Letters - Direction - Theme 6

Salesian Spirituality: Six Themes

Theme VI:

“We cannot always offer God great things, but at each instant we can offer him little things with great love.”

(Jane de Chantal)

There is in the Salesian spirit a deep appreciation for the significance of little things. The insistence on hiddenness in the process of spiritual growth corresponds to this appreciation. Dramatic exploits, acts of great heroism, visible mortification are left to other members of the Christian family. The Salesian spirit occupies an unobtrusive kitchen pantry or perhaps a gardener’s cottage in the household of the larger Church.[1]

Yet in the interior realm a clear sense of the radical world-changing nature of the Christian vocation is present. The heart of the living Jesus is encountered on the cross. It is the surrendered heart of a God bowed in naked abjection and pain. This abject dying Jesus is very much a part of Salesian spirituality. But the arena of the dying is interior and the opportunities for Christ-like surrender present themselves daily in the most ordinary of circumstances. Jesus lives among people as gentleness, kindness, mutual regard, etc. – all the little virtues that mark one as relationally aware.

That the face of Jesus crucified is also in Salesian thought the face of the gentle humble Jesus is significant. Francis de Sales’ favourite biblical quotation about Jesus, the one statement that for him exemplified who that person was, was “Come to me… and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly of heart” (Matt. 11:29-30). The full import of this choice of descriptive phrase is gleaned when one looks at the context in which the quotation occurs. It is embedded in an eschatological portion of the Matthean narrative in which dire warnings about impending judgement are unleashed. Jesus’ own words that follow reveal the nature of the mission and meaning of his own person, a mission that is hidden to the eyes of the wise and learned and perceived only by those who take upon themselves the identity of Jesus as himself, an identity which confounds the “world” by its lowliness and gentleness. Jesus’ sonship, his essential identity with the Father, is stressed. Thus the revelation of the nature of divinity itself through the Son – the kingdom image – is seen as taking upon oneself the yoke of the gentle, lowly heart of Jesus. To take the yoke that Jesus offered was thus, in de sales’ mind, to cultivate all within the self that corresponded to this gentle, lowly Saviour. Hence, the “little virtues” take on salvific significance.

These very Salesian virtues were to be acquired by following the time-honoured ascetic pattern of self-mortification. Always in the Christian tradition death to self – asceticism – is linked to growing likeness to God – the obtaining of virtues. Only the mortifications prized in Salesian thought were not visible and heroic but ordinary and unobtrusive. Patiently enduring the pains of work rather than observing long fasts, practising charity toward an unlikable neighbour rather than wearing a hair shirt, curbing the immoderate impulses of one’s own heart rather than violently assaulting one’s sensual flesh – these are the preferred methods of Salesian asceticism.

Indeed, for de Sales, the mortifications one does not choose are in fact superior to those that one might select oneself. For in those unbidden difficulties, self-discoveries and frustrations which call forth humility and patience, there is “more of God’s will than our own.” God’s will – the will of God’s good pleasure – is here discovered. And it is in dying to one’s own will, even one’s own will to achieve a certain idea of perfection, that God’s will can come to live and act in each person.

There are innumerable and varying lists of the little virtues found throughout the writings of Monseigneur de Sales and Madame de Chantal.[2] Perhaps here it is sufficient to explore three such qualities that seem to be especially dear to their two hearts and to describe some of the ways in which they attempted to put these into practice. Chief among the Salesian virtues, and the one that belongs distinctively to this tradition, rather than to the wider contemplative heritage, is douceur. A difficult term to translate, douceur has been rendered in English as “sweetness,” “gentleness,” “graciousness,” “meekness,” and “suavity.” None of these translations do it full justice. Douceur is a quality of person that corresponds to the light burden offered by the Matthean Jesus to those otherwise heavy-laden. It connotes an almost maternal quality of serving that is swathed in tender concern. Salesian douceur also suggests a sense of being grace-filled, graceful in the broadest use of the term. This gracefulness extends from external demeanour –polite manners and convivial disposition – to the very quality of a person’s heart – the way in which a person is interiorly ordered and disposed. Here one is reminded of the tradition of l’honnête homme popular in the seventeenth century which stressed the harmony, beauty, and grace of the whole person and which de Sales saw as reflecting the beauty and harmony of God.[3] From this point of view, devotion is expressed by the graceful life. By participation and correspondence it is also life in God.

Douceur is ideally to be exhibited in all situations, even the most difficult, and to underlie one’s every act. It was a particular hallmark of the character that the Visitation community was to assume.

In the name of God, my dear daughter, [wrote Jane,] wait for the improvement of these good sisters with great patience, and bear with them gently. Treat their hearts affectionately, making them see their own faults without undue emotion or strong feelings of harshness, but so that through your help they will be encouraged to overcome them and still remain enamoured of your maternal graciousness. This is the matchless way to win souls and it is characteristically ours.[4]

But gentleness of heart was not in Salesian thought restricted to the cloister. All were called to live out the kingdom image to which Christ himself called them. “The one who can preserve gentleness (douceur) in the midst of sorrows and sufferings and peace in the midst of the multiplicity and busyness of affairs – that person is almost perfect,” wrote Francis.[5] Indeed, Francis lived his douceur in the midst of one of the most troubled epochs in history. Rent by the strife of religious and political warfare and torn by the interpersonal and familial vendettas of the aristocracy, Europe of his day was a hotbed of violence. Francis’s early mission to the Chablais, his youthful plans to retake the city of Geneva by prayer and fasting, his intervention in public embroilments, his own personal struggle to transform his anger into the peace of Christ: all these attest to the rightfulness of his reputation as peacemaker.[6]

A second little virtue highly prized in Salesian spirituality is humility. Long an ideal in the classic spirituality of Christendom, humility retained its centrality in the thought of Francis and Jane.[7] Humility expressed for them the recognition of the reality of human dependence upon God, the truth of the profound limitations of the individual person and communities of persons, and the acknowledgement of illusory human pride that strives to be like God and so conspires in its own destruction. This profound sense of humility is a contrapuntal accent to the Salesian theme of human liberty. But by no means is it a negation of that insight. For liberty does not imply a state of God-like omnipotence, a we-can-do-it-by-ourselves attitude. Liberty simply bespeaks the gift of choice, the opportunity given by the Creator to love and not to love. Sustaining this intuition, in Salesian thought, is a deeper sense of the sheer gift of life itself and a recognition of the unmerited, unconditional quality of that gift. The immensity of the gift appears most clearly and in proportion to the extent to which one grasps this fact. Humility is thus not “humiliation” in the negative sense that might be perceived as psychologically unhealthy today. It is rather a recognition of one’s own littleness and need in relation to the Creator’s immense and lavish abundance.

With characteristic subtlety and acuity, Francis de Sales wrote in his Introduction of types and degrees of humility that he hoped Philothea would come to acquire.[8] He first treats outward humility, teaching that it resides in refusing to pride oneself in rank, honour, or beauty. Deeper interior humility refers to a lively consciousness of the gifts given to one by God coupled with a sense that one has not merited any of these. This humility does not parade itself for that would be to act against its very nature. True humility should lead the devout person to a knowledge of his or her own lowliness – what de Sales called abjection. It is love of abjection that characterizes the most profound degree of humility. Here, in the cherishing of one’s own partial and fragile humanity, one meets God. One loves one’s abjection because it is precisely in this kenotic attitude, one’s utter emptiness of self, that one enters into a profound participation with the crucified Lord. In imitation of the humble God-man who lovingly embraced his own abjection in his passion and death, Salesian humility seeks to let this Jesus truly live.

The Salesian spirit also shows an affection and preference for persons not generally considered by society to be viable subjects for human actualisation. It should be remembered that the gentle, lowly Matthean Jesus beloved by the Savoyard announced that the Father’s nature in the Son was hidden from the eyes of the wise and powerful and revealed only to the “little ones.” Francis de Sales, like Jesus, sought out and associated himself with such socially abject persons.

It has been noted that Francis de Sales felt himself particularly called to the direction of women. He had a special genius for this work. This undoubtedly is in part because he simply felt an affinity for members of the female sex. He was close to his mother and counted among his closest confidants many women.[9] Perhaps at another level, he felt called to minister to women because they were among those deemed inferior by society. The bishop was conscious of the centuries-long literary debate which focused upon the place and capabilities of women.[10] He threw his lot in with those who favourably evaluated the “second sex.” Yet paradoxically he cherished women for the very qualities that marked them as unexceptional in the world’s eyes. He loved the very hiddenness of most women’s lives, their self-effacement and lowly status.

So he, with his friend Jane, established a religious congregation not only specifically for women (the Visitation was not to be an offshoot or under the tutelage of any male religious order) but for women who were considered, in seventeenth-century France, unfit for religious life. Their institute was founded for widows, the infirm, those of frail constitution, those not attracted to physical austerities: any woman with a genuine call to a retired contemplative life who did not meet the exacting standards for admission to one of the women’s religious communities then abounding in France.[11] For this they were roundly criticized. The Savoyard was accused of wasting his time starting a convalescent hospital when he should be building a genuine religious community. But in fact he was witnessing to his belief that it is to the little ones that the kingdom of God is revealed. Because of the humbleness of their lives, Jesus lives in them.

Along with the humble “little people,” Francis stressed the “little occasions” that present themselves daily as opportunities to love God and neighbour. In his mind, great occasions for exhibiting one’s devotion rarely presented themselves but little occasions were there every day. Checking anger, selfishness, and pride in unexpected and ordinary encounters was a good deal more humbling than waiting for a dramatic episode through which one might display one’s fervour. In fact, the constant and ordinary repetition of small loving acts was, in his view, the most efficacious means to humility which, in its turn, was the living out of the Jesus of Matthew’s gospel.

Third of the key Salesian virtues is simplicity. Simplicity unlocks a whole treasure chest full of Salesian wisdom that is best exemplified in the life of the community of the Visitation. This institute was established for women and its spiritual formation was directed toward drawing out what were perceived as the strengths of the feminine character and redirecting what were considered its typical weaknesses.[12] A simple lifestyle was practised; the women were adequately if modestly dressed, fed, and sheltered. They were encouraged to cultivate an interior state of simplicity, a transparency of self that shed the thick veil that self-protection and self-consciousness could draw about them. Visitandines were not to adorn themselves, either outwardly or inwardly. They were to be simple before the world and before God. The subtlety of this insight for a community of women must be mentioned. In the seventeenth century, vanity was perceived to be chief among the spiritual problems of women. Women habitually had a tendency to see themselves through the eyes of others, to, as it were, become objects to themselves by becoming obsessed with maintaining an attractive arrangement of inner and outer features.[13] Simplicity held the key to unlocking this attitude, which kept women focused only on her artificially arranged self and away from the true discernment of her whole self and God.

In keeping with this insight, Visitandines were taught a practice of prayer which turned the attention away from the self and onto God. artless unself-consciousness and a transparent self open to its creator were to be the fruit of this practice. Similarly, each Visitation sister was encouraged to cultivate a simple quiet faith, a trust in God’s mercy that did not focus upon difficulties in prayer or upon undue self-concern – what is known in the tradition as scrupulosity.

Those who are led by this path [Jane wrote] are obliged to a great purity of heart, humility, submission and total dependence on God. They must greatly simplify their spirit in every way, bypassing each reflection on the past, the present, and the future. And instead of looking to what they are doing or will do, they must look to God, forgetting themselves as much as possible in all things in favour of this continual remembrance, uniting their spirits in his goodness in everything that happens to them from moment to moment. This should be done very simply.[14]

At the root of this simple self held up as the ideal of Salesian perfection is the belief that in such simplicity Jesus truly lives. The naked Jesus, stripped and dying on the cross, is the paradigm for human actualisation. It is in identification with this living God that the Visitandine prepares herself to move farther and farther into an experience of utter dependence on God alone.

Francis de Sales’ own predilection in prayer was not identical to that experienced by the Visitandine community. But it is typically Salesian in its affinity for little ways. For Francis, the humble, time-honoured valleys of discursive meditation, not the heights of contemplative peaks, were preferable for almost everyone. He wrote to Jane early in their relationship when she had consulted a Carmelite prioress about the methods of prayer practised within the cloister.

So the good Mother says that there is no need to employ imagination in order to envision the sacred humanity of the Saviour. Not, perhaps, for those who are already far advanced along he mountain of perfection. But for those of us who are still in the valleys, although desirous of mounting, I think it is expedient to employ all our faculties, including the imagination. Nonetheless, I have already stressed in another letter that this imagining must be very simple and, like a humble seamstress, thread affections and resolutions onto our spirits.[15]

Thus de Sales made known his preference for the little, ordinary ways of prayer.

Gentleness, peace, humility, simplicity. These are some of the little virtues esteemed by Francis and Jane. By the practice of such virtues in the little occasions that present themselves every day, Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, lives.

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[1] An interesting point of fact: when de Sales, in 1622, visited Lyons while he was in the entourage of the king and queen of France, he chose to lodge in the gardener’s cottage on the grounds of the Lyons Visitation rather than to stay in the overcrowded quarters occupied by the royal suite. It was there that he died.

[2] See Thomas A. McHugh, “the Distinctive Salesian Virtues, Humility and Gentleness,” Salesian Studies, October 1963, pp. 45-74.

[3] On this topic see Ruth Murphy, Saint François de Sales et la civilité chrétienne (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1964) and James Langelaan, Man in Love with God.

[4] Sa Vie et ses oeuvres, IV, pp. 555-56.

[5] Oeuvres, XVII, 260: Letter MCCXXIII, to Mère de Bréchard.

[6] Evidence of Francis’s career as peacemaker is found in E.J. Lajeunie, Saint François de Sales, L’homme, la pensée, l’action, Vol.II (Paris: Editions Guy Victor, 1964), pp. 99ff. Jaroslaw Pelikan in Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 175, states that “only truly new answer of the 16th and 17th centuries to that dilemma of Jesus’ teachings on war, came first from Erasmus, then from certain Anabaptists, Quakers, and other peace groups of the radical reformation who bore witness to an understanding of the person and message of Jesus by which holy war was not holy and just war was not just.” De Sales cannot be claimed to be a Christian pacifist in this sense but he did see himself and devout individuals as called to making Jesus live as Prince of Peace.

[7] Humility as the primary human disposition that allows for the entry of God in the soul is central to the thought of Augustine, Benedict, Bernard, Teresa and innumerable other Christian spiritual writers.

[8] Oeuvres, III, 139-160: Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, chapters 4 – 7.

[9] On Francis and women see especially Th. Schueller, La Femme et la saint: La femme et ses problèmes d’après saint François de Sales (Paris: Les Editions Ouvrières, 1970).

[10] Francis’s relationship to the historic controversy over women is discussed in Th. Schueller, La Femme, pp. 36-50.

[11] Chief among these were the Carmelites who adopted a life of rigorous physical austerity. The reformed members of the Benedictine family were equally prone to adopt severe regulations – witness Angélique Arnauld’s reform of Port Royal, on which see F. Ellen Weaver, the Evolution of the Reform of Port Royal (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1978).

[12] On de Sales’ understanding of the feminine character see Wright, Bond of Perfection, pp. 133-40. Also, Schueller, La Femme et la Saint.

[13] For a contemporary reading of the issue of women and vanity which has informed this analysis of the Visitation, consult John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Great Britain: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 45ff.

[14] Résponses de notre Sainte Mère Jeanne-Françoise Frémiot, Baronne de Chantal (Annecy: Imprimerie Aimé Burdet, 1849), p. 520.

[15] Oeuvres, XIII, 162: Letter CCCXXXIX.

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