Surrender to God — what the French spiritual tradition calls l'abandon à Dieu — is, in the Catholic spiritual tradition, the summit of the interior life: the moment when the soul stops wanting to choose in God's place and lets Him will and lead within it. All the great masters have taught it, each with his own accent — indifference in Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Ignatius, uniformity with the divine good pleasure in Saint Alphonsus Liguori, the present moment in Fr. de Caussade, the little way of childhood in Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.
This article is not an abstract treatise: it is an anthology, a gallery of voices. It gathers what the saints, doctors, and mystics actually said about surrender, and lets their words speak. Here you will hear Christ at Gethsemane, Mary at the Annunciation, the motionless statue of Saint Francis de Sales, the “Take, Lord, and receive” of Saint Ignatius, the sleeping child of Saint Thérèse, the “Jesus, I trust in You” of Saint Faustina.
One remark is needed from the outset: for the saints, surrender is never passive resignation or fatalism. It is the most active and most loving act there is. Tradition even had to defend it against a counterfeit — Quietism — which, under cover of surrender, abolished effort, petitionary prayer, and even hope of salvation. The saints of surrender are all, without exception, souls of extreme energy and fidelity.
For the practical path — how to make surrender grow within oneself — see How to Grow in Surrender to God. For the pitfalls to avoid, see Common Mistakes About Surrender to God. For the affective root of surrender, see What the Saints Say About Trust. For its highest fulfillment, living and acting in the very Will of God, see The Divine Will according to Luisa Piccarreta.
Surrender in the Mouth of Christ and the Scriptures
Before being a doctrine of the spiritual masters, surrender is a gesture of God Himself made man. The saints invented nothing: they meditated on, deepened, and imitated what they read in the Gospel and in all of sacred history. The entire spirituality of surrender is born of a few decisive words.
“Not my will, but thine”: Gethsemane
In the Garden of Olives, on the eve of His Passion, Jesus utters the prayer that founds all Christian surrender:
“Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 22:42[1]
Here, surrender is not the absence of desire: Jesus asks, pleads, sweats blood. But His request ends in total surrender to the Father. The saints retained this structure: one may tell God everything, ask Him for everything, on condition of then surrendering everything to His will. The Catechism stresses it: by the “Thy will be done” of the Our Father, “we ask that our will be united to that of His Son”[2], and it is at Gethsemane that this union reaches its summit[3].
“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”: the Cross
On the Cross, at the moment when all seems lost, Christ surrenders His life to the Father in the barest trust:
“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 23:46[4]
This word, taken up from Psalm 31, became the matrix of all prayers of surrender — from Saint Thérèse to Charles de Foucauld. It says that surrender is trust even unto death: surrendering to God not only what one possesses, but what one is.
Mary's “Fiat,” the model of all surrender
At the Annunciation, the Virgin welcomes a plan that infinitely surpasses her with a single word:
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 1:38[5]
The saints saw in this “Fiat” the perfect model of surrender: a free, total consent, without condition or reserve, to the will of God. Spiritual tradition reads in it as it were a Fiat prolonged throughout Mary's life, from the Incarnation to the Cross, in which she never ceased to adhere perfectly to the divine will[6].
Job, the Psalms, and Old Testament surrender
Surrender already runs through the entire Old Testament. In the midst of disaster, stripped of his goods and his children, Job blesses God:
“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” — Book of Job 1:21[7]
The psalmist makes surrender a daily prayer — “Teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God” (Ps 143:10)[8] — and the prophet Isaiah shows its fruit: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Is 30:15)[9]. Saint Paul gave its ultimate reason: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Rom 8:28)[10]. All the surrender of the saints is contained in this certainty: God is a Father, and nothing He permits escapes His love.
Saint Francis de Sales: Holy Indifference and “Asking for Nothing”
No doctor has spoken of surrender with more gentleness than Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church. His Treatise on the Love of God (1616), especially Book IX, is its great monument. For him, surrender is the very heart of pure love: to love God is to will what He wills, without reserve.
“Ask for nothing, desire nothing, refuse nothing”
The maxim that sums up his spirituality of surrender has remained famous. The saint practiced it, Saint Jane de Chantal testifies, “so faithfully until the end of his life”:
“Ask for nothing, desire nothing, and refuse nothing.” — Saint Francis de Sales, maxim reported by Saint Jane de Chantal[11]
It is not a matter of no longer wanting anything — that would be inhuman and false — but of holding one's heart in such availability that God can write in it what He wills. The indifferent soul “desires only God and His good pleasure”[12]; it welcomes health as sickness, consolation as dryness, from the same fatherly hand.
The parable of the statue in its niche
To make this disposition understood to Saint Jane de Chantal, Francis de Sales resorts to an unforgettable image: the surrendered soul is like a statue that the sculptor has placed in a niche.
“If a statue that had been put in a niche in the middle of a room had speech, and were asked: Why are you there? — Because, it would say, the sculptor my master put me here. […] Do you then desire nothing? — No, for I am where my master put me, and his pleasure is the sole contentment of my being.” — Saint Francis de Sales, parable of the statue, reported in Holy Abandonment by Dom Lehodey[13]
The statue does not move by itself, yet it is not inert: it is there for the master, out of love, attentive to his pleasure alone. “What a good prayer it is,” concludes the saint, “to keep oneself in the will of God and in His good pleasure!”[14] It is the truest image of Salesian surrender: a stillness wholly filled with love.
Surrender as the heart of pure love
In Francis de Sales, indifference has nothing of insensibility. It is the effect of a love so total that it seeks only God's contentment. That is why the saint could, in the harshest contrarieties, keep that “general and universal indifference” which struck all those around him[15]. His doctrine directly inspired Saint Alphonsus Liguori and all the masters of surrender who followed.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Indifference and the “Suscipe”
Half a century earlier, Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) had laid down, at the threshold of his Spiritual Exercises, the principle that governs everything: man is made to praise, reverence, and serve God, and all else is given to him as a means toward that end.
The “Principle and Foundation”: becoming indifferent
From this principle flows Ignatian indifference, the root of surrender:
“We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things […] in such a way that we want health no more than sickness, riches no more than poverty, honor no more than dishonor, a long life no more than a short one.” — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, “Principle and Foundation”[16]
Ignatian indifference is not coldness: it is the freedom of one who no longer wants anything but the will of God, and who holds all things in his hand, ready to keep or release them according to what best leads to God.
The prayer “Take, Lord, and receive”
At the end of the Exercises, in the “Contemplation to Attain Love,” Ignatius places on the retreatant's lips the most radical of prayers of surrender, the Suscipe:
“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will […]. Give me your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me.” — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Suscipe prayer, Spiritual Exercises, no. 234[17]
Everything is surrendered here: no longer only exterior goods, but the most intimate faculties of the soul — memory, understanding, will. Ignatian surrender culminates in this joyful stripping in which the soul, having given all, asks for only one thing more: the love and grace of God.
Saint Alphonsus Liguori: “One act of perfect conformity suffices to make a saint”
A Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists, Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) devoted to surrender some of the strongest pages of Catholic spirituality, notably the thirty-sixth consideration of his Preparation for Death and his treatise On Uniformity with the Will of God. For him, all holiness hangs on one point: loving the will of God.
Uniformity with the will of God
Alphonsus distinguishes simple resignation (enduring the will of God) from uniformity (positively willing what God wills, until becoming but one will with Him). It is in this uniformity that he places perfection:
“Oh! what a great price is one act of perfect conformity to the will of God! It suffices to make a saint.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration[18]
This saying marked all modern spirituality: holiness is not first a matter of great works, but of the will's adherence. A single act by which the soul espouses the divine will perfectly makes it holy. Alphonsus goes further: without this conformity, “our works, penances, communions, alms” do not please God — “they are no longer works of virtue”[19].
The peace of one who wills only what God wills
The saint then shows the immediate fruit of surrender: a peace nothing can touch, because the soul united to God always obtains what it wills.
“He who keeps himself united to the will of God enjoys, even here below, a continual peace. […] If it wills solely what God wills, it has all it desires, since nothing happens except by the will of God.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration[20]
This is the psychological secret of surrender: suffering comes from the gap between what I want and what happens; if I want what happens because God permits it, the gap disappears, and with it the trouble. The surrendered soul is “like a man raised above the clouds” who sees the storms raging at his feet, “untouched and untroubled”[21].
Jean-Pierre de Caussade: The “Sacrament of the Present Moment”
If a single book had to sum up the spirituality of surrender, it would be Abandonment to Divine Providence, attributed to the Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675–1751). Composed in the first half of the 18th century for the nuns of Nancy, the text was published only in 1861 by Fr. Henri Ramière; critics still debate the exact attribution, but the doctrine it carries has become a universal classic[22].
The present moment filled with treasures
Caussade's central intuition is that the will of God never reaches us anywhere but in the instant: not in the past which is no more, nor in the future which does not yet exist, but in the duty and event of the present hour, where God hides and gives Himself as in a sacrament.
“The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains far more than you have capacity to receive […]. Faith is the measure: you will find according as you believe.” — Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence[23]
It is the deepest commentary on the Gospel's “Do not be anxious about tomorrow” (Mt 6:34)[24]. The surrendered soul has but one duty: to welcome, love, and fulfill what the present instant brings, certain that God is wholly in it.
Active abandonment and passive abandonment
Caussade distinguishes two faces of surrender, which sum up the whole doctrine. Active abandonment consists in faithfully fulfilling all the duties of one's state and all the expressed wills of God (commandments, duties, inspirations). Passive abandonment consists in lovingly welcoming all that God sends or permits without our having chosen it — the will of good pleasure[25]. Far from dispensing with effort, surrender presupposes it: it is made of intense activity in one's duties, and loving receptivity in trials. That is precisely what Quietism forgot.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus: The “Little Way” of Surrender
In the 19th century, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873–1897), Doctor of the Church, gave surrender back its simplest and most evangelical face: that of spiritual childhood. Her “little way” is nothing but total surrender into the arms of God, within reach of the smallest.
Surrendering like a child in its Father's arms
For Thérèse, surrender is the way of souls that recognize themselves as little and unable to climb by themselves the steep stair of perfection. Instead, they let themselves be carried:
“It is surrender alone that guides me, I have no other compass! […] Surrendering myself like a child in its Father's arms.” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus[26]
The image of the child is not sentimentality: it states a theological truth. The child does not worry about tomorrow because it knows its father will provide. Likewise the surrendered soul lives, in Thérèse's words, in the certainty that its very littleness draws God's mercy.
The “elevator” of love
Thérèse translates surrender into a modern image, borrowed from her times: to rise toward God, she wants no stair of great efforts, but the elevator of Jesus' arms.
“The elevator that must raise me to Heaven is your arms, O Jesus! For that I have no need to grow; on the contrary I must remain little.” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Manuscript C[27]
All the genius of the little way lies here: surrender overturns the logic of proud effort. It is not by becoming great that one reaches God, but by consenting to remain little in His arms.
The Act of Oblation to Merciful Love
On 9 June 1895, Thérèse crowns her way of surrender with a solemn act: she offers herself entirely as a “victim of holocaust to the Merciful Love” of God[28]. Theresian surrender reaches its summit here: no longer merely enduring or welcoming the will of God, but actively delivering oneself to His love, that He may make of the soul whatever He wills.
Saint Faustina and Charles de Foucauld: Surrender in Modern Times
The 20th century gave the spirituality of surrender two figures who carried it into the heart of the contemporary world: Saint Faustina Kowalska and Saint Charles de Foucauld.
“Jesus, I trust in You”
To Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), Christ asked that beneath the image of Mercy figure the shortest of prayers of surrender: “Jesus, I trust in You.” In her Diary, Jesus reproaches the anxious soul for its useless weariness:
“Why are you afraid to surrender yourself to Me? […] My child, I will change all your troubles into good, and all your weaknesses into strength.” — Jesus to Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 1485[29]
Surrender, for Faustina, is trust under another name: delivering oneself to mercy means letting it turn into good all that the soul surrenders to it. She herself lived from the present instant: “The past does not belong to me, the future is not mine; with all my strength, I apply myself to making good use of the present moment.”[30]
Charles de Foucauld's Prayer of Abandonment
Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), hermit in the Sahara and canonized in 2022, left one of the most widespread prayers of surrender in contemporary spirituality, composed from a meditation on Christ's last word on the Cross:
“Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. […] I commend my soul into your hands. […] For you are my Father.” — Saint Charles de Foucauld, Prayer of Abandonment[31]
This prayer condenses the whole tradition: it starts from Christ's “into thy hands” (Lk 23:46), passes through total availability (“do with me what you will”), and ends in filial trust. It has become, for millions of Christians, the daily expression of surrender.
Dom Lehodey's Synthesis: What Exactly Is Holy Surrender?
At the beginning of the 20th century, Dom Vital Lehodey (1857–1948), Cistercian abbot of Bricquebec, wrote what remains the reference treatise on the question: Holy Abandonment (1919). His contribution was to gather and order the entire earlier tradition — Francis de Sales, Ignatius, Alphonsus, Caussade, Rodriguez — into a precise definition.
The two components: indifference and surrender of the will
For Lehodey, surrender is not a vague sentiment but a structured act, comprising two elements:
“Abandonment comprises two elements […] : holy indifference, and the total surrender of our will into the hands of Providence; the first is the necessary condition, the other the constitutive element.” — Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment (1919)[32]
Indifference — inherited from Francis de Sales and Ignatius — detaches the soul from all that is not God; the surrender of the will delivers it positively to Providence. And Lehodey finds, to describe the whole act, the image that has become classic:
“Abandonment is the movement of trusting love by which we surrender ourselves into the hands of Providence, like a child in its mother's arms.” — Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment[33]
Expressed will and will of good pleasure
Lehodey specifies, against all softness, a decisive distinction taken up by the whole tradition: there is God's expressed will (the commandments, the duties of one's state, counsels, inspirations) — to be actively fulfilled — and the will of good pleasure (what God sends or permits without consulting us) — to be lovingly welcomed[34]. Surrender never dispenses from acting: “However perfect our trust in God, we must not, under cover of abandonment, fall into negligence.”[35] This distinction is the dike separating holy surrender from the false surrender of the Quietists.
Luisa Piccarreta: From Surrender to the Continual “Fiat” in the Divine Will
The tradition of surrender finds a prolongation in the spirituality of the Divine Will revealed to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947). Where classic surrender places the human will into God's hands in each circumstance, Luisa is called further still: to let the divine Will act and live in her continually, transforming each act into a permanent “Fiat.”
“Perfect resignation to My Will melts our two wills and fuses them into one. […] It is not enough to be resigned: the soul must also be convinced that the greatest good for it […] is always to do My Will.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 16 April 1900[36]
Here we find, carried to its height, Saint Alphonsus's distinction between simple resignation and positive uniformity: surrender is fully itself only when it becomes loving and continual adherence to the will of God. This theme goes beyond the frame of the present anthology: it is treated in its own right in the article The Divine Will, to which the reader is referred.
False Surrender: What the Saints Do Not Say
The anthology would be incomplete without this warning, for the saints of surrender all fought a dangerous counterfeit. Spiritual tradition even had the Church condemn it.
Quietism condemned (Molinos, 1687; Fénelon, 1699)
In the 17th century, the Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos taught an “abandonment” that pushed passivity to absurdity: the “annihilated” soul would no longer need to act, resist temptations, or desire its own salvation. Pope Innocent XI condemned sixty-eight of his propositions by the bull Coelestis Pastor of 20 November 1687[37]. A mitigated form, the “pure love” pushed as far as indifference to eternal salvation, was defended by Fénelon and in turn condemned by Innocent XII in 1699[38]. Fénelon submitted at once.
Distinguishing surrender from laziness and fatalism
The common flaw of these errors is confusing surrender with inaction. True surrender, the saints say, is the very opposite:
“Holy abandonment has nothing of the indolent passivity of the Quietists. […] Indifference is not a morbid insensibility, nor a cowardly and lazy apathy […] : it is the singular energy of a will” keenly enlightened by faith. — Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment[39]
The surrendered soul works, struggles, prays, hopes for its salvation — but without anxiety, because it surrenders the outcome to God. This is what the maxim often attributed to Saint Ignatius sums up: “Act as if everything depended on you, knowing that everything depends on God.” Surrender does not abolish effort: it purifies it of anguish. The concrete pitfalls of this confusion are detailed in Common Mistakes About Surrender to God.
Surrender in a Few Words: An Anthology
To finish, let us gather in one table the great voices of surrender: each says the same reality with its own accent, and together they compose a single symphony.
| Voice | Work / source | The word of surrender |
|---|---|---|
| Christ | Gospel according to Saint Luke | “Not my will, but thine” (Lk 22:42) |
| The Virgin Mary | Gospel according to Saint Luke | “Let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38) |
| Saint Ignatius of Loyola | Spiritual Exercises | “Take, Lord, and receive my entire will” |
| Saint Francis de Sales | Treatise on the Love of God | “Ask for nothing, desire nothing, refuse nothing” |
| Saint Alphonsus Liguori | Preparation for Death | “One act of perfect conformity suffices to make a saint” |
| J.-P. de Caussade | Abandonment to Divine Providence | “The present moment is filled with infinite treasures” |
| Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus | Autobiographical Manuscripts | “It is surrender alone that guides me” |
| Saint Faustina | Diary | “Jesus, I trust in You” |
| Charles de Foucauld | Prayer of Abandonment | “Father, I abandon myself into your hands” |
| Dom Vital Lehodey | Holy Abandonment | “Like a child in its mother's arms” |
All these voices meet in one certainty summed up by Thomas a Kempis: “He truly possesses knowledge who does the will of God and renounces his own.”[40] Surrender is not one technique among others: it is the simplest name of holiness.
To Go Further
- How to Grow in Surrender to God — the practical path and concrete means to make surrender grow.
- Common Mistakes About Surrender to God — discerning true surrender from counterfeits (fatalism, passivity, Quietism).
- What the Saints Say About Trust — the affective root of surrender in the mouth of the saints.
- The Divine Will — the highest fulfillment of surrender, living and acting in the very Will of God, according to Luisa Piccarreta.
Notes and References
Gospel according to Saint Luke 22:42, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
1Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2825: by the “Thy will be done,” “we ask that our will be united to that of His Son, to carry out the Father's plan of salvation.”
2Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2611 and § 2824: Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane — “not my will, but thine” — is the model of filial surrender to the Father's will.
3Gospel according to Saint Luke 23:46, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Taken up from Psalm 31 (30):6.
4Gospel according to Saint Luke 1:38, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
5Summary formulation (paraphrase, not quotation): the idea that the “Fiat” of the Annunciation was prolonged into a continual consent, from the Incarnation to the Cross, is common to many spiritual authors. Cf. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 148 and § 2617–2618, on Mary's “let it be done” as the model of the obedience of faith.
6Book of Job 1:21, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”
7Psalm 143 (142):10, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “Teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God.”
8Book of Isaiah 30:15, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
9Letter to the Romans 8:28, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.”
10Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), the maxim “ask for nothing, desire nothing, and refuse nothing,” reported by Saint Jane Frances de Chantal and quoted by Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment (Le Saint Abandon), Abbey of Notre-Dame de Bricquebec / Gabriel Beauchesne, Paris, 1919. Cf. the Treatise on the Love of God, Book IX, on indifference.
11Saint Francis de Sales, quoted by Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment: the indifferent soul “desires only God and His good pleasure.” Cf. the Treatise on the Love of God, Book IX.
12Saint Francis de Sales, parable of the statue in its niche, addressed to Saint Jane de Chantal, reported by Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment: “If a statue placed in a niche […] had speech […]. My daughter, what a good prayer it is, to keep oneself in the will of God and in His good pleasure!”
13 14Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment, on Saint Francis de Sales: “that general and universal indifference ordinarily seen in him,” fruit of his union with God's contentment alone, even amid “harsh assaults.”
15Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), Spiritual Exercises, “Principle and Foundation”: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things […] in such a way that we want health no more than sickness, riches no more than poverty, honor no more than dishonor, a long life no more than a short one.” Reference text from the critical edition of the Exercises.
16Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Suscipe prayer (Spiritual Exercises, “Contemplation to Attain Love,” no. 234): “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will […]. Give me your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me.”
17Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), Preparation for Death, thirty-sixth consideration, first point: “Oh! what a great price is one act of perfect conformity to the will of God! It suffices to make a saint.” Cf. his treatise On Uniformity with the Will of God.
18Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration, first point: “Our works, penances, communions, alms, please the Lord only on condition of being in conformity with His divine will; otherwise […] they are defective works.”
19Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration, third point: “He who keeps himself united to the will of God enjoys, even here below, a continual peace. […] If it wills solely what God wills, it has all it desires, since nothing happens except by the will of God.”
20Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration, third point: “He who abandons himself to the divine will and finds good all that the Lord does, is like a man raised above the clouds who sees the storms raging at his feet, untouched and untroubled.”
21Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675–1751), Abandonment to Divine Providence (L'Abandon à la Providence divine). Text composed in the first half of the 18th century, first published in 1861 by Fr. Henri Ramière (Jesuit), then in complete edition in 1870. Recent criticism debates the exact attribution of the text, stemming from the Lorraine mystical circles of which Caussade was spiritual director; the doctrine of surrender it carries remains a classic of Catholic spirituality.
22Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence: “The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains far more than you have capacity to receive […]. Faith is the measure: you will find according as you believe.” Ramière ed.; many reprints.
23Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:34, English rendering from the Revised Standard Version: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
24The distinction between the expressed will (commandments, duties of state, counsels, inspirations — to be fulfilled) and the will of good pleasure (what God sends or permits — to be welcomed) is classic in spiritual theology; it structures Dom Lehodey's entire treatise, Holy Abandonment, and is spelled out by Caussade under the names of active and passive abandonment.
25 34Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873–1897), Complete Works: “It is surrender alone that guides me, I have no other compass!” (poem My Heaven); cf. the Autobiographical Manuscripts on surrender as the heart of the “little way.”
26Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Manuscript C (Autobiographical Manuscripts): “The elevator that must raise me to Heaven is your arms, O Jesus! For that I have no need to grow; on the contrary I must remain little.”
27Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Act of Oblation of myself as a victim of holocaust to the Merciful Love of God, 9 June 1895, Complete Works.
28Jesus to Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul, § 1485.
29Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 2: “The past does not belong to me, the future is not mine; with all my strength, I apply myself to making good use of the present moment.”
30Saint Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), Prayer of Abandonment: “Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will […]. I commend my soul into your hands […], for you are my Father.” Text composed by his disciples from a meditation of Foucauld (c. 1896) on Christ's last word on the Cross (Lk 23:46). Charles de Foucauld was canonized on 15 May 2022 by Pope Francis.
31Dom Vital Lehodey (1857–1948), Holy Abandonment (Le Saint Abandon), Abbey of Notre-Dame de Bricquebec / Gabriel Beauchesne, Paris, 1919: “Abandonment comprises two elements which we must study: holy indifference, and the total surrender of our will into the hands of Providence; the first is the necessary condition, the other the constitutive element.”
32Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment: abandonment is “the movement of trusting love by which we surrender ourselves into the hands of Providence, like a child in its mother's arms.”
33Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment: “However perfect our trust in God, we must not, under cover of abandonment, fall into negligence.” The author quotes here Bossuet's warning against the Quietists.
35Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947), The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 16 April 1900, “The passport to enter beatitude”: “Perfect resignation to My Will melts our two wills and fuses them into one. […] It is not enough to be resigned: the soul must also be convinced that the greatest good for it and the best way to glorify Me is always to do My Will.”
36Innocent XI, bull Coelestis Pastor, 20 November 1687, condemning sixty-eight propositions of Miguel de Molinos (1628–1696). Molinos had publicly abjured his errors on 3 September 1687. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, Enchiridion symbolorum, nos. 2201–2269.
37Innocent XII, brief Cum alias ad apostolatus, 12 March 1699, condemning twenty-three propositions of the Explanation of the Maxims of the Saints on the Interior Life by François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715). Fénelon submitted at once. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, nos. 2351–2374.
38Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment: holy abandonment “has nothing of the indolent passivity of the Quietists”; indifference “is not a morbid insensibility, nor a cowardly and lazy apathy […] : it is the singular energy of a will” keenly enlightened by reason and faith.
39Thomas a Kempis (c. 1380–1471), The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. III, 6: “He truly possesses knowledge who does the will of God and renounces his own.”
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