Abandonment (mysticism)

Abandonment is a spiritual attitude in Christian spirituality characterized by surrender or self-offering to the will of God. The concept has been especially important within traditions of Christian mysticism, contemplative prayer, and ascetical theology emphasizing detachment from self-will, confidence in divine providence, and inward receptivity to grace.^[1]

In classical spiritual theology, abandonment commonly refers not only to conformity with the known will of God but also to trustful acceptance of the hidden dispositions of divine providence in circumstances beyond human understanding or control. Some spiritual writers described abandonment as a synthesis or culmination of the theological and moral virtues because it presupposes faith, hope, charity, humility, patience, and perseverance.^[2]

Although the term became especially associated in modern Catholic spirituality with Jean-Pierre de Caussade and Abandonment to Divine Providence, historians of spirituality have emphasized that the underlying religious attitude is much older than the terminology itself. Throughout Christian history, related concepts such as detachment, renunciation, indifference, recollection, conformity to the divine will, pure love, self-emptying, and surrender to providence have expressed similar spiritual ideals.^[3]

The spirituality of abandonment is commonly associated with Christian contemplation, the purification of self-will, and the pursuit of union with God through loving acceptance of divine action in both ordinary life and suffering.

History

Early Christianity and the Desert tradition

Forms of spirituality centred upon surrender to God’s will appeared already in early Christian monasticism. The Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers emphasized inner renunciation, radical detachment, humility, and continual conversion of the heart through obedience and prayer.^[4]

Themes later associated with abandonment appear in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, Maximus the Confessor, and John Cassian, particularly in discussions of purity of heart, freedom from attachment, inner stillness, and conformity of the human will to divine action.^[5] Modern scholars have stressed that the history of abandonment spirituality should not be limited to the explicit use of the term itself but should also include related traditions of detachment, inward surrender, and contemplative self-renunciation.^[6]

The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane, “not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42), has often been regarded as the foundational Christian expression of abandonment to the divine will.

Rhineland and Flemish mysticism

The spirituality of abandonment reached a particularly influential form in the traditions of Rhineland mysticism and Flemish contemplative theology during the late Middle Ages.^[7]

Meister Eckhart developed a theology of detachment (Abgeschiedenheit) in which inward freedom from self-will became the highest spiritual disposition.^[8] John of Ruusbroec emphasized contemplative prayer arising from the “ground” of the soul and characterized by simplicity, inward silence, and prayer “without mode”.^[9]

Despite ecclesiastical condemnations affecting some Rhineland mystical figures, including Eckhart and Marguerite Porete, these contemplative traditions continued to circulate widely in monastic and devotional contexts.^[10] Scholars such as Jean Orcibal have argued that Rhineland and Flemish mysticism strongly influenced later Carmelite spirituality, especially John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila.^[11]

Texts such as the anonymous Flemish work The Evangelical Pearl, translated into French in 1602, helped transmit these contemplative traditions into early modern Catholic spirituality.^[12]

The language of abandonment and detachment in Rhineland mysticism also influenced later philosophical traditions through the concept of Gelassenheit (“releasement” or “letting-be”), developed by Martin Heidegger in his 1959 discourse of the same name. Heidegger drew in part upon the vocabulary of late medieval German mystical theology associated with Eckhartian traditions of inward detachment and releasement.^[13]

Early modern Catholic spirituality

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, abandonment became an important theme within multiple currents of Catholic spiritual renewal, including the French School of Spirituality, Carmelite mysticism, Capuchin spirituality, and the traditions associated with the Hermitage of Caen.^[14]

Writers such as Benet of Canfield, Jean de Bernieres-Louvigny, Jean-Joseph Surin, Jacques Bertot, François Fénelon, and Madame Guyon emphasized interior surrender, pure love of God, inward recollection, and abandonment to divine providence.^[15]

The spirituality of abandonment became controversial during the Quietist controversies of the late seventeenth century. The condemnation of Miguel de Molinos in 1687, suspicions directed toward contemplative passivity, and later disputes surrounding Fénelon and Madame Guyon created widespread ecclesiastical distrust of certain forms of interior spirituality.^[16]

Modern historians generally distinguish the broader traditions of abandonment spirituality from the more radical passivism condemned as Quietism.^[17] Recent scholarship has increasingly interpreted many previously suspect contemplative traditions, especially those associated with Madame Guyon, within the larger continuity of Christian mystical theology rather than as isolated doctrinal deviations.^[18]

In traditions influenced by Carmelite mystical theology, abandonment has often been associated with the passive purifications and “dark night” described by John of the Cross. Spiritual writers describe this process as involving detachment from disordered attachments and consolations, experiences of aridity and desolation in prayer, and surrender to divine action amid uncertainty and interior darkness.^[19]

Jean-Pierre de Caussade and the “present moment”

The concept of abandonment became especially associated with the eighteenth-century Jesuit spiritual director Jean-Pierre de Caussade through the posthumously published work Abandonment to Divine Providence.^[20]

The work teaches that every moment of life mediates the will and action of God and that holiness consists in continual fidelity to grace within ordinary circumstances. This spirituality later became associated with the phrase “the sacrament of the present moment”.

Modern scholarship has shown that the textual history of Abandonment to Divine Providence is highly complex and that the work likely emerged from manuscript traditions associated with the Visitation convents of Nancy and circles influenced by Madame Guyon.^[21][22]

Some scholars have argued that the work reflects the survival of traditions of contemplative abandonment and “pure love” spirituality after the Quietist controversies.^[23]

Modern reception

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, abandonment spirituality became widely influential in Catholic devotional life and later in ecumenical contemplative movements. English translations of Caussade, especially The Sacrament of the Present Moment, helped popularize the language of abandonment and providential trust far beyond Roman Catholicism.^[24]

Themes associated with abandonment have also appeared prominently in the spirituality of figures such as Thérèse of Lisieux, Charles de Foucauld, and modern writers on contemplative prayer and spiritual formation.^[25]

The “Prayer of Abandonment” associated with Charles de Foucauld became especially influential in twentieth-century Catholic devotion.

Several modern popes have spoken positively of abandonment to divine providence and conformity to the divine will. In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI stated that prayer involves “complete abandonment to the word and will of God”.^[26] Pope Francis later described Pope John XXIII’s “daily abandonment to God’s will” as a model for the contemporary Church.^[27]