Salesian Literature

Letters on:

Loving and Serving God in Your Daily Life

1. Marriage is an exercise in mortification   ::   2. As far as possible, make your devotion attractive  ::   3. Have patience with everyone, including yourself

4. Keep yourself gentle amid household troubles  ::   5. Do what you see can be done with love  ::   6. Parents can demand more than God Himself

7. Avoid making your devotion troublesome  ::   8. Have contempt for contempt  ::   9. Lord, what would You have me to do?  ::   10. Take Jesus as your patron

11. Remain innocent among the hissing of serpents  ::   12. Never speak evil of your neighbour  ::   13. Extravagant recreations may be blameworthy

14. We must not ask of ourselves what we don't have  ::   15. If you get tired of kneeling, sit down  ::   16. You will not lack mortification

17. We must always walk faithfully  ::   18. Illness can make you agreeable to God  ::   19. You are being crowned with His crown of thorns

20. Often the world calls evil what is good  ::   21. Rest in the arms of Providence  ::   22. In confidence, lift up your heart to our Redeemer

23. We must slowly withdraw from the world  ::   24. This dear child was more God's than yours  ::   25. Think of no other place than Paradise or Purgatory

26. How tenderly I loved her!  ::   27. Calm your mind, lift up your heart  ::   28. Miserable beggars receive the greatest mercy

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6. Parents can demand more than God himself

To a widow, on her duties to her mother

 

Madame,

 

I should be quite trouble in writing to you on this present subject if I were not authorized by Madame, your mother.  For on what ground could I intervene in what passes between you two, and how appeal to your conscience, knowing that you are the only and worthy daughter of a worthy mother, who is full of sense, prudence and piety?  However, since I must intervene, then, under this authorization, I will.

 

Your mother has written to me all that she has told you herself (and that she has had many excellent persons, in comparison with whom I am nothing, tell you) to bring you around to her desire that you not deprive her of your filial help in these great straits to which the occurrences you know of have reduced her.  She cannot bear to see her estate collapse under the burden, and above all, for the want of your help, which she considers to be all that is necessary.

 

She proposes three plans: either that you enter a religious order, in order that the creditors may no longer want you as security, and that she may have the free disposal of your children’s property; or that you marry again with the advantages that are offered to you; or that you remain with her and keep a common purse.

 

She gives in her letter the exceptions you take to the first two plans.  She says you have vowed your chastity to God, and that you have four very little children, of whom two are girls; but about the third plan I see nothing in her letter.

 

As to the first plan, I do not want to interpose my judgement on the question of whether your vow obliges you not to ask a dispensation (although she alleges a great hastiness that may have prevented due consideration).  For indeed the purity of chastity is of such high price that whoever has vowed it is very happy to keep it, and there is nothing to prefer to it except the necessity of the public good.

 

As to the second plan, I do not know whether you can lawfully give up that care of your children that God has required from you in making you their mother, especially since they are so little.

 

But as to the third, Madame, I say that your purse ought to be common with your mother, in a case of such great necessity.  Oh God! It is the least we owe to father and mother.  I suspect that I can indeed discern some reason why a daughter, so placed with children, might keep her purse to herself.  But I do not know whether reason to do so exists in your particular case; and if it does, it must be very clear and strong, and bear to be seen and examined thoroughly.  Among enemies, extreme necessity makes all things common; but among friends, and such friends as daughters and mothers, we must not wait for extreme necessity, for the command of God urges us too much.  In such cases we must lift up our eyes and heart to the Providence of God, who returns abundantly all that we give according to His holy commandment.

 

I say too much, Madame; for I had no right to speak on this, except to refer your dear conscience in this regard to those to whom you confide it…

 

O my God! Dear lady, what we should do for fathers and mothers!  And how lovingly must we support the excess, the zeal, and the ardour – I had almost said “the importunity” – of their love!  These mothers – they are altogether wonderful; they would like, I think, always to carry their children, particularly an only child, at their breasts.  They often feel jealous if their child takes a little amusement out of their presence; they consider that they are never loved enough, and that the love that is due to them can never be fully measured except when it is beyond proper measure.

 

How can we mend this?  We must have patience, and do, as nearly as we can, all that is required to correspond with it.  God requires of us only certain days, certain hours, and His presence is quite content that we also be present with fathers and mothers; but these latter are more exacting.  They require many more days and hours, and an undivided presence.  Ah!  God is so good that, condescending to this, He reckons the accommodation of our will to our mother’s accommodation to His, provided His good pleasure is the principal end of our actions.

 

Well, then, you have Moses and the prophets – that is, so many excellent servants of God: hear them.  And as for me, I do wrong to occupy you so long, but I have a little pleasure in speaking with a pure and chaste soul, and one against which there is no complaint, except for excess of devotion – a rare complaint, so rare and admirable that I cannot help loving and honouring her who is accused of it, or being for ever, Madame,

 

Your very humble and obedient servant,

Francis

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