Saint Francis of Sales (Paperback)

This work is divided into seven chapters: The Life of Saint Francis de Sales The Secret of Sanctity The Writer Doctrine Preaching Correspondence and Direction Direction of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal-Foundress of the Visitation "The revival of Paganism in social manners, as well as in literature and sentiment, is the most flagrant characteristic of the great century to the latter half of which Francis of Sales belonged. But, by redeeming contrast, it was no less a century prolific in Catholic sanctity, in great foundations, in noble deeds, the period of a Christian Renascence, of the Church's conquests and triumphs, as well as of her disasters and losses. In the midst of the corrupt splendours of the Pagan Renascence the light of purity and justice shone with undimmed brilliance." Let us consider the secret of sanctity: "The biographical study of such a life is incomplete without the psychological study. The first gives an idea of effects, some inkling of their cause; the second, full knowledge of that cause; the two in combination, the life as it was. The moral beauty of our study ought to make it an attractive one, and the practical lesson it contains ought to make it instructive. But more than this, I will frankly add that I think men, whose minds are not distorted by prejudice and who can appreciate in others a nobility they are not themselves devoid of, starting with nothing more than belief in God's existence, will have to acknowledge that such a life peremptorily demonstrates the divinity of the Christian religion, I mean in its unmutilated Catholic fulness." "The "interior" life, its conduct, are distinctive features of Christian morality. And should we be asked what this life is, we would say first that it is not the solitary, not the contemplative life. Indeed, our Saint tells us that, necessary in the cloister where everything tends to assist "recollection," it is of still greater necessity in the world where everything tends to "dissipation." The interior life consists mainly in two things the intention, i.e. the direction of the will towards a fixed object, that object being in fact the goal the life proposes to itself as final-the affections, in other words, the sentiments on which the heart feeds and which leave their mark on the actions they prompt." Let us consider this observation on De Sales preaching: "MONSIEUR DE BOISY'S reproach to his son that he preached too much will not be forgotten; and Francis, both as a priest and a bishop, certainly was lavishly generous with his sermons. On the ministry of the Word he set the very highest value; and there is abundant proof that many souls owed their conversion and sanctification to his sermons. His glorious work in the Chablais was, it will be remembered, an apostolate of the voice, for when he wrote and circulated his "tracts," it was only as the best possible means, in the face of determined resistance, of inducing the people to come and hear what he had to say."