Sacrament of the Present Moment (Key Excerpts)

Jean Pierre de Caussade 

“Sacrament of the Present Moment” 

(Key Excerpts)

Just as it is fire and not the phi­los­o­phy or sci­ence of that ele­ment and its effects that heats, so it is God’s order and his will which sanc­ti­fy and not curi­ous spec­u­la­tions about its ori­gin or purpose.

What he ordains for us each moment is what is most holy, best, and most divine for us. 

The mys­te­ri­ous growth of Jesus Christ in our heart is the accom­plish­ment of God’s pur­pose, the fruit of his grace and divine will. This fruit, as has been point­ed out, forms, grows, and ripens in the suc­ces­sion of our duties to the present which are con­tin­u­al­ly being replen­ished by God, so that obey­ing them is always the best we can do. We must offer no resis­tance and blind­ly aban­don our­selves to his divine will in per­fect trust.

It is the will of God that gives every­thing, what­ev­er it may be, the pow­er to form Jesus Christ in the cen­ter of our being

Souls must look upon every­thing as though it were a mat­ter of com­plete indif­fer­ence, and, see­ing only him in all things, must take or leave them as he wish­es so as to live, be nour­ished by, and hope in him alone and not by any pow­er or virtue which does not come from him

… we must set no bounds or lim­its or shape to the will of God.

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