Daily Thought For August 19, 2021
The Present Moment
O all you who thirst, learn that you have not far to go to find the fountain of living waters; it flows quite close to you in the present moment. Therefore, hasten to find it. Why, with the fountain so near, do you tire yourselves with running about after every little rill? These only increase your thirst by providing you with only a few drops, whereas the source is inexhaustible. If you desire to think, to write, and to speak like the prophets, the apostles, and the saints, you must give yourself up as they did to the inspirations of God. O unknown Love! It seems as if your wonders were finished and nothing remained but to copy your ancient works and to quote your past discourses! And no one sees that your inexhaustible activity is a source of new thoughts, of fresh sufferings and further actions: of new patriarchs, apostles, prophets, and saints who have no need to copy the lives and writings of the others, but only to live in perpetual abandonment to your secret operations. We hear of nothing on all sides but “the first centuries,” “the time of the saints.” What a strange way of talking! Do we not realize that God works in every moment, filling and sanctifying them, giving them each a supernatural quality? Has there ever been an ancient method of abandonment to God’s operation which fell out of season? Had the saints of the first ages any other secret than that of becoming from moment to moment whatever the divine power willed to make them? And will this power cease to pour forth its glory on the souls that abandon themselves to it without reserve?
O Love eternal, adorable, ever fruitful and ever marvelous! May the divine operation of my God be my book, my doctrine, my science. In it are my thoughts, my words, my actions, and my sufferings. Not by consulting your former works shall I become what you would have me to be, but by receiving you in everything. By that ancient road, the only royal road, the road of our fathers, shall I be enlightened and shall speak as they spoke. It is thus that I would imitate them all, quote them all, copy them all.
—Excerpt from Abandonment to Divine Providence, Book 1: Chapter 2, Section 9
De Caussade, J.-P. (2011). Inner Peace: Wisdom from Jean-Pierre de Caussade. (K. Hermes, Ed.) (pp. 33–35). Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media.