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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8. Have contempt for contempt

To a woman angered by her broken engagement

 

Mademoiselle,

 

Regarding the first part of the letter you wrote to Madame N. and which you wished to be communicated to me, my dearest daughter, I will that if Monsieur N. made to you no other assertions than those you give, and if the matter were before us, we would require him to marry you, under heavy penalties.  For he has no right, on account of considerations that he could and should have made before his promise, to break his word.  But I do not know how things go over in the place in which you live, where often the rules that we have in our ecclesiastical affairs are not known.

 

Meantime, my dearest daughter, my desire to dissuade you from prosecuting this wretched lawsuit did not arise from doubt about rights, but from the aversion and bad opinion I have of all legal battles.  Truly the result of a lawsuit must be marvellously happy, to compensate for the expense, the bitterness, the anxious excitements, the dissipation of heart, the atmosphere of reproaches, and the multitude of inconveniences that prosecutions usually bring.  Above all I consider worrying and useless – yea, injurious – the suits that arise from injurious words and breaches of promise when there is no real interest at stake.  This is because instead of eradicating insults, lawsuits publish, increase, and continue them; and instead of causing the fulfilment of promises, lawsuits drive the other party to the other extreme.

 

Look, my dear daughter, I consider that in truth, contempt for contempt is the testimony of generosity that we give by our disdain for the weakness and inconstancy of those who break faith with us; it is the best remedy of all.  Most injuries are more happily met by the contempt that is shown for them than by any other means; the blame remains rather with the injurer than with the injured…

 

I will then pray Our Lord to give you a good and holy result to this affair, that you may attain a solid and constant tranquillity of heart, which can only be obtained in God, in whose holy love I wish that you may more and more progress.  God bless you with His great blessings. That is, my dear child, may God make you perfectly His.  I am in Him,

 

Your very affectionate and humble servant,

Francis

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