A Teacher
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Sacrament of the present moment
The transmission
Jean-Pierre de Caussade was an 18th-century French Jesuit priest and spiritual director whose teaching survives chiefly in writings and letters later compiled as Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence (also rendered as The Sacrament of the Present Moment).
Working in the aftermath of the Quietist controversy—when doctrines of passive surrender had been condemned—Caussade articulated a carefully orthodox version of abandonment: the soul is to receive each present moment, with all its duties and circumstances, as the direct expression of God’s will, and to surrender to it completely.
He coined the luminous phrase “the sacrament of the present moment,” meaning that the now itself is the place where the divine is encountered and received. Caussade’s significance for the mind-power lineage lies in his pure articulation of trustful surrender to the present, stripped of striving.
His teaching that peace and grace are found by fully accepting “what is,” rather than resisting or grasping, is a direct Christian ancestor of the present-moment and acceptance themes that pervade modern spirituality—from Tolle’s “power of now” to the surrender component of manifestation (“let go and allow”).
At the same time, his framing is theocentric: the present is surrendered to God’s will, not manipulated to extract desired outcomes—making him, like John of the Cross, both a source for and an implicit corrective to the acquisitive use of “surrender” in popular manifestation culture.
What they gave
Sacrament of the present moment: Located the divine encounter in the now—an ancestor of present-moment / “power of now” teaching.
- Self-abandonment to providence: Articulated trustful surrender and acceptance of “what is” as the spiritual path.
- Non-striving: Framed grace as received through acceptance rather than effortful grasping.
- Theocentric corrective: Surrender directed to divine will, distinguishing genuine abandonment from instrumental “letting go.”
In their words
There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed.
All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.
The duties of each moment are the shadows beneath which hides the divine operation.
Faith changes the face of the earth; by it the heart is raised, entranced and becomes conversant with heavenly things.
The present is ever filled with infinite treasure, it contains more than you have capacity to hold.
Sanctity, then, consists in willing all that God wills for us.
Mystery makes the soul live by faith; for all the rest there is nothing but contradiction.
Those things that happen at each moment by the divine command or permission are always the most holy, the best and the most divine for us.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Ignatian spirituality; the gentle devotion of Francis de Sales; the Quietist debate (engaged with care to stay orthodox).
- Taught / Influenced: surrender and self-abandonment spirituality; present-moment and acceptance teaching; modern contemplative and mindfulness-adjacent devotion.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Abandonment to Divine Providence (The Sacrament of the Present Moment)1741