ego must be annihilated in order that we may understand what God is telling us and respond to and trust in him alone.
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‘The Sacrament of the present moment’ requires us to do our duty whatever it may be, a carrying out of God’s purpose for us, not only this day, or this hour, but this minute, this very minute – now.
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His doctorine still has a relevant message today for those who find life purposeless in a society abandoned to the fantasties and arrogance of the pursuit of happiness which so quickly becomes a pursuit of pleasure; in which suffering, mental or physical, must be drugged out of existence; in which there is no place for the Cross in Christianity. Those who are ready to believe in God will find comfort and hope in the quest for perfection through surrendering themselves to his will and discovering in the reality and humiliation of life’s trials and tribulations his loving purpose for them.

As I pondered this, I realized that ’self-abandonment’ was the perfect term for what Anita was trying to do in her final days. She had stopped cursing about three weeks prior to her death. (Not that we swore a lot, but we were both known to cuss in frustrations.) She also stopped complaining, even to me. I know she had daily struggles, so I thought it strange that she would choose to stop venting about it. Now I see she was giving it to God rather than me. I think self-abandonment as exactly what she was trying to do, and just in time it seems.

Now self-abandonment falls to me. I’ll keep going forward in the book and in my walk and I’ll keep you updated.