Quote by Jean Pierre de Caussade
“What shall I say of their effeminate adornments, their costly fabrics, their extravagant perfumes, their sumptuous tables groaning under the weight of rare and luxurious viands? Nay, sensuality and luxury are so general that, to our shame, books are published to teach us how to sin in these respects. Men have perverted creatures from their lawful use, and instead of making God's benefits a help to virtue, they have turned them into instruments of vice. So great is the selfishness of the world that there is nothing which men do not sacrifice to the gratification of the flesh, wholly forgetful of the poor, whom God has so specially recommended to their care. Such persons never find that they are poor until they are asked for alms; at any other time there is no extravagant luxury their income cannot afford.”
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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(especially with the Church's condemnation of the Quietiest movement), Caussade's instructions to the sisters were kept unpublished until 1861, and even then they were edited to protect them from charges of Quietism.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.