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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28. Miserable beggars receive the greatest mercy

To Jane de Chantal, on humility and widowhood

       

My dear sister,

 

My God!  What heartiness and passion I have in the service of your soul!  You could not sufficiently believe it.  I have so much that this alone suffices to convince me that it is from Our Lord.  For it is not possible, I think, that all the world together could give me so much – at least, I have never seen so much in the world.  I give this letter to this carrier because he will be coming back, and will be able to bring me your letters.

 

Today is the feast of All Saints, and at our solemn Matins, seeing Our Lord being the Beatitudes with poverty of spirit, which St. Augustine interprets as the holy and most desirable virtue of humility[1], I remembered that you had asked me to send you something about humility.  I think I said nothing about it in my last letter, although it was very ample and perhaps too long.  Now, God has given me so many things to write to you, that if I had time, I think I should say wonders.

 

In the first place, my dearest sister, it comes to my mind that learned men attribute to widows, as their proper virtue, holy humility.  Virgins have theirs, so have martyrs, scholars, pastors – each his or her own, like the order of their knighthood.  And all must have had humility, for they would not have been exalted had they not been humbled.  But to widows belongs, before all, humility; for what can puff up the widow with pride?

 

The widow no longer has her virginity.  (This can, however, be amply compensated by a great widowly humility.  It is much better to be a widow with plenty of oil in our lamp, by desiring nothing but humility and charity, than to be a virgin without oil or with little oil) (cf. Mt. 25:3). 

 

The widow no longer has that which gives the highest value to your sex in the estimation of the world; she has no longer her husband, who was her honour, and whose name she has taken.

 

What more remains to glorify herself in, except God?  O happy glory! O precious crown! In the garden of the Church, widows are compared to violets, little and low flowers, of no striking colour nr of very intense perfume, but marvellously sweet.  Oh, how lovely a flower is the Christian widow, little and low by humility!  She is not brilliant in the eyes of the world; for she avoids them, and no longer adorns herself to draw them on her.  And why should she desire the eyes when she no longer desires the hearts?

 

The Apostle orders his dear disciple to “honour the widows who are widows indeed” (1 Tim. 5:3).  And who are “widows indeed” save those who are such in hear t and mind – that is, who have their heart married to no creature?  Our Lord does not say “blessed are the clean of body,” bur rather the clean “of heart”; and He praises not “the poor,” but “the poor in spirit” (Mt. 5:8).  Widows are to be honoured when they are such in heart and mind; what does widow mean except “deserted and forlorn” – that is, miserable, poor, and little?  Those, then, who are poor, miserable, and little in mind and heart, are to be praised.  All this means those who are humble, of whom Our Lord is the protector.

 

But what is humility?  Is it the knowledge of this misery and poverty?  Yes, says or St. Bernard, but this is moral and human humility.[2]

 

What then is Christian humility?  It is the love of this poverty and abjection, contemplating these in Our Lord.  You know that you are a very wretched and weak widow?  Love this miserable state make it your glory to be nothing.  Be glad of it, since your misery becomes an object for the goodness of God to show His mercy in.

 

Among beggars, those who are the most miserable and whose sores are the largest and most loathsome, think themselves the best beggars and the most likely to draw alms.  We are but beggars; the most miserable are the best off.  The mercy of God willingly looks on them.

 

Let us humble ourselves, I beseech you, and plead only our sores and miseries at the gate of the divine mercy; but remember to plead them with joy, comforting yourself in being completely empty, and completely a widow, that our lord may fill you with His kingdom.  Be mild and affable with every one, except with those who would take away your glory, which is your wretchedness and your perfect widowhood.  “I glory in my infirmities,” says the Apostle, and “it is better for me to die than lose my glory” (2 Cor. 12:9).  Do you see?  He would rather die than lose his infirmities, which are his glory!

 

You must carefully guard your misery and your littleness; for God regards it, as he did that of the Blessed Virgin.  “Man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart” (1 Kings 16:7; RSV 1 Sam. 16:7).  If He sees our littleness in our hearts, He will give us great graces.  This humility preserves chastity, for which reason, in the Song of Solomon that lovely soul is called the “lily of the valleys” (Cant. 2:1).

 

Be then joyously humble before God, but be joyously humble also before the world.  Be very glad that the world takes no account of you; if it esteems you, mock at it gaily, and laugh at its judgement, and at your misery that is judged.  If it esteems you not, console yourself joyously, because in this, at least, the world follows truth.

 

As for the exterior, do not affect visible humility, but also do not run away from it; embrace it, and every joyously.  I approve the lowering of ourselves sometimes to mean offices, even toward inferiors and proud persons, toward the sick and the poor, toward our own people at home and abroad; but it must always be ingenuously and joyously.  I repeat it often, because it is the key of this mystery for you and for me.  I might rather have said “charitably,” for charity, says St. Bernard, is joyous[3]; and this he says after St. Paul (Gal. 5:22).  Humble services and matters of exterior humility are only the rind, but this preserves the fruit.

 

Continue your Communions and exercises, as I have written to you.  Keep your soul very closely this year to meditation on the life and death of Our Lord.  It is the gate of Heaven; if you keep His company you will learn His disposition.  Have a great and long-suffering courage; do not lose it for mere noise, and especially not in temptations against the Faith.

 

Our enemy is a great clatterer; do not trouble yourself at all about him.  He cannot hurt you, I well know.  Mock at him and let him go on.  Do not fight with him; ridicule him, for it is all nothing.  He has howled round the saints, and made plenty of hubbub, but to what purpose?  In spite of it all, there they are, seated in the place that he has lost, the wretch!

 

I want you to look at the forty-first chapter of the Way of Perfection by the blessed St. Teresa, for it will help you to understand well the doctrine that I have told you so often, that we must not be too minute in the exercises of virtues, that we must walk openheartedly, frankly, naively, after the old fashion, with liberty, in good faith, in a broad way. I fear the spirit of constraint and melancholy.  No, my dear child, I desire that you should have a heart large and noble, in the way of Our Lord, but humble, gentle, and without laxness.

 

I commend myself to the little but penetrating prayers of our Celse-Benigne; and if Aimee[4] begins to give me some little wishes, I shall hold them very dear.  I give you, and your widow’s heart, and your children, every day to Our Lord, when offering His Son.  Pray for me, my dear child, that one day we may see one another with all the saints in Paradise.  My desire to love you and to be loved by you has no less measure than eternity.  May the sweet Jesus will to give us this in His love and direction!  Amen.

 

I am then, and wish to be eternally, entirely

Yours in Jesus Christ,

Francis

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[1] St. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount, Book 1, Chapter 1.

[2] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Advent of Our Lord, 4.4.

[3] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatise on Charity, chapter 9

[4] St. Jane de Chantal’s son and daughter.

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