Correspondences and Conferences

 

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Conferences

 

The friendship between Bishop de Sales and Madame de Chantal bore fruit in the community of the Visitation that they co-founded. On June 6, 1610, Jane and three companions made their way from dinner at Francis' episcopal apartments through the narrow cobblestone streets of Annecy to their new home, the Gallery House, a dwelling deeded to them by a patron. The procession was a festive and triumphal one through the city, for Francis was a beloved figure in his diocese. Jane herself was by now well connected with Annecy's first families through the marriage of Marie Aimée to Francis' brother Bernard. Also accompanying the Baroness de Chantal into her new life was Jacqueline Favre, daughter of one of Annecy's leading citizens, as well as Francis' dear friend Antoine Favre, Charlotte de Brechard, Jane's family friend, and Jacqueline Coste, a lay sister recruited by Francis.

 

When the little band of women settled in their new home perched on the hillside just above Lake Annecy, they inaugurated an entirely new way of life. They sought to live the devout life in a specific way with other women who felt a deep drawing to the life of prayer but who, because of the limitations of health or family obligations, could not enter one of the formal contemplative orders. The way of the Visitation was to be eminently Salesian. Like the devout life expressed among the laity, the devout life expressed in the Visitation was to be first and foremost an interior reality. To live Jesus was its intent. In fact "Live Jesus!" became the motto of the community.

 

The asceticism practiced was to be primarily a matter of heart, not of body. The first rule laid out a moderate plan of daily activity including liturgical and private prayer, work (mostly household), and simple recreation. At the center of the life were the little virtues that Francis loved so much and of which he wrote so evocatively in the Introduction. The emphasis was to be on creating a community that lived out in a striking way gentleness, simplicity, humility, patience, and the other relationally sensitive virtues.

 

In 1610, the year of the Visitation's foundation, Francis made it a frequent habit to stop by the Gallery House and visit Jane and the other women. They had one special meeting place, the garden just behind the house where there was a small orchard of pear trees. They fondly named it the "Conference Garden," for it was there that together they spoke about the life they were creating. At other times the bishop held talks on various spiritual themes related to devotion as these women sought to live it. The conversations were later lovingly recorded and compiled in a small book. Of all the conversations, one of the most delightful and typically Salesian is the fourth in the collection, the conference on cordiality.

 

Obviously the bishop in this conference is directly addressing a community of women dedicated to living a form of what was in his day termed "the life of perfection," a vowed life observing some expression of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Hence his advice is shaped to fit the particularity of their situation. But the conference on cordiality is revealing of Francis' spirituality in a more general way. His vision is profoundly relational. One goes to God not only vertically but horizontally. That is, the spiritual life is carried on not only between an individual and God but between persons as well.

 

It is in the affectionate (spiritually tempered) relationship between persons that one Lives Jesus! With delightful charm Bishop de Sales describes for Jane de Chantal and the first sisters of the Visitation what a community based on such cordial relational love might look like. He is very aware of the pitfalls that his listeners will inevitably encounter in such an undertaking. He is aware of the danger especially in the life of perfection of making imperfection an occasion for a too self-preoccupied discouragement. The wonderful balance of his spiritual advice is keenly observed in this conference.

 

Francis took the two great commandments of the New Testament seriously; love of God and love of neighbor were for him the foundations of the Christian life. While he gives some prece­dence to love of God as the primary source and end of all love, he is among those, certainly a minority in the contemplative tradition, who would especially emphasize love of neighbor. Certainly Christians from earliest times have been counseled to love one another; the persistent tradition of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy vigorously attests to this. But in general, spiritual writers have tended to emphasize love of God so intently that love of neighbor becomes almost an afterthought. Or at least love of neighbor tends to proceed generically and dispassionately as a care for souls out of the one great consuming love of the divine. This was not the case with Bishop de Sales. He argued that a person does not have two hearts, one to love God and one to love others, but only one heart capable of love. Thus all loves are intertwined and, while they are all grounded ultimately in divine love, human love is not necessarily a hindrance to divine love. Rather, directed rightly, human love is essential, for learning to love each other forms us in love, and love is of God.

 

Thus when the bishop gave his conference on cordiality to the little band of Visitation sisters in the pear garden behind the Gallery House, he was teaching that love of one another should become the basis of an entire way of life. The small, gentle, and attentive relational gesture, the patient bearing with one another, the mutual trust and accountability that he envisioned as hallmarks of Visitandine life are distinctive in the literature for religious houses. The little virtues of affability, cheerfulness, and childlike confidence so prominent here are absent from discussions of virtue in the monastic writings of his day. To Live Jesus! In this community was to make the gentle, humble Jesus of Matthew come to life.

 

We must then remember that love has its seat in the heart, and that we can never love our neighbor too much, nor exceed the limits of reason in this affection, provided that it dwells in the heart; but as regards the manifestations of this love, we can very easily go wrong by excess, passing beyond the rules of reason. The glorious St. Bernard says that "the measure of loving God is to love him without measure," and that in our love there ought to be no limits, but that we should allow its branches to spread out as far as they possibly can. That which is said of love of God may also be understood to apply to our neighbor, provided, however, that the love of God always keeps the upper hand and holds the first rank. Then, in the next place, we should love our sisters with all the compass of our heart, and not be content with loving them as ourselves, which the commandments of God oblige us to do, but love them more than ourselves, in order to observe the rules of evangelical perfection, which require that of us. Our Lord himself says: "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). This "love as I have loved you" ought to be well considered, for it means: more than yourselves. And just as our Lord has always preferred us to himself, and does so still as often as we receive him in the Blessed Sacrament, making himself therein our food, so in like manner he wishes us to have such a love for one another that we shall always prefer our neighbor to ourselves. And just as he has done all that he could do for us except condemning himself to hell (which indeed he could not and ought not to do, for he could not sin and it is sin alone that leads to damnation), so he wishes, and the rule of perfection requires, that we should do all that we can do for one another except losing our soul. With that sole exception, our friendship ought to be so firm, cordial, and solid that we should never refuse to do or to suffer anything for our neighbor and our sisters.

 

Now this cordial love ought to be accompanied by two virtues, one of which may be called affability, and the other cheerfulness. Affability is a virtue that spreads a certain agreeableness over all the business and serious communications that we hold with one another; cheerfulness is that which renders us gracious and agreeable in our recreations and less serious intercourse with one another. All the virtues have, as you know, two contrary vices, which are the extremes of the virtue. The virtue of affability, then, lies between two vices: that of too great gravity and seriousness on the one hand, and on the other of too many demonstrations of affection and using expressions that incline to flattery. Now the virtue of affability holds the golden mean between these two extremes, making use of affectionate terms according to the necessity of those with whom it has to deal, preserving at the same time a gentle gravity according to the requirements of the persons and affairs of which it treats. I say that we must show signs of affection at certain times, for it would not be suitable to carry into a sick room as much gravity of demeanor as we should display elsewhere, not showing more kindness to an invalid than if she were in full health. But we must not make such demonstrations too frequently, or be ready on every occasion to speak honeyed words, throwing whole handfuls of them over the first person we meet. Just as if we put too much sugar on our food it would disgust us, becoming insipid by being too sweet, so in the same way too frequent signs of affection would become repulsive, or at any rate we should cease to value them, knowing that they were given almost mechanically. The food on which salt is scattered in quantities would be disagreeable on account of its tartness, but that into which either salt or sugar is put in proper proportions becomes agreeable to the taste; so also caresses bestowed with measure and discretion are rendered profitable and agreeable to those who receive them.

 

The virtue of cheerfulness requires that we should contribute to holy and temperate joy and to pleasant conversation, which may serve as a consolation and recreation to our neighbors, so as not to weary and annoy them with our knit brows and melancholy faces, or by refusing to recreate ourselves at the time destined to recreation....

 

We must, moreover, remark that cordial love is attached to another virtue, which is as it were a consequence of that love, namely, a childlike confidence. When children have, say, a fine feather or something else that they think pretty, they cannot rest until they have found their little companions to show them the feather, and make them share in their joy; and in the same way they want them to share their grief, for if they have but a sore finger they go telling everyone they meet about it, to get pity and have the poor finger breathed upon. Now I do not say that you must be exactly like these children, but I do say that this confidence ought to make you willingly communicate to your sisters all your little satisfactions and consolations, with no fear lest they should remark your imperfection. I do not say that if some extraordinary gift is bestowed upon you by God you must tell everyone about it — no; but as regards your smaller consolations and joys, I wish you not to be so reserved about them and, when the occasion presents itself, to speak of them frankly and simply to one another, not in a spirit of boasting and self-satisfaction, but of childlike confidence. So too as regards your faults, I should wish you not to take so much pain to hide them, for they are none the better for not being outwardly visible. The sisters will not think you have none because they are concealed, and your imperfections will perhaps be more dangerous than if they were detected and caused you the confusion that they do to those who are more ready to let them appear on the surface. You must not, then, be astonished or discouraged when you commit some fault or imperfection before your sisters, but, on the contrary, you must be very glad to be seen as you really are. You may have been guilty of some fault or silliness, it is true; but it was before your sisters, who love you dearly, who can very well bear with you in your faults, and who will feel more compassion for you than indignation against you. Such confidence would greatly strengthen the cheerfulness and calmness of our minds, which are liable to be troubled when we are found out to be faulty in something, however small it may be, as if it were any great wonder that we should be seen to be imperfect!

 

In conclusion, remember always that if we should sometimes, through inadvertence, fail in gentleness and sweetness of behavior, we must not distress ourselves, or think that we are absolutely devoid of cordiality, for this is not so. An act committed now and then and not frequently does not make people vicious, especially when they have a hearty purpose and will to amend.

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