Faith
- FATHER JEAN PIERRE DE CAUSSADE, S.J.
Faith is God's interpreter.
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Without the light of faith, creation speaks to us in vain. It is a writing in coded symbols in which we can find nothing but confusion, a mass of thorns from which no one would expect to hear the voice of God.
But faith reveals to us, as it did to Moses, the fire of divine love burning in the midst of the thorn bush. It gives the clue to the coded symbols, and reveals to us in the midst of confusion the wonders of divine wisdom. Faith gives a heavenly face to the whole earth.
By faith the heart is raised, is enraptured, and becomes conversant with heavenly things. Faith is our light in this life. Faith alone grasps the truth without seeing it. By faith we touch what we cannot feel, and see what is invisible to the eye. By faith we view the world as though it did not exist.
It is the key to the treasure house, the key to the depths of divine wisdom, the key to the knowledge of God. It is faith that teaches us the emptiness, the falseness of created things. By it God reveals and manifests himself in all things. It is faith that tears the veil aside to reveal the eternal reality.
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Acknowledgement
Father Jean Pierre de Caussade, S.J. "God's Will, Our Joy." excerpt from The Joy of Full Surrender (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2008).
Reprinted with permission from Paraclete Press.
The Author
Father Jean Pierre de Caussade, S.J. (1675-1751) was a French Jesuit priest and writer known for his work Abandonment to Divine Providence (also translated as The Joy of Full Surrender) and his posthumously-published letters of instruction to the Nuns of the Visitation at Nancy, Spiritual Letters of Jean-Pierre De Caussade, where he was spiritual director from 1733-1740. 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.
