INTRODUCTION

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Wendy M. Wright and Joseph F. Power OSFS

 

At the head of each of the letters she wrote and throughout the writings he penned the words “Live Jesus!” appeared.[1] This exclamation was for Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales an emphatic statement about how they saw themselves and what they were about in the world.  For them “Live Jesus!” was far more than a cheer of affirmation or a rallying cry in the manner of Vive le Roi!  It was expressive of the particular vision of the Christian life that they sought to bring to birth in their own persons.  To study Salesian Spirituality – the spiritual tradition parented by de Sales and de Chantal – is then to reflect on the distinctive way in which this French woman and this man from Savoy allowed Jesus to live in themselves and in those they directed.[2]

 

Certainly the entire history of Christian spirituality might be said to be the attempt on part of myriads of diverse personalities situated in differing historical moments and with the particular socio-political, cultural, and theological tools at their disposal to let Jesus live.[3]  From this point of departure, Salesian spirituality is but one example of continuing endeavour.  Undergoing all Christian spiritual traditions is the insistence that human beings, to be true to their deepest insights, must follow the way to God opened fro them by Jesus of Nazareth, in some way taking on the reality of the life he lived.[4]  The essential pattern of that life has generally been understood to be one of self-emptying in order to be filled with God.  It is this process of self-emptying and being filled – one’s dying and rising – that is known in traditional Catholic terminology as the ascetic life and the mystical life.  The entire progress of the human endeavour is thus articulated with a language (both verbal and pictorial) fashioned from the paradigmatic life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The question “How does Jesus live?” could therefore be asked of any Christian spirituality.  The answers would differ depending on the ways in which individuals or groups of believers understand who Jesus is and the way in which they envision the process of ridding the self of obstacles that are in the way of Jesus’ showing forth.  Put another way, each variety of Christian spirituality will project a slight different asceticism and a somewhat variant mystical perception.

 

But the motto “Live Jesus!” is more than simply descriptive of a wider Christian contemplative assumption about the human drama and thus aptly applied to the Salesian spirit as well.  “Live Jesus” belongs especially to that spirit.  The tradition of spirituality that this volume represents and which this introductory essay attempts to analyze is well encoded in the pithy phrase that Jane de Chantal so boldly inscribed as she began each act of correspondence.

 

To “Live Jesus” was to have – in Francis de Sales’ words – the name of Jesus engraved on one’s heart.[5]  It was to allow that name to become one’s own true name, to allow one’s entire self – body, thoughts, affections, actions, decisions, work, devotion – to be animated by the reality of the person known by that name.  To allow Jesus to live one did not simply learn about Jesus or pray to Jesus or even imitate Jesus.  One surrendered the vital centre of one’s being – one’s heart, as understood in the wholisitc biblical sense – to another living presence.[6]  The Pauline dictum “I no longer live but Christ lives in me”[7] is at the core of the distinctive Salesian inscription.  Jesus was for the two early seventeenth-century founders of the Salesian tradition a presence to be experienced, a reality to be lived.  Authentic human existence was identified by them as the continual and ever-present bringing to life of the living Lord who bears the name Jesus.

 

 

 

Two sources of the tradition

 

To have begun with an exclamation used both by Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal is to already suggest a distinctive if not unique perspective adopted in the present volume.  Typically it is Francis de Sales alone who has been viewed as the originator of Salesian spirituality – as the name itself suggests.  Scholarly opinion has held that the Genevan bishop created an eminently personal form of thought which never developed beyond the confines of the shape he gave it.[8]  Given this assumption, Jane de Chantal emerges in the secondary literature as a subordinate figure, at the least as a dutiful disciple of a great master who simply handed on his theories or, at best, as the chief artistic creation of his direction, as a woman with a particular (and somewhat untempered) personality who was moulded and sanctified by the masterful hand of her guide.  We have not held to this view.

 

First, because of the long intimacy of these two friends and the extent to which each of their own spiritual orientations was radically influenced by their relationship, it is difficult to claim that the spirituality they held in common came from only one of them.[9]  In any long-term relationship of depth, two persons give birth to each other, creating each other anew in the interaction that transpires between them.  This certainly can be said of these two figures.  It is true that when Madame de Chantal met Monseigneur de Sales and became his directee he was already well formed in his creative vision.  His influence on her was central to her religious experience during the formative early years of their relationship, and she continued to venerate him to the end of her life.  Yet, after the initial years of their interaction, during which time Francis was the dominant figure, the two of them entered a period of intense and mutually supportive friendship.  During this time Jane was teacher as much as Francis, sharing with him the depth of her inner life with God, enriching his own perceptions of the Christian life through her experience and collaborating with him in the creation of their community, the Visitation of Holy Mary.

 

Indeed, aside from his initial vision of the community and his conscientious but periodic spiritual direction sustained by either his actual presence or through his written works, the nurturance of the Visitation was very much up to Jane de Chantal.  In that context, the spirituality that they shared was worked out in a specific and quite unique way as it had not been by de Sales himself.  Salesian spirituality as it became known in the only religious community that the bishop was instrumental in founding was very much a matter of Jane de Chantal’s handiwork.  As such, it bears the imprint of her own personality and religiosity in a unique way.

 

There are then, in our opinion, two primary historical forms in which the Salesian spirituality is embodied.  One is the person of Francis de Sales: active bishop, spiritual director, writer, preacher, correspondent with persons in all walks of life, reformer, advocate of lay devotion, preacher to the royal court.  The other is found in the person of Jane de Chantal and the community of the Visitation: a quasi-monastic women’s congregation formed by a woman who identified closely with her roles as wife and mother, and peopled by women attempting to live out a vision of mutual charity in imitation of and interior intimacy with the humble, gentle Jesus.  it is from these two distinct yet interconnected vessels that that tradition flows into the stream of history, and it is these two vessels which are given to the historian as sources to examine when trying to discern the shape and texture of what it means to “Live Jesus.”

 

To put it somewhat differently, Salesian spirituality contains more variety, more richness and nuance than has previously been acknowledged.  The two springs from which that spirituality flows have much in common; there is a basic gestalt that identifies both as Salesian.  But these parents of the tradition lived out their common spirit in quite different vocational circumstances.  Furthermore, they were very distinctive personalities and brought to their shared views their own life histories, capabilities, and religious perceptions.  Jane and Francis employed essentially the same religious language, but in fact that language, in function, tone, and assimilation, was not identical, as will be shown later.  It is arguable that past efforts have insufficiently explored the wealth of religious insight or the complexity of the spirituality that this language, viewed in more than one form, can yield.

 

 

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction

 

The Salesian tradition parented by Francis and Jane is observed most clearly in the place where it “lives” most vigorously.  Like other spiritual traditions, it is essentially a lived experience, which only secondarily produces and is nourished by a written expression.  It is a tradition known by assimilation, internalised only gradually through personal contact and communication.  Among the various vital exchanges between persons, the practice of spiritual direction has held a privileged place in the Salesian tradition from its very origins.

 

A preliminary description of spiritual direction may be helpful here, although much can be gleaned from the letters themselves.  Salesian direction was not simply the passing on of a system of ideas or methods of prayer.  It was first and foremost a process of intuitive response practiced between two persons. The director was one who authentically lived the vocation of Christian.  The style envisioned for this vocation was firmly rooted in the cultural context of early seventeenth-century Catholicism.  The directee came to the director seeking some of the authenticity perceived there.  To put it in the historical terminology: he or she felt called to the devout life lived in the name of Jesus and came to discover how such a life might be fashioned.  The directee brought the nascent yearning of his or her heart and the director then helped that person to learn to identify those promptings, to “lean toward” the centre of the self, to distinguish movements of the heart that seemed to be from God from those which seemed to be aligned to the purpose alien to God, and to propose possible practices that might encourage the free expression of those God-born impulses as well as practices that might curb the impulses born of other sources.[10]  Salesian direction was always personal and unique to each directee.  It was concrete and adapted to the particular temperament and life circumstances in which a given individual found himself or herself.

 

The director in this situation did not see himself or herself as a professional dispensing information to the uninformed but as a fellow Christian walking the same road as the directee.  In such a context all director/directee relationships might be viewed as spiritual friendships although the intensity and mutuality of the actual friendships Jane and Francis enjoyed differed greatly according to the parties involved.

 

Such was, in general outline, the lived reality of spiritual direction as practised by Francis and Jane, and, if it has been possible to reconstruct something of that context, it is largely due to the letters they have written as a means of continuing the process of direction while at distance.

 

“Letters of Spiritual Direction” has come to constitute a genre of spiritual literature, a formalized mode of communicating general spiritual advice, so it is important to stress that the letters in this volume do not fit into that category.  In a way they preceded the genre, and arose as the only way of continuing the kind of direction process just sketched when the two people were separated.  As such they are spontaneous, personal, and as varied as the relationships they sustained and nourished.  Each of them was written for the person addressed, and none of them was written with the thought of publication.

 

At the same time, these letters embody an art and a style of their own, an unselfconscious art that tends to hide itself, and a style that is closer to the dialogue of spoken language.[11]  This seems true of all of Jane’s writings, and it can help account for the differences in style and vocabulary between Francis’s letters and his published works.  Francis, who knew well the importance of writing for the age in which he lived when he wrote for publication, wrote more freely when he penned these letters, and he encouraged his correspondents to do the same: “Don’t pay attention to how well your letters are constructed before you send them to me.”[12]

 

Thus letter-writing was one method by which spiritual direction might legitimately be carried on.  As such, it was a creative as well as a descriptive medium with the power to be formative for both writer and reader.  In this sense, the letters reproduced here, while obviously literary in the general sense, are also primary sources for what is not at root a literary enterprise.

 

The Genevan bishop once wrote to Madame de Chantal that he believed that the reason persons are in the world is

 

… to receive and carry the gentle Jesus: on our tongue by proclaiming Him; in our arms by doing good works; on our shoulders by supporting the yoke of dryness and sterility in both the interior and exterior senses…[13]

 

The same might be said of the pen in hand.[14]  It is through the living exchange of letters that Jesus might be carried more faithfully by the correspondents both individually and altogether.

 

To focus on the letters of direction as a means of plumbing Salesian spirituality is not meant to detract from other writings where it can also be found, notably in the published works of both saints.  Francis’s works especially have enjoyed wide popularity, and deservedly so.  But in addition to all the intrinsic reasons flowing from the nature of the letters themselves, the choice of letters rather than other works for this volume was prompted by two practical considerations.  On the one hand, de Sales’s published works are available in accurate English translations.[15]  On the other hand, some of the writings published under the name de Chantal, because they were never written for publication and because they were in fact written down from memory by her sister Visitandines, are of uneven aesthetic quality and questionable authenticity.[16]  The great exception to this is her letters of direction which constitute an extensive, authentic, and personal witness to her spirit.  In this they are a fitting counterpart to the letters of Francis, which she collected, edited and published a few years after his death.  Hence from a textual point of view, their respective letters are the most apt means of entering into the vision and the spirituality they shared.

 

Jane’s letters begin with the expansive outburst, “Live Jesus!”  Who was this Jesus who was entreated to live?  What was the face Francis and Jane hoped to see alive in the faces of those they directed?  Who was the person they hoped would animate their own lives?  To begin to answer these questions three efforts must be made.  First, it is necessary to suggest the various contexts in which the Salesian spirit came to be: the socio-political context, the biographical context of its founders’ lives, and the evolving context of western Christian spirituality as it flowed in and around them.  Second, it will be necessary to paint a picture of the whole of Salesian spirituality.  This will be done somewhat impressionistically, portraying what is Salesian not as a logical system of thought – for such an attempt surely must fail to capture the depth and colour that is there – but by suggesting six thematic clusters that, when viewed as a whole and at something of a distance, create an effect suggestive of the living spiritual reality.  Third, it will be necessary to distinguish between the unique spiritual styles of Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales, looking to several central ideas they held in common to perceive how each one understood and lived out those ideas.

 

This impressionistic portrait, whose main features have been culled from the experiences of both Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales, and known to us, the editors and translator, variously through historical inquiry and present affiliation, will, we hope, serve as a useful introduction to the letters of Salesian spiritual direction presented here.

 

 

 

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[1] “Vive Jésus” became the motto of the Visitation of Holy Mary, the congregation founded by Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal.  It is also found in the dedicatory prayer that launches de Sales’ famous Introduction to the Devout Life and in his Treatise on the Love of God, Book XII, chapter 13, as well as scattered throughout his letters and occasional writings.

[2] At this time Savoy was an independent duchy governed by Duke Charles-Emmanuel and politically linked with Turin.  Culturally Savoy was influenced by France.  Jane was from  Dijon in Burgundy.

[3] One insightful attempt to write just such a history, with the Crucifixion as central organizing principle, is Rowan Williams, Christian Spirituality: A Theological History from the New Testament to Luther and St. John of the Cross (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980).  Cf. also Une Spiritualité pour tous,  Texts choisis et preséntés per Claude Roffat (Paris: Editions du Centurion, 1980), for a brief discussion of the various Christian spiritualities as they relate to the Gospel and to Christ.

[4] This statement is especially true of pre-Reformation spirituality and, after the sixteenth century, the Catholic tradition.  Mainline Protestant traditions, with differing anthropological assumptions and predominantly theocentric syntheses, tend not to focus upon the activity or cooperation of the human person in “letting” Jesus live.  For some insight see Frank C. Senn, ed., Protestant Spiritual Traditions (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986).  The eastern Christian teachings on deification as the central dynamic of the spiritual life also approach the issue of making Jesus live from a different perspective.  On this see Louis Bouyer, A History of Christian Spirituality, Vol. 3, Protestant and Orthodox Traditions (N.Y.: Desclée Co., 1969).

[5] Oeuvres de Saint François de Sales, Evêque de Genève et Docteur de l’Eglise, Edition complète, d’après les autographes et les éditions originales… publiée… par les soins des Religieuses de la Visitation de Ier Monastère d’Annecy, 27 vols. (Annecy: J. Niérat et al., 1892-1964), simply as Oeuvres, followed by the volume and page; to this we will generally add an indication of the work referred to and its appropriate subdivisions, in this case the Introduction to the Devout Life, Book III, chapter 23, thus making it possible for users of other editions or translations to find the reference.

[6] Andre Raviér writes, “the heart (in the Salesian sense) refers, as it does in the Bible, to that which is most profound, inalienable, personal and divine in us; it is the mysterious center where each person meets God, responds to his call or refuses it.”  Un Sage et Un Saint:  François de Sales (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1985), p. 128.

[7] Gal. 2:20.  Another Pauline text underlying Francis’ notion of “living Jesus” is Colossians 3:3: “Your life is hidden now with Christ in God.”  cf. his commentary in Treatise on the Love of God, Book 7, chapters 6 and 7.

[8] Cf. Louis Cognet, Histoire de la Spiritualité chrétienne, III, La Spiritualité moderne (Paris: Aubier, 1966), pp. 299ff.

[9] On their friendship, Wendy M. Wright, Bond of Perfection: Jeanne de Chantal and François de Sales (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1985).

[10] Francis Vincent, St. François de Sales, Directeur d’âmes: l’éducation de la volonté (ParisL Gabriel Beauchesne, 1923), is an older but comprehensive study of the Genevan bishop as director.

[11] On the unique style of Francis’s letters, see André Ravier, Un Sage et un saint, François de Sales (Paris: Nouvelle cite, 1985), pp. 127-129, and Elisabeth Stopp, St. Francis de Sales, Selected Letters (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 35-39).

[12] Oeuvres, XVIII, 400; Letter MDXXIX.

[13] Oeuvres, XIV, 211; Letter DLV.

[14] Francis de Sales, it should be noted, is officially the patron saint of the Catholic Journalists.

[15] See especially Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1982) and Treatise on the Love of God, 2 vols., trans. John K. Ryan (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books, 1974).

[16] This is particularly true of the Traité sur oraison which bears her name but actually may be a collection of spiritual sayings garnered from diverse sources by Visitandines of the eighteenth or nineteenth century.  Here Entretiens and Conférences bear the marks of oral reflections that have been recorded by a variety of listeners. These are all found in her collected works, Ste. Jeanne Françoise Frémyot de Chantal, Sa Vie et ses oeuvres, édition publiée par les soins des Religieuses du Premier Monastère de la Visitation Sainte-Marie d’Annecy, 8 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1874-79), which also contains the Life of Mère de Chaugy, a reliable, if secondary, historical source.  Perhaps the best example of her authentic writings is the Responses which is not included in the Plon collection but published separately as Résponses de Notre Sainte Mère, Jeanne Françoise Frémiot, Baronne de Chantal sur les règles, constitutions et coutumier de l’Institut (Annecy: Imprimerie de Aimé Burdet, 1849).

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