SURRENDER: Christians’ Disregard Of God’s Action by Jean-Pierre de Caussade

From The Joy of Full Surrender

What unfaithfulness there is in the world!  How unworthy are human thoughts of God!  We constantly complain of God’s action in a way we would not use toward the lowest of workmen about his trade.  We would reduce God’s action to the limits and rules of our feeble reason.  We presume to imagine that we can improve on his acts.  These are nothing but complaints and murmurings.

We are surprised at the treatment endured by Jesus at the hands of the Jews.  Divine love! adorable Will of God! infallible truth! in what ways are you treated?  Can God’s will ever occur at other than the proper time?  Can it be mistaken?  “But there is this business of mine!  I require such and such a thing!  The necessary helps for my purpose have been taken from me.  That person thwarts all my good works.  Is it not most unreasonable?  This illness comes on just when my health is most important to me.”  To all this there is only one answer: that the will of God is the only thing necessary; therefore, what it does not grant must be useless.

My good souls, nothing is lacking to you.  If you only knew what these events really are that you call misfortunes, accidents, and disappointments, and in which you can see nothing but what you consider out of place or unreasonable, you would be deeply ashamed.  You would blame yourselves for your complaints as blasphemous.  But you never think of these happenings as being the will of God, and his adorable will is blasphemed by his own dear children who refuse to acknowledge it.

When you were on Earth, my dear Jesus, you were treated as a demoniac.  They called you a Samaritan.  And now, although it is acknowledged that you live and work through all the centuries of time, how is your adorable will received – that will that is worthy of blessing and praise?  Has one moment passed from the creation of the world to the present time, and will there pass one from now to the day of judgment in which the holy name of God is not worthy of praise – that name that fills all the ages and everything that happens in them, and makes them holy?  What?  Can the will of God do me harm?  Shall I be afraid, or run away from the will of God?  And where shall I look to find anything better if I dread God’s purpose for me, his will in my regard?

We ought to listen attentively to that inner voice in the depths of our hearts every moment.  If our understanding and reason do not understand or grasp the truth and goodness of these words, is it not because they are incapable of appreciating divine truths?  Should we be amazed that our reason is confused by mysteries?  When God speaks it is a mystery, and therefore a deathblow to my senses and my reason, for it is the nature of mysteries to confound both.  Mystery makes the soul live by faith; everything else sees it as nothing but a contradiction.  God’s action by one and the same stroke kills and gives life: the more we feel the death to the senses and reason, the more convinced should we become that it is bringing life to the soul.  The darker the mystery, the more light it contains.  This is why a simple soul finds nothing more divine than that which has the least appearance of being divine.  The life of faith is a continual struggle against the senses.