The Present Moment as Sacrament

Jean-Pierre de Caussade on the Miracle of Mindfulness

“That is the key to Liberation — it has nothing to do with outer circumstances. It comes back to attention.” — John Butler

Thich Nhat Hanh taught me that washing dishes could be meditation. The monks of New Melleray Abbey showed me in practice what it meant to live a life in which every activity was an act of spiritual devotion. Jean-Pierre de Caussade taught me why and, more importantly, how: because this moment— this ordinary, unremarkable moment—is where I participate in God’s will. All three, across centuries and tradition, arriving at the same truth: The present moment is site of the Holy, the really Real. The ordinary is sacred. Attention is prayer.

“Perfection,” writes Jean-Pierre de Caussade in Abandonment to Divine Providence, “is neither more nor less than “the faithful co-operation of the soul with [the] work of God, and is begun, grows, and is consummated in the soul unperceived and in secret.” One may be conversant, he says, with all variety of theory and speculation about the nature of God, but it boils down to this: to “receive the meaning of the designs of God”.

Receiving this meaning is more an act of Mindfulness than it is of propositional knowing. The experience of Being is the opportunity to blossom into full recognition of the wonder of the world. Writing of Mary’s fiat (“Ecce ancilla Domini: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum,” which translates to “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word (Luke 1:38)”:

What treasures of grace lie concealed in these moments filled, apparently, by the most ordinary events. That which is visible might happen to anyone, but the invisible, discerned by faith, is no less than God operating very great things. O Bread of Angels! heavenly manna! pearl of the Gospel! Sacrament of the present moment! thou givest God under as lowly a form as the manger, the hay, or the straw. And to whom dost thou give Him? “Esurientes implevit bonis” (Luke i, 53). God reveals Himself to the humble under the most lowly forms, but the proud, attaching themselves entirely to that which is extrinsic, do not discover Him hidden beneath, and are sent empty away.

Humility is the first step. As I learned in my own sobriety, sacrificing ownership and submitting to the Will of God as center of the Good was a means to relieve myself of the pressure of egotistical performance: thy will, not mine. This is a common refrain among many alcoholics, but it is also the refrain of many who simply seek a spiritual life.

And perception becomes paramount. How easy it is to get caught up in my stories, my anxieties and pressures all bound up in an endless conflict of fear and desire. John Butler, who has meditated for decades, offers this description of experiencing the present moment:

There are levels, levels of everything. Levels of depth, levels of the appreciation of beauty, levels of stillness, levels of relaxation. We don’t normally appreciate how we normally find so much of that — it seems a lot to us. We don’t always realize [all] the infinite possibilities. Just sitting here we can look out the window at the now familiar landscape, you can see it’s reassuring to us. Look at the sky, clouds there, bird flying across the window, the beauty of a bird, a pair of twigs, of a tree against the autumn sky, we could spend all day just entering more deeply into the beauty of that scene. Where does it end?

That simple scene contains a magnificent depth of reality that all-too-often evades my perception. It is absent only because I do not choose to put my attention on it. As Iain McGilchrist says (and I agree), “Attention is a moral act.” Butler goes further to suggest the experience of moving away from talking, from the propositional mind, to embody a larger experience of the integration of further types of knowing, which Vervaeke specifies as “perspectival, procedural, and participatory.”

It’s a natural thing both as in nature nature perhaps led human beings first to the idea of meditation, but also this relaxation opens up something that’s natural in us as well. It’s as natural as breathing. It really is. It’s as natural as going outside for a breath of fresh air. It’s as natural as just when you’ve had enough talking, just being quiet. It’s supernatural. Literally supernatural. You see how closely what we call the supernatural is interwoven with what we might call the natural.

This gets back to a more classic notion of the supernatural. We tend to think of it as being something external to reality, some sort of fantastic Divine confabulation. But the contemplative tradition draws us into understanding that the supernatural is an extension of reality when we are attentive, quiet, and centered enough to behold the depth, and it is there that we begin to sense all of the things outside of our own Power.

Which brings us back to Caussade.

“[T]his is all that God requires of the soul for the work of its sanctification. He exacts it from both high and low, from the strong and the weak, in a word from all, always and everywhere. It is true then that He requires on our part only simple and easy things since it is only necessary to employ this simple method to attain to an eminent degree of sanctity.”

The word Caussade uses which is translated as “sanctity” is “sainteté” which could also be rendered as “saintliness” or “holiness.” It is the attentive piety which connects us to the depth of experience, the illumination of the vocational aspects of ordinary life, the true entirety of an experience beyond our immediate perception, a genial meaning pouring from the inner chambers of our heart and soul. My basic chores of showing up for work, participating with others, being as best I can loving and accepting, and seeing that this experience of Life is full of meaning and purpose, no matter what my end, whatever tragedy may befall upon me.

Soli Deo Gloria