Salesian Literature

Salesian Views on

::   Sacraments  ::   Self-love  ::   Self-purification  ::   Simplicity  ::   Spiritual Direction  

::   Spiritual Exercises  ::   Spiritual Integration  ::   Spirituality  ::   Suffering  ::   Surrender

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Spirituality

Related Topics: Devotion | Faith | Holiness | Interiority | Loving God | Vocation

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme I: Salesian spirituality was not simply humanistic in the technical sense of belonging to those spiritualities that are rooted in Christian humanist thought.  It was also a very “human devotion” in the ordinary sense of that phrase. 

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme II: Drawing on the wisdom of received tradition, Salesian spirituality found its own point of spiritual equilibrium by “living between” what Francis de Sales described as the two wills of God. … Salesian spirituality steers a fine course between the otherworldliness and the fatalism that haunts much of Christian thought. To live courageously between the two wills, to engage in the constant and unending interplay between the two, is to begin to live in harmony with the unique will of God.

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme III: Salesian spirituality, while retaining much of the interior spirit of the desert, in the sense that a radical call from God does indeed claim and refashion the human heart, did not at all assert that that voice could only echo clearly in the stillness of the hermit’s cave or the monastery cloister.

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme IV: The Salesian spirit is contextual.  It is also relational.  Being in the midst dos not mean simply trying to pray in the brief silences that emerge amid the noise.  It means that making Jesus live is not something that occurs solely in the isolated individual vis-à-vis his or her own God.

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme V: The Salesian stress on interiority, that is, on beginning from the inner, hidden life, and working outward in whatever setting or circumstances, finds eloquent expression in de Sales’ language of the heart.  To live Jesus meant to engrave that name on the human heart.  For in Salesian spiritual anthropology, the heart is the vital core of the entire personality. 

 

The Spirituality of St. Francis de Sales: A Way of Life [François Corrigan]:  If there is one message in particular that Francis de Sales preached to Christians of his day, it is this: All are called to holiness. 

 

Salesian spirituality starts from the Heart and grows outward [Joseph F. Power]

 

Salesian Spirituality is Relational Spirituality  [Joseph F. Power]

 

In the midst of movement Salesian Spirituality finds peace  [Joseph F. Power]

 

The Call to be Saints [Claude Morel]: This call, to be saints, is addressed to each one of us in a very personal manner.  We have all to answer it and commit ourselves personally to the way of holiness.

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