Salesian Literature

Vol. 1, Introduction

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The works of St. Francis de Sales are phenomenal. The complete works in French, known as the Annecy Edition, number 26 volumes.  They contain more than 2,000 Letters, and his two masterpieces: Introduction to the Devout Life (Philothea) and Treatise on the Love of God (Theotimus), not forgetting his Sermons and his Spiritual Conferences.

 

Francis de Sales met Jeanne Francois de Chantal on 5th March 1604 at Dijon.  Together wither, he founded the Order of the Visitation of saint Mary in 1610.  To this day the Visitation is an enclosed Order living and witnessing in many countries of the world, and keeping alive in the world today the spirit of gentleness and compassion, the flame of Love for God and man which consumed the heart of Francis de Sales.

 

It is in the setting of the Order of the Visitation that we have to read the marvellous Spiritual Conferences which Francis de Sales gave to his Sisters of the Visitation in the course of his frequent visits to them. Through these Conferences he undertook their human and spiritual formation.  Many people rightly see in these homely talks the quintessence of the Salesian spirit, the highest peak of Salesian devotion, the secret of a very special way of loving God and man.  In these pages, there burns brightly even today a brilliant and glorious flame beckoning us to experience in the intimate depth of our hearts the warmth and the tenderness of Love’s gentle persuasion.  Readers of the Conferences will be overwhelmed by their remarkable simplicity, their amazing riches, and their vision of life which is beyond compare and surpassing all we can say.

 

The “Spiritual Conferences” are indeed a compendium of the spiritual, religious, and interior life and a precious aid to build up strong, solid and down to earth convictions and attitudes of mind and heart as we make our way gently, peacefully and serenely to the heart of God.  In the desert of our life we need the gentle rain from heaven: the sympathy, kindness and understanding of the heart of Christ which Saint Francis de Sales reveals to us in these Spiritual Conferences.  Our whole life, he tells us, is to be an expression and fulfilment of the sympathy and understanding of the heart of Christ.  The whole world ought to be able to look into our hearts and see in us the gentle Christ who called himself meek and humble of heart.  The “Spiritual Conferences” present to us the real image of Francis’ life, his feelings, his deep convictions, his humane approach and his apostolic zeal.  They are the fruit of an experience of life.  However much we may admire the text we are now going to start reading, we should in no way consider it merely as an elaborate theory conceived in the privacy of the study, far removed from the daily cares and anxieties, fears and apprehensions, doubts and moments of discouragement, aversions and antipathies, abhorrence of corrections, lack of trust in one another, experienced in the life of a community and the family of man.

 

Venturing into the religious life is, in the mind of Saint Francis de Sales, a tremendous and fascinating adventure.  Must is at stake.  At stake is not only the personal and collective salvation of the religious themselves but the collective salvation of the whole world.  No one has perceived so well the fact that no society, whether civil or religious, no people can attain peace, justice, reconciliation without the presence, at every level of human society, of men and women who devote their lives to the pursuit of the ideal of evangelical perfection and who act as ferments among their fellowmen.  The Visitation Sisters and all the men and women of our times who seek after Christian perfection are not the type of Christians who live in an ivory tower nor in an enclosed and exclusive world of their own, enjoying their spiritual privileges, jealously guarding their mystical gifts.  They are people who are free as the wind, beings on fire, whether they live in the enclosure of their cloister or in the heart of the family, amidst the cares and anxieties of their daily activities and in the midst of all the torments and vicissitudes of life.  They are people who set the world ablaze with the bright and shining light of God’s love burning deep inside them.

 

The greatest enlightenment which the “Spiritual Conferences” bring to us, I believe, is the revelation that all over the world today there are the fires glowing and the flames leaping up because all over the world there are the hidden lives, the devout lives, the humble, ordinary lives, consecrated in love and service of God and human beings, who generate and radiate the light and power to draw all to Christ and to renew the face of the earth. That, I believe, is the message that Saint Francis gives to his religious and to all of us in inviting us to follow LOVE’S GENTLE PERSUASION.

 

Francis was completely exhausted by the work he had to put in at the service of God’s people.  “when I look back at my soul,” he would write to Jeanne de Chantal, “it fills me with pity, for it appears to be so emaciated and worn out that it resembles death.”  He died at the young age of 55 while on a visit to the Visitation Convent of Lyons, on the 28th of December, 1622.  according to the testimony of Saint Jeanne de Chantal, Francis de Sales celebrated Mass on the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, on the 27th December, in the Visitation Church at Lyons.  After dinner he sat down to write a letter of direction to an Abbess, and he was already so ill and giddy that he could hardly see to write.  Then he suddenly had a stroke which resulted in paralysis, and of this he died the next day which was the feast of the Holy Innocents.  His death was gentle and peaceful and he breathed his last just as the “Agnus Dei” of the litany was being said.  He received the last anointing with great devotion and did everything a true Christian should do when it comes to this pass.  People who were at his bedside were overcome with grief when they say he was near the end and they begged him to say something to them.  “Keep peace with one another,” he said “and live in fear of God.”

 

Francis de Sales was beatified in 1661, canonised in 1665, and proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1877.  He is known as the “Doctor of Love” and is the Patron Saint of writers and journalists.  Just before his last illness and death, as he took leave of his Sisters of the Visitation of Lyons, Francis de Sales said to them: “Farewell, my dear Daughters! I carry you in my heart and as a pledge of my love I leave you my heart.”  Those were the last words he pronounced to the Sisters to whom he left his heart as a legacy.  It is this heart of Saint Francis de Sales that we shall discover in these pages.  Let us read them prayerfully, let us meditate on them and let us allow this gentle Doctor of Love and Devotion to teach us, to captivate us, and to guide us with LOVE’S GENTLE PERSUASION into the eternal today of a heart to heart intimacy with God and human beings.  May the divine fire of the Holy Spirit which burned in the gentle heart of Francis de Sales, inspire us with compassion and love.

 

Fr. Ivo Carneiro MSFS

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