Ave Maria Meditations
The souls who are called by God to live in the state of perfect self-abandonment lead on earth a life like to that of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and Saint Joseph. This life is entirely filled with the will of God. These souls fully submissive to the divine will as soon as it is manifested in preceptor inspiration are in continual dependence on what we may call the will of pure Providence.
It follows from this that their life, though most extraordinary in its perfection, shows nothing exteriorly except what is quite ordinary and common: they fulfill the duties of religion and of their state; others apparently do the same. Examine them in other matters; there is nothing striking or peculiar; only ordinary things happen to them. What distinguishes them is not perceptible to the senses; it is the dependence on the supreme will in which they live which seems to arrange everything for them. This will keeps them always masters of themselves through the habitual submission of their hearts.
Thus the souls of whom we speak are by their state solitary and free, disengaged from everything in order to content themselves in peacefully loving the God who possesses them and faithfully fulfilling the duty of the moment according as His will is signified to them without permitting any reflection on themselves or any scrutiny of consequences, causes, or reasons; it must suffice them to walk simply in pure duty as if there were nothing in the world but God and the particular duty of the moment.
+Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J.
