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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27. Calm your mind, Lift up your heart

To a woman whose husband died recently

 

Madame,

 

You cannot think how deeply I feel your affliction.  For many reasons, but chiefly for his virtue and piety, I honoured with a very particular affection this dear departed gentleman.  How grievous that, at a time when there is so great a dearth of such souls among men of his rank, we should see and suffer these losses, so injurious to the commonwealth.

 

Still, my dear lady, considering all things, we must accommodate our hearts to the condition of life in which we are.  This is a perishing and mortal life, and death, which rules over this life, keeps no regular course – it seizes sometimes here, sometimes there, without choice or any method, the good among the bad, and the young among the old.

 

Oh, how happy are they who, being always on their guard against death, find themselves always ready to die, so that they may live again eternally in the life where there is no more death!  Our beloved dead was of this number, I well know.  That alone, Madame, is enough to console us; for at last, after a few days, or sooner or later in a few years, we shall follow him in this passage; and the friendships and fellowships begun in this world will be taken up again never to be broken off.  Meanwhile, until the hour of our departure strikes, let us have patience and await with courage our own departure for that place where these friends already are.  And as we have loved them cordially, let us continue to love them, doing for their love what they wished us to do in the past, and what they now wish for on our behalf.

 

Doubtless, my dear lady, the greatest desire your deceased husband had at his departure was that you should not long remain in the grief that his absence would cause you, but try to moderate, for love of him, the passion that love of him excited in you.  And now in the happiness that he enjoys, or certainly expects, he wishes you a holy consolation, and that by moderating your tribulation, you save your eyes for abetter purpose than tears, and your mind for a more desirable occupation than sorrow.

 

He has left you precious pledges of your marriage.  Keep your eyes to look after their brining up; keep your mind to raise up theirs.  Do this, Madame, for the love of your dear husband, and imagine that he asked you for this at hid departure, and still requires this service from you.  For truly he would have done it if he could, and he now desires it.  The rest of your griefs may be according to your heart, which remains in this world, but not according to his, which is in the other.

 

And since true friendship delights in satisfying the just desires of the friend, so now in order to please your husband, be consoled; calm your mind, and lift up your heart.  And if this counsel hat I give you with entire sincerity is agreeable to you, put it into practice.  Prostrate yourself before your Saviour, acquiesce in His ordinance; consider the soul of this dear departed, which wishes from yours a true and Christian resolution; and abandon yourself altogether to the heavenly Providence of the Saviour of your soul, your protector, who will help you and succour you, and will, in the end, unite you with your dead, not as wife with husband but as heiress of Heaven with co-heir, and as faithful lover with her beloved.

 

I write this, Madame, without leisure and almost without breath, offering you that very loving service of mine that has long been yours, and also that is required from my soul by the merits and the goodness of your husband toward me.

 

God be in the midst of your heart. Amen.

Francis

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