Salesian Literature

Preface

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Although honoured by the request to write an introduction to the sermons which are included in this volume, I have found the task to be a daunting one. St. Francis de Sales is the patron of our diocese and so deserving of our devotion and piety. He was the founder and is the continuing inspiration of a religious community which has served this and innumerable other dioceses in America, Europe and throughout the world with gentle charity and with loving concern for the poor and disadvantaged. He was a model bishop, making himself all things to all people. Long before the word came into popular usage, he actively engaged in the practice of the grassroots ecumenism which longs to see all Christians reunited in the bonds of charity and faith for which Jesus Himself prayed. He is the author of several volumes of sermons, treatises, conferences and informal conversations which have nourished the spiritual lives of Christians for over three hundred and fifty years. Over and above all these admirable accomplishments, he is a saint and a Doctor of the Catholic Church. The mere telling of his spiritual, pastoral and personal qualities and accomplishments is enough to render any praise which I might offer to him unnecessary and superfluous. Equally, it should convince my readers that the words of St. Francis de Sales which they will find in this volume are words of life, vibrant echoes of the words of Jesus and of the Spirit whom Jesus sent to the Church for its guidance and holiness.

 

The sermons presented in this small book are those delivered by St. Francis for the Sundays and feasts of the liturgical year beginning with the Second Sunday of Advent and concluding with the Second Sunday after the Epiphany. They were spoken, for the most part, during the period 1620-1622, one of them only three days before the Saint's final pilgrimage to his Lord in Heaven. They are, thus, words which reveal to us the fullness of Francis' mature pastoral concern, his personal love of the Incarnate Saviour and the engaging simplicity with which he addressed his audience. His procedure is to comment on the Gospel selection read in the Mass of the day and to use its message as a springboard for instruction on the practical aspects of Christian conduct in everyday life. These sermons were delivered in the presence of a community of his beloved Sisters of the Visitation, to whom he was both a father and spiritual director. They have the uncomplicated freshness and informality of one who feels thoroughly at home with his audience, before whom he is completely himself and for whose benefit he pours out his whole heart and spirit.

 

With Francis, we shall not find that formal and ornate rhetorical style which characterizes so many 17th-century sermons. Rather, he is content to follow the advice which he gave to St. Jeanne de Chantal's brother, Andre Fremyot, when the latter was named Archbishop of Bourges: "To speak well, it is enough to love well." Accustomed as he was to making use of homely, down-to-earth and, sometimes, legendary examples to convey his message, he is, in these sermons, as he himself said in another context, a "barber and not a surgeon," by which he meant to say: "When I am preaching in the choir before seculars, I give no pain. I only throw perfumes, I only speak of virtues and of matters likely to console our hearts; I play a little on the flute and dwell on the praises which we ought to render to God." (Spiritual Conferences of St. Francis de Sales, Gasquet-Mackey, Conf. XVI—'On Antipathies," p. 238). His words are thus intended for all Christians, regardless of their state or position in life. Although aware of human faults and frailties, he habitually emphasizes the love of God as the true pole star of Christian life, and he gently, yet constantly, encourages his hearers to focus their lives and their vision on its unfailing light.

 

Readers of these pages will, perhaps, be struck by the length of Francis' sermons, for they are habitually longer than those which are common in our day. They will want to note, at the same time, the richness and the wide range of his thought. Drawing on both the Old and the New Testaments, the writing of the Fathers of the Church, the lives of the Saints, and sometimes on examples found in classical literature, he waves an extraordinarily full and colourful tapestry of thought, against which the simple words of the Gospel text come to life and receive brilliant illumination. While styles and taste in preaching change with the centuries (for they should be adapted to their own times and their own audiences), the message of the Gospel, which is Francis' chief concern, does not change. His words are as meaningful to Christians of our times as they were to those of the 17th century.

 

Above all else, however, readers of these pages should allow the gentle and devoted spirit of St. Francis de Sales to touch their hearts and minds as he touched the hearts and minds of his own audiences. That spirit is a spirit on which has been indelibly impressed a tender and deep devotion to the God who is Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of each and every member of the human race. It is a spirit suffused with that wisdom which looks beyond the surface of persons and events and sees the ever-present Providence of God in human affairs. It is a spirit which burns bright with a consuming love for our Lord and Saviour, for Him who gave His life that we might find life in Him. It is a spirit shot through with love for the Church, for its unity, for its members united to Jesus Christ as the tendrils of the vine are united to its stock. It is a spirit which willingly recognizes the value of all that is truly human in each individual and consistently encourages its growth and development. It is a spirit which is humble, simple, clear-eyed in its perception of human limitations and yet convinced that God, in His infinite mercy, has called each and every one of His human creatures to enjoy friendship with Him in this life and throughout all eternity. It is the spirit of the pastoral bishop whom St. Francis, unconsciously depicting his own self-portrait, described as "a man gentle, charitable, and zealous for God's glory, a vigilant pastor; in short, a man perfect in every virtue and one who performs carefully all the duties of his office, having the two natures of his soul so well ordered that there is nothing of hatred in him except for sin and nothing of love except for the love of our dear Saviour." (Sermon for December 6, 1620, p. 17-18 of this volume).

 

I express my gratitude to the Sisters of the Visitation who have laboured lovingly over the translation of these sermons. In making them available to the members of their own communities, they have also made them available to the entire English-speaking Church. This service is yet one more manifestation of their devotion to the Church and to its members, a devotion of which I and all the members of the Diocese of Wilmington are gratefully conscious. May God grant that each of us who reads these pages will be animated with St. Francis de Sales' "spirit of compassion to befriend all on the way to salvation." (Mass of St. Francis de Sales, January 24).

 

Robert E. Mulvee

Bishop of Wilmington

 

Feast of the Transfiguration

August 6, 1987

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