Saint Francis de Sales - 24 January

Life and Teaching of St Francis de Sales

He was born at Savoy in 1567 and was ordained a priest in December 1593. As a seminarian he was already using Scupoli’s work. In 1602 he was consecrated Bishop of Geneva but because of the Protestant Reformation, of which Geneva was one of the main centres, he was unable to live there and spent most of his life at Annecy, just across the border in France. He travelled, preached and wrote tirelessly and was much sought after as a spiritual director. He was energetic in using the media of communication available in his day, publishing many pamphlets about the Catholic faith, and for this he is recognized as the patron saint of journalists. He died in 1622 and is buried at Annecy. Canonized by Pope Alexander VII in 1665, just forty years after his death, he was declared a doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1887.

The writings of Francis de Sales reveal his own humanity in the first place, his knowledge of human nature, his compassion for men and women, and his understanding of the difficulties experienced by people trying to live the Christian life well. He also spoke from personal experience, informed by his earlier anxiety about his salvation, from his experience of conflict between Christian communities, from his experience of the challenges that faced him as a bishop as well as from what he learned through spiritual direction, both received and given.

With Francis de Sales the concerns of the modern world and the needs of lay Catholics begin to be felt: how to help Christians living in the world with various responsibilities to live a life of prayer and devotion. How are they to seek and to live out what Scupoli termed ‘perfection’ according to the possibilities and the duties of each person’s state in life? It has been said (by the Church historian Philip Hughes) that in Francis de Sales the French Renaissance is baptized. He represents a form of Christian humanism and succeeded, where Erasmus had failed, in ‘making humanism devout’ (this latter phrase seems to originate with Henri Bremond). Francis was much influenced by Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, was directed for most of his life by Jesuits, and took another great saint of the 16th century, Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), as his model for how to live and work as a bishop. He was also familiar with the writings of Teresa (whom he refers to as ‘Avila’) and John of the Cross.

Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) became the paradigmatic bishop of the Tridentine church. His pastoral care and government were the model and inspiration for bishops and other leaders. Pope John XXIII, for example, in his work as a historian, prepared editions of the visitation charges of Charles Borromeo to his own diocese of Bergamo. Charles continued to shape and inform Church leaders, therefore, and in very significant ways right through to the Second Vatican Council.

To return to Francis de Sales: he is a bridge between the Renaissance and the modern period and one of the most important writers on Christian spirituality between the 17th century and the present day. To take just one example from the 20th century, the Irish Benedictine spiritual writer Blessed Columba Marmion was very much influenced by Francis de Sales and brings to his spiritual writings the same qualities of moderation and discretion. Francis continues to inspire and guide people through his writings of which the most important are Treatise on the Love of God, Conferences, and above all his Introduction to the Devout Life. We learn a lot about his spirituality, and also get a clear sense of his personality, from his collected Letters.

One of his main achievements was to move the principal concerns of the Christian spiritual life out of the context of cloistered religious life. He applied the fundamentals of the spiritual life to all Christians, recognizing the richness of the diverse vocations within the Church. His best-known work, Introduction to the Devout Life, was written for lay people rather than for monks, religious women, or priests. Perhaps this was the first treatise written specifically for the ‘ordinary Christian’. There had been books of prayers and other devotions intended for lay people produced in the Middle Ages but this was the first theological reflection on how the Christian person is to live a spiritual life in the circumstances of family life, daily work, social involvement, and so on. It first appeared in 1609 and the final edition with corrections made by Francis himself was published in 1619, just three years before his death.

For Francis, as for Lorenzo Scupoli, the devout life is not any kind of extraordinary grace or favour. Even the highest things promised by the great works on mysticism are not themselves virtues, he says, but rather rewards that God gives for virtues, or small samples of the joys of the future life. A purely intellectual contemplation, the essential application of the spirit, a supereminent life – one should not aspire to such graces, Francis says, because they are in no way necessary for loving and serving God well, which should be our only aim.

In fairness to them, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross say the same thing and warn against becoming preoccupied with special experiences or para-normal phenomena in prayer. This is not what it is about: it is about turning away from sin, growing in virtue, and giving ourselves as fully as possible to loving and serving God, according to God’s will, and for the sole purpose of giving glory to God. With Francis de Sales the characteristic spirituality of the Catholic Reformation is fully established, informed by the great Spanish spiritual writers of the previous century, but given a more practical and pastoral application by him as by Scupoli and other Italian and French spiritual writers.

What Francis de Sales calls ‘true devotion’ does not consist in any particular spiritual exercise. He notes that people sometimes place their virtue in austerity, or abstinence, or almsgiving, or frequenting the sacraments, or prayer, or a certain sort of passive and supereminent contemplation – he takes the ground from under everybody by saying that those who do this are all mistaken. ‘They take the effects for the causes, the brook for the spring, the branches for the root, the accessory for the principal, the shadow for the substance.’ ‘For me’, he concludes, ‘I neither know nor have experienced any other Christian perfection than that of loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves. Every other perfection without this one is a false perfection.’

So true devotion or Christian perfection consists simply in fulfilling the twofold precept of charity taught by Christ (Matt 22:34-40). It is nothing other than the true love of God, a love which is true because it is the divine love itself making our souls beautiful. This love is also called grace, because it makes us pleasing to God. It is called charity, because it gives us the power to do good. And it is called devotion, because it not only makes us do good but makes us do it carefully, frequently and promptly. The three terms – grace, charity, devotion – are central to all Salesian spirituality.

Devotion, or holiness, is for all. Love is absolutely primary, and Jesus, meek and humble of heart, is its model and way. In practice Francis proposes the journey which had by then become standard for any Catholic or Christian spiritual quest. There needs to be purgation from sin and renunciation of all attachment to sin. The person must seek to avoid all ‘occasions of sin’ and confirm the seriousness of their intention by making a general confession. He proposes a schedule of spiritual exercises including morning and evening prayer, a daily examination of conscience, spiritual reading, and frequent reception of the sacraments of confession and Holy Communion.

Mental prayer, or meditation, should be part of the Christian’s daily activity. These exercises need to be adapted to the specific vocation of each person, for each one’s growth in virtue is connected with developing the virtues proper to their vocation. All must grow in charity, meekness and humility. All must turn away from sin and engage in the spiritual exercises recommended. But the particular regime, or spirituality, of each person depends also on each one’s commitments and relationships in the Church and in society.

Regarding prayer, Francis de Sales offers some guidelines on how to set about meditation or mental prayer, a way of approaching it which became common particularly with the influence also of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. For Francis there should be a time of preparation in which we remember that we are in the presence of God, we ask God’s help, we place ourselves within the Biblical scene of whichever mystery from the life of Christ we wish to meditate (composition of place). There follows a time of meditation, thinking about the theme, the words of Christ in that moment, and the action involved in the event. One should then move to involve also the will in expressing affection and in considering resolutions to act with greater conformity to Christ. The conclusion should involve acts of thanksgiving, offering and petition. After the time of meditation there should be a moment of reflection and recollection before returning to the duties of one’s particular vocation and to implementing the resolutions made during the meditation. (He gives these schemes for meditation in Introduction to the Devout Life I.9-18 and II.2-9.)

He follows Ignatius in offering a series of sample meditations with advice about how to place oneself in the biblical scene, what points to ponder in each case and what resolutions to consider making. As one moves through these meditations there will be a need also to make ‘elections’, decisions about one’s way of living and perhaps also about one’s vocation. The ten meditations he presents in Introduction to the Devout Life I.9-18 he sees as preparation for a general confession, underlining that moment in which the person confirms the seriousness of their purpose in wanting to live a life of devotion.

Once a person is established in seeking to live the devout life, having undertaken the necessary via purgativa by turning away from sin and participating in the sacramental life of the Church, they can then concentrate on developing the virtues necessary to persevere in their desire and to grow in their love of God and neighbour. Book III of the Introduction to the Devout Life considers these virtues, not only with wise theological insight but also with shrewd psychological understanding. For example, is it the first time that we find a spiritual writer devoting a section of his work to ‘meekness towards ourselves’ (III.9)? Or dealing at such length on the importance of ‘friendship’ (III.17-22)? In the following book he considers the temptations that will come to discourage the person including simple ‘anxiety’ (IV.11), for which he can draw on his personal experience as a young man terrified at the prospect of his own damnation. He knows the difficulty of persevering in one’s good intentions and so recommends a substantial annual retreat in order to confirm and strengthen those intentions (Book V).

Salesian spirituality thus unifies all Christian morality and holiness around the great commandment of love. Perfection is not found in any particular spiritual exercise, practice or experience but rather in the love of God and neighbour. Perfection understood in this way is the vocation of all Christian people. Fundamental to growing in the observance of this commandment are mental prayer and the cultivation of the virtues proper to one’s state in life.

The heart of Christ mediates God and God’s love to human hearts and so the spiritual life means becoming conformed to the ways of Jesus’s heart. Francis succeeded in giving warmth to his spiritual doctrine, saying that only the language of the heart can ever reach another heart, a phrase which John Henry Newman later took as his motto, cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). At the same time, Francis avoided sentimentality in his spiritual teaching for it is a doctrine that requires determination, self-sacrifice and unconditional surrender to God. Devotion, he says, ‘is nothing other than that spiritual agility and vivacity by which charity works in us, or we work with her aid, with alacrity and affection’.

The spirituality of Francis de Sales can be summarized in the contents of a letter written in 1604, five years before the appearance of Introduction to the Devout Life. The means of attaining perfection vary according to the diversity of callings, he says. Whether we are religious, widows or married persons, all must seek perfection, but not all by the same means. The principal means of uniting oneself to God are the sacraments and prayer and the ways by which we unite ourselves with our neighbour are very numerous. In whatever way we do it, we must practise love for our neighbor and express it outwardly. It can be done, for example, by visiting hospitals to comfort the sick, to have compassion for their infirmities and to pray for them. We can do it by fulfilling the duties we have towards our spouse and families. In everything charity must prevail and enlighten us so that we yield to the wishes of our neighbor in whatever is not contrary to the commandments of God.

Francis de Sales lived this spiritual teaching in his own life of prayer, preaching, writing and spiritual direction. In his letters we see how he listened and responded to each person according to their individual needs, showing great psychological insight as well as creativity in imparting his spiritual teaching. He helped people to distinguish between feelings and the will, as also between God and their awareness or non-awareness of God. In his Treatise on the Love of God we see him engaging with the mystical aspect of the spiritual life, relying in important ways on Thomas Aquinas, and explaining how the love of God arises, grows and develops in the human soul. While he speaks there about the higher experiences of union with God, this work also concludes with a consideration of ordinary life and the practice of the virtues needed every day if people are to persevere in prayer, carry out their duties, and grow in their love for God and neighbour.

His great friend Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641) summed up his personal spiritual condition in words that clearly echo those of the great Carmelites in their descriptions of union with God: ‘he kept his spirit within (an) inner solitude,’, she said, ‘living in the topmost point of the spirit, without depending on any feelings or on any light save that of a bare and simple faith’.