Francis de Sales and the Introduction to the Devout Life

 

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A Description of True Devotion

 

A Description Of True Devotion

 

You seek devotion, dear Philothea, because as a Christian you know that it is a virtue very pleasing to God.  Small mistakes made at the beginning of any project grow infinitely great as it progresses, and in the end are almost impossible to correct.  Hence you should know, before everything else, what is the virtue of devotion… [Continue  ...]

 

Devotion is suitable to every kind of life-situation and occupation

 

God commanded the plants, at the creation, to bear fruit each according to its kind (Gen. 1:11).  Similarly, he commands Christians, the living plants of his Church, to produce the fruits of devotion, according to each one’s ability and occupation… [Continue  ...]

 

The necessity of a guide to begin and to make progress in devotion

 

When young Tobias was told to go to Rages, he said, I do not know the way at all.  His father replied, Well, go and find someone to be your guide.  (Tobit 5:2,4).  Similarly, I say to you, dear Philothea: If you want to set out earnestly on the path of devotion, find some good person to guide and direct you.  This is the most important advice.  The devout Avila writes that in whatever way you search “You will never find the will of God with such certainty than by following the path of this humble obedience so much recommended and practised by all the devout persons of the past… [Continue  ...]

 

As his preface makes clear, the project Francis de Sales had in mind was less an initiation into a practice or form of life than an immersion into an entire attitude of being. Devotion was not simply doing something (good works or pious practices) but rather an orientation of the heart that flows forth in action. For de Sales the religious or devout person was not one who fulfills specific obligations but one who responds willingly and sensitively to the breath of the spirit animating his or her life. Thus flexibility and freedom are crucial to undertaking the devout life. One cannot allow narrow attitudes, habits, or concerns to hinder responsiveness to the touch of God, which is always surprise, always new life. At the same time, de Sales assumed that the spirit, as lively and unpredictable as it might be, works within the structures and choices of human life. Thus, to follow the voice of God is not always to be called to abandon the persons and occupations that make up one's life. In this, he modified somewhat the Roman religious ethos of his age, which was reasserting the pri­macy of the monastic or vowed life over against the churches of the Reform, which deliberately abandoned those lives in favor of marriage and "secular" work as the normative way for all Christians.

 

In fact, de Sales wanted to have it both ways. On the one hand, he affirmed that people in all lifestyles cannot follow a purely monastic devotion. In this, of course, he is in one sense correct, for monasticism is an entire lifestyle that involves renouncing family relationships and living in an ordered intentional community under the specific guidelines of a rule. It purposely cultivates separation, silence, and solitude as the appropriate stances for religious transformation. Not all lifestyles can encourage this in the same total way. On the other hand, the Genevan bishop wants to say that devotion is possible for all, no matter where they find themselves. It can be lived in any circumstance because it is not essentially outward but inward.

 

In the earlier centuries of Christianity it was assumed that if one wanted to truly live the Christ life one should first do something different. If the countercultural reality that Jesus came to initiate was to be embraced, then one should follow a practice that would break down habituated ways of seeing or adopt a style of life that clearly broke with the established cultural norms or wear clothing or live in a fashion that set one apart from the ordinary un-Christlike world. It was assumed that doing something different gradually had the effect of changing the doer. Francis assumed (and in this he is modern) that to change outwardly you needed to change inwardly first. He didn't mean that living the Christ life was a very private affair. He meant that external change or actions come from a changed heart. While this may seem obvious to us, it was not always the way early and medieval Christians went about living the Christ life. For them, adopting a practice (fasting, bowing, renouncing wealth, etc.) should gradually change the heart. De Sales starts from the inside out. That's where "Live Jesus!" fits. By this exclamation he asserts that one must have the name of Jesus engraved on one's heart. The outward fruits will follow.

 

There is one point that Francis de Sales makes emphatically dear in his preface: one should have a spiritual director to practice effectively the devout life. A word needs to be said about this assertion. Spiritual direction as it was practiced in the seventeenth century was somewhat different from spiritual direction as it is generally practiced in the contemporary Christian context. Perhaps a short historical survey might make this clear.

 

Christians from earliest times have always felt the need to encourage and support one another in their faith. Community is essential to any fully lived religious experience. Precisely because we are interdependent beings we do not grow in knowledge or love of God apart from the interaction of others who are wise and loving and more experienced than we. Even in the solitude of the early fourth- and fifth-century desert hermitages this was true. In fact, the Christian tradition of spiritual guidance has its beginnings in those hermitages. Neophytes in the desert sought out the abba (father) or amma (mother) to pass on a word of life. While it was assumed that the real teacher of the novice hermit was God or the Holy Spirit operating in the silence of the hermit's cell, nonetheless the insight of a teacher was seen to be of importance. The elder amma or abba was a charismatic figure known to embody the simple, profound wisdom of desert prayer. She or he gave to the seeker a particular word that corresponded to the spiritual needs of that seeker. The word was not so much an instruction as something to be lived into, a wisdom that was uniquely suited to the spiritual condition of the disciple, which would unfold as the years went by.

 

As the hermit life of the desert gave way to the cenobitic or communal life of monasticism, the tradition of spiritual guidance continued, but in a new form. The rule of the monastery became the word by which the disciple lived. The rule was a formative medium through which transformation of the monk into the image and likeness of God in Christ (as it was understood in that period) was achieved. The superior of the monastery — the abbot or abbess — was a spiritual guide in the sense that he or she guided the community in the way of the rule. While the superior was in authority over everyone in the monastery and while obedience in all things to him or her was due, an individual might also have a spiritual guidance relationship with another in the community who had lived the life longer and who had a special gift for guiding others on the spiritual journey.

 

The art and practice of spiritual guidance spilled out beyond cloister walls in the medieval world with the innovation of new forms of Christian life. With the creation of the mendicant or­ders — the Franciscans and Dominicans, who lived a mixed life of contemplative withdrawal and active work, especially preaching — came the institution of "third order" communities. These informal lay groups operated under the inspiration of the mendicants. Living in their homes and pursuing ordinary occupations, third order members followed a modified rule of life. They also received support from one another and spiritual mentoring from the orders. During this same period, a number of outstanding holy women, some members of third orders, some others living as anchoresses (hermitesses attached to a monastery or church), and others acting independently, gained prominence as spiritual guides. In fact, persons with an outstanding reputation for holiness had always been sought out for advice by ardent Christians groping for a foothold on the sometimes slippery spiritual path.

 

But in the Middle Ages, manifest holiness was enough to establish one as a guide who was sought out by others. Thus guidance was non-institutionalized and charismatic. It was determined by the gifts of the one who served as guide.

 

The techniques of prayer and discernment (evaluating interior movements) that were transmitted from guide to disciple varied from period to period and person to person, but they all drew on a common store of images and accumulated wisdom that had been unfolding from the era of the desert hermits. The medieval world had a special propensity for affective meditation, especially upon the life and passion of Christ. This trend came to fruition in the sixteenth century in the process of spiritual guidance developed by Ignatius of Loyola. The method is sometimes termed "interventionist" because the guide is one who, having experienced the interior process outlined in Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, leads a retreatant through a series of meditations, ex­aminations of conscience, and imaginative contemplations. The guide discerns the meaning, source, and directionality of the retreatant's affectivity, commonly referred to as "spirits." The guide actively confronts the person doing the Exercises with processes and subject matter that are designed to initiate a dynamic that allows him or her to encounter and respond directly to God's initiative.

 

Frances de Sales himself had experienced the dynamic process of Ignatius' Exercises; and his style of direction, especially as it is revealed in the Introduction to the Devout Life, owes much to the Ignatian influence. His use of directed meditations and his practice of gathering a "spiritual bouquet" at the end of the meditation day are variant forms of what one finds in the Exercises.

 

But a new model of spiritual guidance was developing at the same period in the Roman Catholic Church, and Francis was in some ways an early example of this "director of conscience" model of spiritual direction. For centuries the practice of sacramental confession had been gradually becoming closely tied to the practice of spiritual direction. For persons who were not in n monastic community or under the jurisdiction of a bishop, the confessor often became a spiritual director. In the centuries after the Reformation much emphasis was placed upon doctrinal orthodoxy among the faithful, and spiritual experiences were often evaluated for their adherence to normative church dogmatic teaching. Thus a person's spiritual life, his or her unique intimate relationship with God, became less the focus of spiritual direction than the cultivation of approved methods of prayer and avoidance of dubious forms of mysticism or heretical ideas. Clerics became the chief spiritual directors. No longer was spiritual guidance a charism. It was a function of the office of the cleric-confessor. The terms "spiritual direction," "director," and "directee" come from this model of guidance, which dominated Catholic practice for three hundred years.

 

Francis de Sales as a director was an example of the best of this "director of conscience" style of guidance, which reflects the strongly hierarchical model of church that prevailed from the seventeenth to mid-twentieth centuries. It could be poorly exercised by someone without a real charism in the discernment of interior movements. But Francis had this gift. For him spiritual direction was not simply the passing on of a system of ideas or methods of prayer, although it was that in part, as seen in the Introduction. It was first and foremost a process of intuitive response practiced between two persons. The directee came to the director seeking guidance in how best to respond to the Christian imperative and bringing the nascent yearning of his or her heart. The director helped that person to discern these promptings, to lean toward what we today would term the center of the self, to distinguish movements of the heart that seemed to be from God and those that seemed to be aligned to purposes alien to God, and to propose practices that might encourage the free expression of those God-born impulses as well as practices that might curb the impulses born of other sources.

 

The Genevan bishop saw himself less as a professional dispensing information to the uninformed than as a fellow Christian walking the same road as the directee. In such a context all director/directee relationships were in some sense friendships although their intensity and mutuality differed. Much of what Francis did as a director is remarkably modern in its feel. It is also in continuity with the charism of spiritual guidance as exercised over the centuries preceding him. Yet he was also firmly rooted in the thought world of this time and could insist that a directee look upon his or her director as an "angel, not merely a man."

 

Spiritual direction as it is generally practiced in the twentieth century is not of the "director of conscience" type. Although some priests and ministers are formally engaged in spiritual direction, many are not. And many spiritual directors are not priests or ministers. The practice of spiritual direction is formally separate from sacramental confession. There has been a return, in recent years, to seeing spiritual guidance as a charism discovered among all Christians: ordained, lay, men, women, celibate, married, single. In addition, the developing fields of psychology, counseling, and psychiatry have profoundly colored the way in which spiritual direction tends to be undertaken now. There is an awareness of life cycle development, personality dysfunction, addiction, family systems theory, and the dynamics of pastoral interaction that shapes what happens in a spiritual direction session. Further, the religious pluralism and ecumenism of contemporary life have generally been embraced in modern spiritual direction. Emphasis tends to focus upon the unique relationship between the directee and his or her own God and not on the theological vision that lies behind it. Attentiveness to the diversity of ways in which prayer can occur, the religious propensities of differing personality types, and the diverse ways of naming the divine has likewise influenced spiritual direction.

 

When Francis de Sales speaks of the necessity of a spiritual guide in the life of devotion, he is anticipating what many people say in today's world, that people need accompaniment in the life of deepening faith. Worship communities, small faith-sharing groups, friendships, or shared spiritual commitments, as well as formal spiritual guidance are all ways such accompaniment may take shape. Francis de Sales also stresses the point that such accompaniment is especially vital for persons not in formal religious vows — in other words, lay persons. The point is still well token today because the community of support and shared vision that, at least in theory, exists in a religious order or among those professed to ministry is often absent in the lives of lay persons.

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Meditations on the Purpose of Life

 

After the opening discussion of the nature of devotion, the Introduction continues with a set of meditations designed to prepare the individual to consciously and freely embrace a devout life. De Sales' meditations clearly reflect the influence of the Ignatian Exercises. The purpose of the meditations is to implant firmly the awareness in both mind and heart of humankind's true identity as children of God created to know, remember, love, and praise the Creator. Thus we are encouraged to look carefully at our life and to evaluate the ways in which we have or have not made use of talents and capabilities. Then, as we reflect on the goodness of God, the possibilities for beauty and goodness inherent in human life, the shortness of life, the consequences of neglecting or misusing our gifts, we come to the point of choice. In the language of the tradition, we make an election. We make a firm resolution to start anew, to serve God with all our capacities, and to use all the means at our disposal to embrace a life of devotion, a life oriented toward the love and service of God.

 

At the end of each of the little meditations that conclude the first part of the Introduction to the Devout Life, the reader is invited to gather a little "spiritual nosegay." The phrase may strike twentieth-century readers as a bit sentimental, but the gentle­women for whom de Sales penned this piece were accustomed to delighting in the polite and the gracious turn of phrase. As a spiritual teaching, gathering a little nosegay is profound. Good intentions and meaningful thoughts are useless unless they take form in action. They need to be impressed upon consciousness, burned into the flesh of our lives. So to distill from a longer, amorphous meditation a short, memorable phrase or image is to make the branding iron that can effect a lasting mark. In the spiritual journey, remembering is always an essential, formative act. We constantly need to be reminded of who we truly are and what is most essential in life. De Sales' spiritual bouquets allow us, using an olfactory metaphor, to breathe in memories of who we most essentially are and what we are called to become.

 

The process described in the meditations engages the memory, intellect, will, and affections. The meditator is invited to recall the depth of God's love and the fact that we are God's children, to exercise the intellect on the topic of the meditations, to make deliberate choices based on insight gained, and to integrate affectively those choices into the fabric of our lives through prayer. The meditations are, obviously, directed toward the whole person, so that the choice of the devout life will be deep, lasting, and transformative.

 

First Meditation: Our Creation

 

Preparation

1.       Place yourself in the presence of God.

2.       Ask him earnestly to inspire you.

 

Reflections

1.       Consider that a few years ago you were not in the world, and that you were just nothing.  Were was I then?  The world was already existing a long time but there was no news of me.  [Continue  ...]

 

Third Meditation: God’s Blessings

 

Preparation

1.       Place yourself in the presence of God.

2.       Ask him to inspire you.

 

Reflections

1.       Think of the bodily gifts which God has given you: your body, the many conveniences for its care, your health, all the lawful comforts, your friends, so much that is helpful.  While considering all these, compare yourself to so many other persons who are more deserving than you but who have not been given these blessings: some have defective bodies or lack of health or limbs, other are subject to rebuke, disrespect and dishonour, still others are weighed down with poverty.  But God has not allowed that you should suffer such miseries. [Continue  ...]

 

Tenth Meditation:  Deliberate choice of the Devout Life

 

Preparation

1.       Place yourself in the presence of God.

2.       Humble yourself before his face.  Ask for his help.

 

Reflections

1.       Imagine that you are in the open country again, alone with your Guardian Angel.  On your left you see the devil seated on a great raised throne, with many infernal spirits near him.  All around him is a vast crowd of worldly people, who with uncovered heads acknowledge him as lord and pay him homage, some by one sin and some by another. [Continue  ...]

 

The heightened affectivity of the election or choice of direction strikes the reader immediately. Francis had been well taught by his Jesuit mentors to pray imaginatively with Scripture or meditation material. The idea was to become immersed in the life and mission of Jesus to the extent that one would make the deliberate and life-altering choice to enlist under the standard of Christ. Ignatius' original metaphors were military. One chose to be a soldier in the forces of Christ, not the forces of Satan (which meant everything not oriented toward God as its end). Bishop de Sales chooses the image of two contrasting kings to make his point.

 

In recent years it has been popular to recast some of the language and imagery of the Ignatian Exercises in terms more congenial to contemporary tastes. Perhaps the same might be done for Francis' images and language here in the Introduction to the Devout Life. While attractive new translations have appeared in print, to my knowledge no reworking of the Devout Life analogous to the many reworkings of the Exercises has ever been attempted. While for some people the image of the kingdom of devotion with its assembly of virgins whiter than snow, self-denying widows, and gentle married couples may speak powerfully, for others it does not. Perhaps a community of persons concerned with the implementation of God's justice and mercy on behalf of the poor and oppressed might be an equally compelling picture. Or alternatively a vision of a creation-centered Christian community committed to the preservation of the planet and the cultivation of a vision of ecological Interconnectedness might speak persuasively to others. In any case, the point we need to remember here is that the choice for the kingdom of Christ is at the heart of the Introduction. How Christians have envisioned that kingdom and its anticipation in our lives has differed from age to age.

 

Clearly, both for the contemporary world and for Francis de Sales, the kingdom of Christ is not simply an otherworldly "place" to be aspired to only after death. While the fullness of Christ's kingdom may not be identified with any particular political system, national group, or even church community, the kingdom is a reality into which people live through their choices and actions.

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