“Libres, por su situación, de casi todas las obligaciones exteriores, estas almas son poco aptas para el trato mundano o para los negocios, lo mismo que para las reflexiones o conductas complicadas. No es fácil servirse de ellas para nada, y más bien dan la imagen de personas débiles de cuerpo y de espíritu, de imaginación y de pasiones. No se les ocurre nada, no piensan en nada, no preven nada, no se toman a pecho nada. Son, por decirlo así, muy bastas, y no se ve en ellas el adorno que la cultura, el estudio y la reflexión dan al hombre. Se ve en ellas lo que la naturaleza muestra en los niños que no han recibido aún formación alguna de sus maestros. Son en ellas patentes ciertos pequeños defectos, de los que no son más culpables que esos niños sin formación, pero que chocan más vistos en ellas que en éstos. Y es que Dios despoja a estas almas de todo, menos de la inocencia, para que no tengan nada sino a Él mismo.”
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Jean Pierre de Caussade S.J. was a French Catholic Jesuit writer known for his work Abandonment to Divine Providence (also translated as The Sacrament of the Present Moment) and his posthumously-published letters of instruction to the Nuns of the Visitation at Nancy, where he spiritual director from 1733-1740, although he continued to write the sisters after leaving Nancy.
While he is best known for his work with the sisters, he also spent years as preacher in southern and central France, as a college rector (at Perpignan and at Albi) and as the director of theological students at the Jesuit house in Toulouse. Caussade is remembered for, among other things, his belief that the present moment is a sacrament from God and that self-abandonment to it and its needs is a holy state - a belief which, at first glance, would appear to be heretical relative to Catholic dogma. In fact, because of this fear (especially with the Church's condemnation of the Quietiest movement), Caussade's instructions to the sisters were kept unpublished until 1861, and even then they were edited to protect them from charges of Quietism. A more authoritative version of these notes was published only in 1966. It is clear in his writings that he is aware of the Quietists and that he rejects their perspective.