Book 2, Chapter 2
-Part 3 continued-
Self-abandonment is “the complete donation of our being to God to be used according to his good pleasure.” ~Caussade
As Father C continues to weave together strands of spiritual insight to help us better delve into our own life with God, he brings us to a discussion of the active and the passive responses that a disciple might make to God. In light of our previous discussion, we might call these the active and passive forms of submission to God.
For just a moment we need to consider that over the years talk of the interior life etc., distressed the relationship between the inner life (the passive) and the exterior life (the active). Extremists in favor of passivity-only were called Quietists in 17th-Century France, although the roots for this are found earlier in Spain. This is considered an unbalanced bearing on the doctrines of the Christian life. Included among these are the views that the “perfect” among the Quietists can achieve sinless perfection; that their souls can be completely absorbed into God in this life; and that any dealings with the ordinary life in the world are to be strictly shunned.
The better-known of the writers from this movement are Jeanne Guyon (d. 1717) and Francois Fenelon (d. 1715). A Church Commission condemned the Quietist views of the two, for which Guyon apologized and Fenelon, an archbishop, submitted to papal authority on the matter.
Caussade carefully prefers the passive approach to God. “Although souls raised by God to the state of self-abandonment are much more passive than active, they cannot be dispensed from all action” (Page 59). Careful indeed, for Caussade wrote these notes just a dozen or so years after Guyon and Fenelon died, and in the same country. He gives something of a nod to the Quietists, but achieves more of a balance by adding, “they cannot be dispensed from all action.”
The institutional memory of the Catholic Church contains a movement toward passivity (or contemplation) and the equal and opposite reaction of movement away from passivity and toward faith in action.
While studying the contemplative lifestyle with a group of believers, I found it strange that we were warned by some of the members to avoid becoming otherwise active in the church. I believe this to be a “memory” from the debates of yesteryear.
I think it is easy for us today to see how an inner life of prayer and contemplation is needed to inform and energize an active life of faith. The two are complimentary to one another. However, it took our predecessors some time to reach this balance.
By 1907, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (France again!) wrote a pamphlet that later became the book The Soul of the Apostolate, which defends and prefers the interior life. You can tell that there is still strife in the air by this time, as two of Dom Chautard’s many sections of the book are: “Is the interior life lazy?” and, “Is the interior life selfish?” His conclusion is that action is made fruitful by the interior life – a fairly balanced reckoning.
Further still, we have to consider that solitary contemplation is as much of an action as spooning up mashed potatoes at a soup kitchen. A prayer warrior confined to his home or his bed is as much a part of the overall spiritual well-being of the church as is a brilliant evangelist or popular Christian author. We must see this, although we do so rather poorly, and then still balance isolation with community; the prayer closet with the marketplace.
Jesus managed to spend time alone and isolated in prayer as well as working and teaching among people. “In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there” (Mark 1:35). “… he would often go off to some deserted place and pray” (Luke 5:16). Matthew reports that, after Jesus healed the sick and fed the crowd of thousands with five loaves and two fish, he pressed the disciples to get into a boat and head for the other side of the Sea of Galilee, sent the crowd away, “and went up into the hills by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23).
In passing I will point out that St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) (and France again!) was a great example of this balance. His contemporary, Geoffrey of Auxerre, reported of Bernard: “Contemplation and action so agreed together in him that the saint appeared to be at the same time entirely devoted to external works and yet completely absorbed in the presence and the love of his God.”
In his 12th sermon on the Song of Songs, Bernard speaks of three ointments that waft from the body of the Bride. They are, he says, “Contrition, devotion and lovingkindness.” What follows is his unsurpassed description of the external manifestation of the believer filled with mercy and charity:
“Who, in your opinion, is the good man who takes pity and lends, who is disposed to be compassionate, quick to render assistance, who believes that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving, who easily forgives but is not easily angered, who will never seek to be avenged, and will in all things take thought for his neighbor’s needs as if they were his own?
“Whoever you may be, if your soul is thus disposed, if you are saturated with the dew of mercy, overflowing with affectionate kindness, making yourself all things to all men yet pricing your deeds like something discarded in order to be ever and everywhere ready to supply to others what they need, in a word, so dead to yourself that you live only for others – if this be you, then you obviously possess the third and best of all ointments and your hands have dripped with liquid myrrh that is utterly enchanting.” (Vol. 1, On the Song of Songs, Sermon 12, Page 78.)
In light of the history of the church and of the Scriptures, we can safely say that self-abandonment is not something we do lying down. The donation of our life to God for his purposes will entail a life drawn away for prayer and a life lived in the service of others.
It sometimes happens in doctrinal development that things that are discussed separately become unnecessarily separated. Faith and works is the most glaring example. In the case of the interior and exterior life, it is the believer’s responsibility to respond to God in a way that integrates “pray without ceasing” (First Thessalonians 5:17), with “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).
The separation of the two is needless, impractical and doctrinally unsound.
Why bother with this discussion? If it has been a problem in the history of the church, it could well be a difficulty in the life of the contemporary believer. Doctrinal history is nothing if it does not show us how to put together the forces that flow from our belief.
If prayer is your left hand, and action is your right, you must clasp them together for the Christian life. It is neither in the right, nor the left, but in the interlaced fingers that bring them together.
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