Salesian Literature

It was during the loneliness of her widowhood and during his rise to public service and visibility that Jane and Francis met.  He became her director and began the process of enabling her to achieve spiritual liberty, that inner freedom that allows one to perceive and then to respond to the deepening layers of awareness of God’s constant and challenging presence.  The relationship of director and directee soon blossomed into a lasting friendship.  This friendship, born of their common love of God, was nurtured by their shared delight in each other’s spiritual gifts and their mutual quest for perfection. Over the next six years the two of them discerned together both the future of Madame de Chantal’s spiritual aspirations and the shape of a new project that would speak to the dreams of both their hearts.  In 1610 they co-founded the Visitation of Holy Mary in Annecy in Savoy, a congregation for women who felt drawn to a life of religious commitment but who were not sufficiently young, robust, or free of family ties to enter one of the austere reformed women’s communities or who were simply not attracted to the physical austerity of these houses or to the lukewarm religiosity of the older lax religious orders.

 

The Visitation offered to women such as these a home – simple and modest in its physical ascetic demands yet rigorous in its interior pursuit of authentic Christian charity – where they could flower and become “daughters of prayer.”  The women were to follow a simplified monastic routine, saying a shortened version of the daily office, engaging in modest work.  They were women called to great intimacy with God who would realize a community of true charity among themselves.  With graciousness, gentleness, and tender concern they were to lead each other to pure love of God.  Women who had completed the novitiate were to express their love of God to neighbour by making visits to the poor and infirm in the surrounding neighbourhood.  There was also provision made for a limited number of laywomen to come within the community for brief periods of refreshment and retreat.

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In part, the Visitation was one facet of de Sales’ programme for the building up of a society infused with the spirit of true devotion.  In part, it was the culmination of the widow de Chantal’s deepest personal longings to find a way to both uncompromisingly abandon herself to her religious impulses while still caring for the needs of her children and her extended family.  Her then-youngest daughter Françoise went with her and stayed within the community (Charlotte had recently died); her eldest daughter Marie-Aimée, recently married to Francis’s own brother, Bernard, resided nearby.  Jane was free to move in and out of the community cloister as her maternal duties required.  During the years that followed she was able to arrange for her son’s and daughter’s education and marriages and settle the estates left by her father and father-in-law, not neglecting these responsibilities but not having her religious aspirations set aside because of them.

 

After the foundation of the Visitation, Jane de Chantal found her life as much defined by her position as superior of a budding community as her friend Francis found his determined by his role as bishop.  Both were considered spiritual leaders of their day.  Both were concerned with the continuing spiritual revitalization of their society.  Both to this end gave themselves in spiritual direction, wrote, spoke, and continued to grow in their own faith.

 

 

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Further References:

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Midathada Mariadas, Pastoral spirit of St. Francis de Sales.  “Foundation of a Religious Order”

Dirk Koster, The Beginnings of the Visitation

Dirk Koster, Further Growth of the Visitation

André Ravier, St. Francis de Sales: Sage and Saint. “The Annecy Visitation”

Michael de la Bedoyere.  Francois de Sales. “Founding of the Visitation”

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Papal Encyclical:

 

Pope Pius XI, Rerum Omnium Perturbationem, 26 January 1923, “to celebrate the Third Centenary of the entry into heaven” of St. Francis de Sales, and conferring on him the title of “Heavenly Patron of all Writers”:

Go to:  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_26011923_rerum-omnium-perturbationem_en.html#top

 

Pope Paul VI, Sabaudiae Gemma, 29 January 1967, “Commemorating the Four Hundredth Birth Anniversary of St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church:

Go to: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19670129_sabaudiae-gemma_lt.html

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