Salesian Literature

Chapter 17:  Hearing and Reading the Word of God

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Love the word of God. Listen to it always with attention and deep respect, whether your hear it during familiar conversation with your spiritual friends or in sermons.  Draw as much profit from it as you can.  Do not let it fall to the ground.  Receive it in your heart like a precious balm.  Imitate our Lady who kept carefully in her heart all the words spoken in praise of her child (Lk. 2:19 and 51).  Remember that our Lord gathers up the words we say to him in our prayers, in the measure in which we gather up the words he says to us in sermons.

 

Always have with you some good book of devotion, like those by St. Bonaventure[1], or The Spiritual Combat[2], the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Letters of St. Jerome and such others.  Read a little from it every day with great love.  Read as though you were reading letters sent to you by the Saints from Heaven, to show you the way and to encourage you to follow it.

 

Read also the stories and biographies of the Saints.  You will see there, as in a mirror, the image of the Christian life.  Find inspiration in their actions, drawing profit for yourself according to your life situation.  Those who live their life in the world are not to imitate in every respect many of the actions of the Saints.  Yet, they can imitate all the actions to a greater or lesser extent.  The solitary life of St. Peter, the first hermit[3], can be imitated in your spiritual recollections with which I have already dealt above (Part 2, Ch. 12), and in your real recollections about which I shall speak later (Part 5).  The extreme poverty of St. Francis of  Assisi can be imitated by the practice of poverty which I shall describe (Part 3, Chs. 14-16), and so on with regard to others.

 

Certainly, some biographies give more light for the guidance of our life than others.  Among these are the Life of Blessed[4] Mother Teresa of Avila, which is excellent for the purpose; the Lives of the first Jesuits; that of St. Charles Bormeo[5], Archbishop of Milan, of St. Louis, of St. Bernard; the chronicles of St. Francis of Assisi and others of a similar kind.

 

In the life of some other saints there is more for our admiration than for our imitation.  Among these are St. Mary of Egypt, St. Simon Stylites, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Angela and others like them.  But even these can help to strengthen in general a longing for the holy love of God.

 

 

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[1]  Here St. Francis mentions other names he has recommended earlier: John of Avila, Granada and Arias, de la Puente.  Besides these he mentions the following:  John Gerson (1362-1429) famous Chancellor of the University of Paris, who in St. Francis’ time was thought to be the author of “The Imitation of Christ”;  Denis the Carthusian (1402-1471); Louis de Blois (1506-1566), Flemish Benedictine; Diego Stella (1524-1598), Portuguese Franciscan;  Luca Pinelli (died 1607), Italian Jesuit.

[2]  By Lorenzo Scupoli (1530-1610), Italian Theatine.  It was St. Francis’ favourite book since his studies in Padua.

[3]  From Egypt, died about 341.

[4]  Canonized only in 1622.

[5]  Canonized in 1610.

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