Spirituality of SFS: A Way of Life

Today

From the distance of four hundred years, can the voice of Francis de Sales reach our ears? Yes, undoubtedly so, because it rises form his heart and, “as has been well said, heart speaks to heart.”

People today can hear his message.

To a world prone to violence, Francis offers the option of evangelical gentleness, which is not weakness but the strength of love.

To a world prone to division, he offers the possibility of unity by enabling people to achieve personal oneness and to unite in communion with one another.

To a world prone to war and conflicts, he offers the way of peace through mutual confidence, dialogue and reconciliation.

To a world looking for meaning, he offers a vision of man and of the universe which is full of hope.

To those who are in anguish, he offers the face of a God who is tender, as well as the rich resources hidden in the depth of the human spirit.

To hesitant hearts, and to those which are lukewarm, he brings or relights the fire of love which urges them to set out and work.

He reminds those whose ear and heart are already open to God’s calls that they can and ought to “aspire to the life of perfection”.

He reminds those who, inside or outside the Church, regard it skeptically or critically or abusively that it is the well-beloved Spouse of Christ and that the “Holy Spirit dwells in communities.”

To those who doubt man, and his dignity and destiny, he dares to say that man is the flower of the universe which was created to be his resting place “just as man was created to be God’s resting place” (a variant reading from the Treatise on the Love of God, Book 11, Chapter 8).