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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9. Lord, what would you have me do?

To a man wondering if he has a religious vocation

 

Sir,

 

Go and bless Our Lord for the favourable inspiration He has given you to withdraw yourself from this great and wide road that those of your age and profession are accustomed to follow, and by which they ordinarily arrive at a thousand kinds of vices and inconveniences, and very often at eternal damnation.  Meanwhile, to make this divine vocation fruitful, to realize more clearly the state that you are about to choose, and to better satisfy this infinite mercy, which invites you to His perfect love, I counsel you to practise these exercises for the following three months.

 

First, refrain from some satisfaction of the senses, which you might take without offending God.  for this purpose, always rise at six, whether you have slept well or badly, provided you are not ill (for in that case you would have to condescend to the sickness); and to do something more on Fridays, rise at five.  This arrangement will give you more leisure to make your prayer and reading.

 

Also, accustom yourself to say every day, after or before prayer, fifteen Our Fathers, and fifteen Hail Marys, with your arms extended in the form of a cross.

 

Moreover, renounce the pleasures of taste, eating those meats at table that may be less agreeable to you, provided they are not unwholesome, and leaving those to which your taste may have more inclination…

 

These little light austerities will serve you to a double end: the one, to entreat more surely the light required for your spirit to make its choice (for the lowering of the body in those who have entire strength and health marvellously raises the spirit); the other, to try and to feel austerity, in order to see if you could embrace it, and what repugnance you will have to it.  This experiment is necessary to test the slight inclination you have to leave the world.  If you are faithful in the practice of the little things that I propose to you, you will be able to judge what you would be in those greater things that are practised in religious orders.

 

Pray earnestly to Our Lord to illumine you, and say often to Him the words of St. Paul, “Lord, what would you have me to do?” (Acts 9:6)and those of David, “Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God” (Ps. 142:10; RSV Ps. 143:10).  Above all, if you awaken during the night, employ well this time in speaking to Our Lord about your choice.  Protest often to His majesty that you resign to Him and leave in His hands the disposition of all the moments of your life, and that He must please dispose of them according to His will.

 

Fail not to make your prayers morning and evening, when you can, with a little retreat before supper, to lift up your heart unto Our Lord.

 

Take up pastimes that are of the more vigorous kind, such as riding, leaping, and the like; and not the soft ones, such as cards and dancing.  But if you are touched with some vainglory about those others – “Alas!” you must say, “what does all this profit one for eternity?”

 

Go to Communion every Sunday, and always with prayers beg the light you need; and on feast days you may well visit, as an exercise, holy places – the Capuchins, St. Bernard’s, the Carthusians.

 

If you feel the inspiration toward religion gather strength and your heart urged by it, take counsel with your confessor; and in case you make a resolution, gradually dispose your grandfather toward it, so that the annoyance and pain caused by your leaving may fall as little as possible on religion, and that you only may be burdened with it.

 

May God grant you His peace, His grace, His light, and His most holy consolation.

 

Francis

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