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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16. You will not lack mortifications

To a pregnant woman, telling her to eat properly

 

My dearest daughter,

 

I am just leaving, and hence pressed for time.  You must please consider these four lines as if they were many.   Be sure, I beg you, that your very dear soul will never be more loved than it is by mine.

 

But what am I told?

 

They tell me that although you are pregnant, you fast, and rob your child of the nourishment that its mother requires in order to supply it.

 

Do it no more, I beseech you; and humbling yourself under the advice of your doctors, nourish with scruple your body, in consideration of that which you bear.  You will not lack mortifications for the heart, which is the only holocaust God desires from you.

 

O my God!  What grand souls I have found here in the service of God!  May His goodness be blessed for it.  And you, too, are united with these souls, since you have the same desires. Live entirely in God, my dear daughter, and persevere in praying for

 

Your very humble brother and servant,

Francis

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