Novena for Order 2017, Day 8
If we wish to reach the state of abandonment, we must get rid of any love for created things.
No thought, no mental effort will teach us anything about pure love. We can learn of it only through the activity of God, and God teaches us, both through our reason and through difficulties and setbacks. What we learn by these teachings is that there is nothing good except God. To know this we must get rid of all we hold dear. We must strip ourselves of everything. We cannot be settled in the state of pure love until we have experienced a lot of setbacks and many humiliations. We must reach the stage when all that the world contains ceases to exist and God is everything to us. Now for this to happen, God destroys all our personal affections. It does not matter what they are. We may take up some special kind of devotion, a particular pious practice, try to become perfect by following certain paths and seek the guidance of other people. No matter what it is we attach ourselves to, God will step in and upset our plans so that, instead of peace, we shall find ourselves in the midst of confusion, trouble and folly. As soon as we say, "I must go this way, I must consult this person, I must act like this," God at once says the opposite and withdraws his power from those means which we ourselves have chosen. So we discover the emptiness of all created things, are forced to turn to God and be content with him.
--Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Chapter 4, 2.
Prayer for Ordering a Life Wisely.
Its extremely misguided to say that we must lose all love for created things in order to attain pure love for God. God never commanded that. He commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And love for self, family, friends, persons of the other sex is a natural inclination created in us by God. He does not destroy all of a person's affections. That would be to destroy the human nature that he created. If a person loses all his affections for created things, that is an effect of depression or despair, which God may use to draw the person closer to him through the influence of his grace, but it doesn't mean that God himself has destroyed those affects. Caussade's views are closer to Indian mysticism than to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. In the beginning of the world, God said that the things he had created are good, and he said that mankind is very good and made in his image and likeness. What is intrinsically good and beneficial to us is worthy of affection.
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