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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10. Take Jesus as your patron

To a young man going to live at court

 

Sir,

 

At last, then, you are going to make sail, and take the open sea of the world at court!  God be gracious to you, and may His holy hand be ever with you!

 

I am not so fearful as many others, and I do not think that this is one of the most dangerous professions for those of noble soul and manly heart.  For there are but two principal rocks in this gulf: vanity, which ruins spirits that are soft, slothful, feminine, and weak; and ambition, which ruins audacious and presumptuous hearts.

 

Vanity is a defect of courage, and lacks the strength to undertake the acquisition of true and solid praise, but desires and is content with the false and the empty.  Just so, ambition is an excess of courage, which leads us to pursue glories and honours without and against the rule of reason.

 

Thus vanity causes us to occupy ourselves with those silly gallantries that are fashionable with women and other little spirits, but scorned by great hearts and elevated souls.  And ambition makes us desire honours before deserving them.  It is ambition that makes us put to our own credit, and at too high price, the merit of our predecessors; and we would willingly gain our esteem from theirs.

 

Well, sir, against all this, since it pleases you that I speak so, continue to nourish your soul with spiritual and divine meats, for they will make us strong against vanity and just against ambition.

 

Keep carefully to frequent Communion: believe me, you could do nothing more certain to strengthen yourself in virtue.  To make yourself quite safe in this practice, put yourself under the orders of some good confessor, and beseech him to charge himself with making you give an account in confession of the failures you may make in this exercise, if by chance you make any.  Always confess humbly, and with a true and express purpose of amendment.

 

I solemnly implore you: before leaving your home in the morning, never forget to ask on your knees for the help of Our Lord; and before going to bed at night, never forget to ask for the pardon of your sins.

 

Especially beware of bad books; and for nothing in the world let your soul be carried away by certain writings that weak brains admire, because of some vain subtleties that they find in them.  Such are the works of that infamous Rabelais[1], and certain others of our age, who profess to doubt everything, to despise everything, and to scoff at all the maxims of antiquity.  On the contrary, read books of solid doctrine  - and especially Christian and spiritual ones – for recreation from time to time.

 

I recommend to you that gentle and sincere courtesy which offends no one and obliges all, which seeks love rather than honour, which never rails at any one so as to hurt them, nor stingingly, which puts no one off and is itself never put off (or, if it is put off, it is but rarely, in exchange for which it is very often honourably advanced).

 

Take care, I beseech you, not to embarrass yourself in flirtations, and not to allow your affections to prevent your judgement and reason in the choice of objects of love; for when once inclination has taken its course, it drags the judgement like a slave to decisions that are very improper and are well worthy of the repentance that soon follows them.

 

I would wish that, first, in speech, in bearing, and in relations with others, you should make open and express profession of wishing to live virtuously, judiciously, perseveringly, and as a Christian.

 

I say “virtuously,” that no one may attempt to engage you in immoralities.  “Judiciously,” that you may not show extreme signs, exteriorly, of your intention, but only such as, according to your condition, may not be censured by the wise.

 

“Perseveringly,” because unless you show with perseverance an equal and inviolable will, you will expose your resolutions to the designs and attempts of many miserable souls, who attack others to draw them to their company.

 

Lastly, I say “as a Christian,” because some make profession of wishing to be virtuous philosophically, who, however, are not so, and can in no way be so, and who are nothing else but phantoms of virtue, using their graceful manners and words to hide their bad life and ways from those who are not familiar with them.

 

But we – who well know that we cannot have a single particle of virtue but by the grace of Our Lord – we must employ piety and holy devotion to live virtuously; otherwise we shall have virtues only in imagination and in shadow.

 

Now it is of the greatest importance t let ourselves be known right from the start such as we wish to be always, and in this we must have no haggling.

 

It is also of the greatest importance to make some friends who have the same aim, with whom you can associate and strengthen yourself.  For it is a very true thing that the company of well-regulated souls is extremely useful to us to keep our own soul well regulated.

 

I think you will easily find either among the Jesuits, or the Capuchins, or the Feuillants, or even outside the monasteries, some gracious spirit who will be glad if you sometimes go to see him, for recreation, and to take a spiritual breath.

 

But you must permit me to say to you one thing in particular.  You see, sir, I fear you may return to gambling; and I fear this, because it will be to you a great evil: it would, in a few days, dissipate your heart, and make all the flowers of your good desires wither.  Gambling is the occupation of an idler; and those who want to get renown and introductions by playing with the great, and who all this the best way of getting known, show that they have no good desires, since they have no better credit than that of having money and wanting to risk it.

 

It is no great merit to be known as gamblers; but if they meet with great losses, every one knows them to be fools.  I pass over the consequences, such as fights, despair, and madness, from which not one gambler has any exemption.

 

I wish you, further, a vigorous heart.  Do not flatter your body by delicacies in eating, sleeping, and other such softnesses; for a generous heart has always a little contempt for bodily comforts and pleasures.

 

Still Our Lord said that “those who are clothed ins oft garments are in the house of kings” (Mt. 11:8).  It is for this reason that I speak to you about it.  Our Lord does not mean to say that all those who are in kings’ houses must be clothed in soft garments, but He says only that customarily those who clothe themselves softly are there.  Of course, I am not speaking of the exterior clothing, but of the interior.  For with regard to the exterior, you know far better what is proper; it is not for me to speak of it.

 

I mean, then, to say that I would like you sometimes to correct your body so far as to make it feel some rigours and hardships by contempt for delicacies and by frequent denial of things agreeable to the senses.  Again, reason must sometimes exercise its superiority and the authority that it has to control the sensual appetites.

 

My God!  I am too diffuse, and I scarcely know what I am saying, for it is without leisure and at odd moments.  You know my heart, and will take all this well; but still I must say one thing more.

 

Imagine that you were a courtier of St. Louis.  This holy king … loved for everyone to be brave, courageous, generous, good-humoured, courteous, affable, free, and polite; and still he loved, above all, for everyone to be a good Christian.  Had you been with him, you would have seen him kindly laughing on occasion, speaking boldly at the proper time, taking care that all was in splendour about him, like another Solomon, to maintain the royal dignity; and a moment afterward, he would be serving the poor in the hospitals, and marrying civil with Christian virtue and majesty with humility.

 

In a word, this is what we must seek: to be no less brave for being Christian, and no less Christian for being brave.  For this we must be very good Christians – that is, very devout, pious, and if possible, spiritual.  For, as St. Paul says, “the spiritual man discerneth all things” (1 Cor. 2:15); he knows at what time, in what order, and by what method each virtue must be practised.

 

From often this good thought, that we are walking in this world between Paradise and Hell, and that our last step will place us in an eternal dwelling.  We do not know which step will be our last, and so, in order to make our last step well, we must try to make all the others well.

 

O holy and unending eternity!  Blessed is he who thinks of you.  Yes, for what do we play here in this world but a children’s game for who knows how many days?  It would be nothing whatever, if it were not the passage to eternity.

 

On this account, therefore, we must pay attention to the time we have to dwell here below, and to all our occupations, so as to employ them in the conquest of the permanent good.

 

Love me always as yours, for I am so in Our Lord, wishing you every happiness for this world and particularly for the other.  May God bless you, and hold you by His holy hand.

 

And to finish where I began: you are going to take the high sea of the world; change not, on that account, patron or sails, anchor or wind.  Have Jesus always for your patron.  His Cross for a mast on which you must spread your resolutions as a sail.  Your anchor shall be a profound confidence in Him, and you shall sail prosperously.

 

May the favourable wind of celestial inspirations ever fill your vessel’s sails fuller and fuller and make you happily arrive at the port of a holy eternity, which with true heart is wished you, sir, by

 

Your most humble servant,

Francis

 

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[1] Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), French author.

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