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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13. Extravagant recreations may be blameworthy

To a woman, on Christian entertainment

 

My dearest daughter,

 

You see what confidence I have in you.  I have not written to you since your departure, because I really have not been able to do so; and I make you no excuse, because you are truly, and more and more, my more than most dear daughter.

 

God be praised that your journey back has been made quietly, and that you have found your husband happy.  Truly, the heavenly Providence of the heavenly Father treats with sweetness the children of His heart, and from time to time mingles favourable sweetness with the fruitful bitternesses that merit such sweetnesses…

 

Monsieur Michel asked me what I wrote to Monsieur Legrand about hunting; but, my dearest daughter, it was only a little thing in which I told him there were three laws to observe to avoid offending God in the chase.

 

First, we must not do damage to our neighbour, since it is not reasonable that any one should take his recreation at the expense of another, and especially in treading down the poor peasant, who is already martyred enough otherwise, and whose labour and condition we should not despise.

 

Second, we must not spend our time hunting on the days of the chief feasts in which we ought to serve God; and above all, we must take care not to omit Mass on the days we are commanded to attend it.

 

Finally, we must not spend too much money on hunting, for all recreations become blameworthy when extravagant.

 

I do not remember the rest [of what I said to Monsieur Legrand about hunting].  In general, discretion must reign everywhere.

 

So, then, my dearest daughter, may God be ever in the midst of your heart, to unite all your affections to His holy love. Amen.

 

So has He, I assure you, put in my heart a most loving and complete affection for yours, which I cherish unceasingly, praying God to crown it with blessing.

 

Amen, my very dear, and ever more dear, daughter.

Francis

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