Francis de Sales and the Introduction to the Devout Life

 

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Nourishing the Devout Life

 

After making the radical choice for God, the task is to continue to live faithfully according to that choice. Thus the second part of the Introduction is concerned with "raising oneself to God by prayer and sacraments." Prayer and participation in the sacramental life of the church are considered by Francis to be the necessary means of nourishment in that continuing fidelity. The bishop especially recommends a kind of mental prayer focused on the figure of Jesus the Christ.

 

Prayer is Necessary

 

Prayer is opening our understanding to God’s brightness and light, and exposing our will to the warmth of his love.  Nothing else purifies so well our understanding of its ignorance and our will of its sinful attachments.  It is a spring of blessings and its waters quench the thirst of the passions of our heart, wash away our imperfections, and make the plants of our good desires grow green and bear flowers. [Continue ...]

 

A short method for mental prayer, First Point of the Preparation: Recalling the Presence of God 

 

Perhaps, Philothea, you do not know how to make mental prayer.  Unfortunately, it is something that few people know nowadays.  So I teach you a short and simple method for it.  It will be of help until you are more fully instructed by reading the numerous good books on this subject, and above all by practice. [Continue ...]

 

Second Point of the Preparation: The invocation or asking for God’s help 

 

The invocation is made as follows: having become aware that you are in the presence of God, cast yourself down with profound reverence.  Acknowledge that you are most unworthy to remain before such a supreme Lord.  Yet, knowing that his Goodness desires it, ask him for the grace to serve and adore him well in this meditation. [Continue ...]

 

Third Point of the Preparation:  Imagining the Scene

 

Besides these two general points to prepare for meditation, there is a third which is not common to ever of meditation.  Some call it the composition of place, and others the interior presentation.  This consists in presenting to one’s imagination the scene of the mystery taken for meditation, as if it was really and truly taking place before us. [Continue ...]

 

The Second Part of Meditation:  Reflections leading to God

 

Having made use of the imagination, next make use of the understanding.  This is what we call meditation.  It consists in making one or many reflections in order to arouse good movements of the will towards God and the things of God. [Continue ...]

 

The Third Part of the Meditation: Good movements of the will leading to deliberate decisions

 

Meditations produce good movements in the will, such as the love of God and of our neighbour; the desire of Heaven and eternal glory; zeal for the salvation of others; imitation of the life of our Lord; compassion, admiration, joy; fear of God’s displeasure, of judgment, and of hell’ hatred of sin; confidence in the goodness and mercy of God, shame for the sins of our past life.  Our spirit should give vent whole-heartedly to these good movements of the will. [Continue ...]

 

Concluding the meditation and spiritual nosegay

 

Bring the meditation to a close with three acts which must be made with as much humility as possible:

1.  The first is an act of thanksgiving.  We thank God for the good movements of the will and the deliberate decisions he has given us and for his goodness and mercy which we have discovered in the mystery on which we have been meditating. [Continue ...]

 

Readers who are actively engaged in the work force, who have the charge of young families, or who otherwise have limited freedom of time, will note right away that de Sales' advice on when and how long to pray (an hour preferably before the midday meal) was offered to women who had the leisure and household help to arrange their time as they wished. While he does make allowances for days in which fulfillment of this obligation is impossible, in general he assumes that such a prayer discipline is possible and essential to the devout life.

 

While I would concur that fidelity to prayer (defined quite broadly) is essential to a quickened spiritual life, there may be periods of one's life where very different forms and disciplines of prayer are called forth. For example, a young mother at home with three or four preschool children without outside help may find regular uninterrupted time impossible to arrange. When the toddlers finally go down for their naps, the baby may wake for a feeding. If she tries to get up an hour before her early-rising youngsters in order to pray, she may find herself so exhausted by mid-afternoon that she is unable to deal rationally with her boisterous four-year-old. If she waits to pray until her husband comes home from the late shift at work, she may find precious time for spousal communication eroded. Her prayer at this point in her life may arise less out of conscious focus on Scripture than on a contemplative awareness of the miracle discovered in the baby at her breast or the feverish child she comforts in the middle of the night.

 

Similarly, not all persons may be temperamentally drawn to mental prayer of the type Francis de Sales describes. It was assumed in his era that mental prayer was a safe, accessible form of prayer at which everyone could succeed. More formative and "deep" than vocal prayer (saying specific liturgical or formulated prayers aloud), mental prayer was distinguished from contemplative prayer, which was considered to be a more advanced form of discourse with God. There were "professional" prayers for this latter prayer, persons called specifically to the life of withdrawal whose sole occupation was to give themselves unreservedly to the cultivation of interior prayer. Generally, this contemplative type of prayer was considered to be mostly non-discursive and imageless. It was a resting in loving union with God or Jesus as spouse. While this vastly oversimplifies the discussion (for the theological science of the contemplative life was skillfully articulated in this period), de Sales, like his contemporaries, assumed that most lay people would do best to practice the type of mental prayer he outlined here and leave contemplation to "advanced souls."

 

In the last third of the twentieth century, these traditional notions about contemplative prayer have been challenged. Contemplation is no longer described today as it was in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries as an elite form of prayer that was a gift of God and generally reserved for those embarked on the life of "perfection." Instead, with a return to assessments of the contemplative life enunciated in the patristic and medieval church, contemplation has come to mean a simple, non-discursive, wholistic prayer to which anyone may find himself or herself drawn. The contemporary centering prayer movement is an example of the popularization of the practice of contemplative prayer. On the other hand, recent awareness of the variety of ways in which people are drawn to pray (due to temperament, personality, cultural context, gender differences, training, and so forth) brings Into question the universality of these prescriptions for mental prayer.

 

Nonetheless, the great benefit of this type of prayer activity that de Sales describes, whether it is a form to which one is naturally drawn or which is easily accommodated within the confines of one's daily life, is that it is clearly formative. By this I mean it gives one the opportunity to reflect in a focused, narrative way upon the central mystery of the Christian faith. Praying imaginatively and affectively with the story of Jesus creates the conditions by which one's personal life story becomes woven into the fabric of the greater Christian story of God's love and purposefulness. The great overarching story becomes the locus of meaning through which the seemingly random events of one's small story become significant. Mind, heart, imagination, and will are shaped by the narrative into which one ventures in this type of mental prayer. It is in fact an exercise designed so that one might come eventually to "Live Jesus."

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The Virtues of the Devout Life

 

At the core of the Introduction to the Devout Life are the teachings on what de Sales calls "the virtues." Nearly all of the third part of the book is concerned with the cultivation of those distinctive attitudes or qualities of person that the Christian tradition has long designated as characteristic of a life conformed to Christ. The virtues enumerated by tradition are many, but chief among them are faith, hope, charity (the three "theological virtues"), and prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice (the four "cardinal" virtues). Tradition assumed that a person under the influence of God's grace and with attentive effort would grow into the possession of faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.

 

But there were a host of other personal qualities that tradition held up as exemplary as well. Many of them come from the desert traditions of spirituality. Humility and simplicity, for instance, were qualities that the desert abbas and ammas constantly praised. And from the monastic tradition come what is known as the counsels of perfection or the evangelical counsels. They are poverty (renunciation of personal property), chastity (abstention from sexual relations), and obedience (submission of the will to a superior in all things). These counsels of perfection form the basis of the vowed religious life in nearly all its forms throughout the centuries. Not listed among the seven classic virtues, the counsels nonetheless inform discussions of virtue and the life modeled on Christ.

 

Beyond this there are numerous other laudable personal qualities or actions that tradition came to include among the virtues. Francis could mention courage, generosity, honesty, fasting, almsgiving, and such and be understood by his readers to be referring to the virtues. The bishop and his contemporaries felt every person could cultivate the virtuous life. In other words, allowing Jesus to live in you was something that required a certain amount of effort or cooperation on your part. It was a process in which you were actively involved. The virtues were numerous, and it was thought they would be realized in different degrees in different persons. Further, certain virtues would be made more manifest in certain circumstances. For instance, tragic events might call forth great courage in a person.

 

What is so interesting and distinctive about Francis de Sales' treatment of the virtues is his choice of those to be actively cultivated. Every Christian is called to virtue. But Francis highlighted what he called the "little virtues." These he contrasted to the great heroic virtues that are only rarely called forth. The little virtues are those qualities that become manifest in the common routine of everyday life. Much of what is distinctive about Salesian spirituality is found in this cultivation of the little virtues.

 

The third part of the Devout Life begins by introducing this Idea:

 

We must select the virtues to be practised 

 

The queen of the bees never goes to the fields without being accompanied by her little subjects. Similarly charity never enters a heart without finding a lodging there for itself as well as for a retinue of other virtues which it exercises and sets to work as a captain does his soldiers.  However, it does not put them to work all at once, not uniformly, nor at all times and in all places.  The just man is like a tree planted near running waters that bears its fruit in due season (Ps. 1:3).  For charity waters the soul and produces in it virtuous deeds, each in its proper season. [Continue ...]

 

Francis de Sales had, as you have just seen, a fondness for the little, common virtues. Throughout his writings he lists them. Which are they exactly? His lists vary. Usually included are humility, gentleness, simplicity, patience. I would single out especially gentleness as the most distinctive virtue of the spirituality that Francis exemplified. The French term that is usually translated as gentleness is douceur. Sometimes it is rendered in English as "sweetness," "meekness," or "suavity." But those translations do not convey the fullness of the virtue of douceur. I like to think of it as "gracefulness" and "graciousness" as well as "gentleness." Gracefulness extends from external demeanor to the internal ordering of a person's heart. One is both gracious in interactions with others and graciously ordered within. For the bishop being gentle or gracious had everything to do with living Jesus.

 

Most people hold a particular image of Jesus in mind and heart. There are many such images found in the gospels themselves. Perhaps one favorite might be the Jesus of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:31-46) who warns that external punishment will come to those who neglected him when they refused to welcome him in the stranger, clothe him in the naked, visit him in the sick and imprisoned. Perhaps a favorite image is the Jesus of John 6:54, who promises that anyone who eats his flesh and drinks his blood will have eternal life. Perhaps it is Jesus hanging on the cross who, in Luke's Gospel (23:33-34), in the midst of his agony offers forgiveness to his enemies with the words, "Father forgive them; they do not know what they are doing." The images are manifold. Different spiritual traditions and different historical eras will tend to focus attention upon a specific image and thus cluster thought and action in conformity to that image.

 

Salesian spirituality looks especially to Jesus as depicted in Matthew 11:28-30: "Come to me, all you who labor and are over­burdened and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light." It is the central phrase of the passage that is most important in Francis de Sales' understanding of Jesus: "Learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart." The invitation to learn from, to imitate, to follow, to be as Jesus receives the stress. And what is Jesus like? He is gentle and humble of heart. That is, the core of his being, his most essential self, the point from which all actions and thoughts flow — the heart — has the qualities of gentleness and humility. For Francis this was a radically countercultural idea, for most hearts are not gentle and humble but proud, grasping, and envious. There is a kind of subversiveness to Francis' understanding of the Christ-life; in this he is tutored by St. Paul. While it may appear that strength, power, and capability should be desirable qualities, these are in fact somewhat dubious virtues. Francis was quoted as saying, "Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength." For him, this truth had eschatological significance, for Jesus the Christ came to overturn the standards of the world and en-flesh a new standard of reality. Gentleness and humility were signs of the presence of the kingdom. To live these little virtues was to begin to realize God's Intent for humankind.

 

All of the little virtues are primarily relational. They offer the possibility of realizing a community of mutual love and respect. This, I think, is one of the distinctive features of Francis' thought and one that translates most easily into another historical era. What he was about was a very biblical enterprise: the creation of a human community that genuinely loved as it had first been loved by God.

 

At the root of this loving community is the art of living the gentle, humble Jesus. Gentleness or graciousness is one of his qualities. Another is humility. Humility, unlike gentleness, is not a virtue uniquely developed in the Salesian spiritual tradition, but humility is one of the most consistently admired virtues In Christian spiritual literature. It was a favorite of the desert hermits and then became a prime virtue of monasticism.

 

Bishop de Sales' exploration of humility reflects aristocratic lay life in the seventeenth century, but he sees true humility as essential to the devout life. He makes a distinction between external and internal humility.

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