Spirituality of SFS: A Way of Life

“As you journey on the Lord’s way, I want your heart to be broad and deep but humble, gentle and without artifice” (AE XIII, 392). Francis de Sales wants for each of us what he desired for Jane de Chantal in this November 1, 1604 letter to her. He invites us “to do everything by love” because he knows that love broadens the heart while at the same time keeping it simple and master of itself. It is in fact one of love’s characteristics to render those who love simultaneously capable of great things and yet attentive to the little ordinary things of everyday life.

To love without limits

Francis leads those who follow him to love’s limit, dying to self so as to live for others, following Jesus, in this, to the ultimate self-gift. Jesus never stopped giving; his love for us led him, in loving obedience, “even unto death, death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:8). The Christian is also called to go to love’s limit.

This course, which can easily become a race, follows Jesus in a radical decision to “die to every other love so as to live only in Jesus’ love” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 12, Chapter 13).

It is precisely here where the Treatise on the Love of God culminates. Book 12 is the Treatise’s last book and its summit as well. Chapters 10 – 13 are particularly clear in their exigency to live with Jesus’ love.

Chapter 10 is an “exhortation to the sacrifice we must make to God of our free will,” that is, of our interior freedom of decision.

Francis says there that “none of us can love God perfectly unless we give up our affections for passing things.” Of course we can love temporal things but only to the extent that they are necessary or useful for our existence, and in no way with our heart attached to them. If we do become inappropriately attached to them, we become detached from the Loving God, our true Good.

That is why he turns deliberately toward Christ, making him the Lord of his life, offering to him his entire being. “Ah, Lord Jesus, [when shall we be like Abraham who was ready to offer up his only son, Isaac?]; when shall we, having sacrificed to you all that we have, be ready to immolate to you all that we are as well? When shall we offer to you the holocaust of our own free will, the only child of our spirit?”

He is convinced from the example of Jesus who freely lived and died for us that it is only in the “total self-gift” of our will to God that true liberty is found. Playing on the words freedom and slavery, he gives expression to a profound truth regarding liberty and slavery: “Our free will is never so free as when it is a slave to God’s will, just as it is never so enslaved as when it serves its own will.”

As a matter of fact, our self-gift to God is neither capitulation, nor diminishment, nor self-alienation. Rather, it fulfills our person, raising us up to the level of “God Most High” whose love prompts Francis to cry out, echoing Saint Paul (Gal. 2:20): “Ah, he has loved me! I say he has loved even me, me just as I am, and has delivered himself to the Passion for me!” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 12, Chapter 12).

It is understandable why he titled the last chapter (13) of his Treatise on the Love of God, “Mount Calvary is the True School of Love.” It is Calvary where we learn to love, for “Mount Calvary is the mountain of lovers” and the place for our decisive choice between life and death. In choosing to love God and others, we choose life; in opting for self-love, we choose death, for every human being is limited and mortal. “All Christian wisdom lies in making the right choice here.”

In choosing to love, the saints made their choice for life. Martyrs, in fact or in heart, gave the highest witness of love. It is to those heights that Francis invites all the baptized.

In concluding the Treatise on the Love of God, we might be tempted to think that this call is reserved for some privileged people who are very advanced in mystical ways, and not to “ordinary” Christians as well. We need only return to the Introduction to the Devout Life, which is written for “all of Jesus’ sisters, brothers and companions” to see that the call is made to everyone without distinction.

Francis writes there that all Christians must be prepared “to suffer many and great afflictions for Our Lord, and even martyrdom.” We must be resolved “to give him whatever we hold dearest if it pleases him to take it: father, mother, brother, husband, wife, child, even our eyes and life. Prepare your heart for all that” (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part, 3, Chapter 35).

The Second Vatican Council says the same thing in Chapter V of its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “The Universal Call to Holiness.” After reminding us that, since the beginning of the Church, Christians have been called upon to render their supreme witness to love by martyrdom, it goes on to say: “While it [martyrdom] is given to a few only, all however must be prepared to confess Christ before the world and to follow him along the way of the cross, amidst the persecutions which are never lacking to the Church” (No. 42; emphasis author’s).

All of us know the courage it takes to witness to Jesus Christ in our daily life, especially when others are hostile or indifferent, or when they deride us and our faith. Forms of persecution vary greatly, but the fact of persecutions is almost universal. Paul had already written to his friend and disciple, Timothy, “Anyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus can expect to be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12).

A daily fidelity

The words, ‘martyr’ and ‘witness’ were originally the same word. Thus, it is normal that martyrdom would be considered “an eminent grace and a supreme proof of charity” (Lumen Gentium, 42). At the same time, Christians are expected to witness to love in all the realities of their lives, even when there is no risk of death or open hostility. To wait for some hypothetical day of bloody persecution to witness to our faith would be to live in a dream world.

Great mystic that he was, Francis de Sales was also very much the realist. What good would it be for us, he asks, to build castles in Spain when we live in France? What good would it be to dream of dying a martyr’s death in some distance place tomorrow if we don’t fully live our faith here today? The truly important thing is to live each moment, however ordinary and banal it may seem, with a great and deep love. After all, it is love which gives value to our actions, not their number nor their difficulty.

That is why, after telling us to be prepared for martyrdom, Francis is quick to add: “However, as long as divine Providence does not send you such great and excruciating afflictions… [at least] be prepared to bear with great patience and gentleness the slight injuries, the minor inconveniences, the inconsequential losses that do daily come your way.” “By means of such trifles, borne with great love, you will win over God’s heart.”

Among these “daily little occasions” he mentions: daily acts of charity, headaches or toothaches, colds, the bad mood of ours spouse, the loss of some object like a piece of jewelry or gloves, the embarrassment often experienced by performing some public act of worship, the need of going to bed earlier so as to rise earlier for Mass or for some meeting, and so on. “Such opportunities are always present”; therefore we must profit from them. “Accepted and embraced with love, they are greatly pleasing to the divine Goodness who, for a ‘single glass of water’ promised a sea-full of happiness to his faithful” (Mt. 10:42).

To connect these little things with Christ’s supreme act of love on the cross is to give them their true love. For those who love, nothing is insignificant. This is why we are invited “to practise these little, humble virtues, which are like the flowers which grow at the foot of the Cross: service to the poor, visiting the sick, care for our families.”

We all know that “great opportunities to serve God are rare, but little occasions are frequent indeed.” We must not miss them! According to St. Paul’s exhortation, “do all things in God’s name and they will be done well.” We can please God by eating, drinking, sleeping, relaxing, working – whatever – if we “do all these things because God wills them to be done.”

As support for this conviction, Francis cites the example of St. Catherine of Sienna who was both a cook and a mystic! Later, she has been declared a “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Paul VI (in 1970).

A humble love

Thus, to live the present moment, precisely where we are, is a good way not to have false illusions. God is waiting for us at every moment of this present day.

We might imagine that we love because we have good thoughts in prayer, or warm feelings in our heart, or because we are touched by some radio or TV show which tells of some far-off people. But the best and only real way of knowing whether we love God and others is if, here and now, we love without distinction or restriction those people with whom we are in daily contact.

We readily admit that this is not easy. We stumble often. Soon after leaving Mass or prayer, perhaps we clash with some member of our family or a neighbour or a friend or a colleague at work. Our highest aspirations often fall flat on their face!

These failings can be of great help to us because they keep us humble, preventing us from thinking we’ve reached the summit already. It is good to occasionally stumble so we don’t forget that we are still “on the way” and not yet at our goal. This admission ought not to discourage us; rather, it ought to encourage us to always keep moving ahead, in the humble confidence of those who know that they are loved, exactly as they are, by him who made them and whose desire it is to make them his children, sharers in his glory.

While wanting to enter this final life and joy, we journey along with faith in our merciful God. “We are a sorry lot, quite incapable of doing good; but God, who is infinitely good, is content with our little efforts” (AE XII, 203). He accompanies us on our journey, picking us up form our falls, and sustaining us by the strength of his Spirit and the Sacraments. He who “is greater than our heart” already fills our heart with the joy of his risen Son.

Let us, thus, keep our hearts “open wide.” Francis teaches our hearts how to be great in little things, how to be humble and open to all that God desires of them, even great things when that is the case. To all of us, he says what he said to the first Visitation Sisters: “You must increase your courage so that you will be able to be used as God wishes” (Spiritual Conferences XVI).

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If there is a wish to be made at conclusion of these pages, it is that made by Francis de Sales to Jane de Chantal, on January 20, 1607:

“Keep your heart open wide and, so long as the love of God is your sole desire and his glory your only wish, always live joyously and courageously.”

“O God, how I wish that the Saviour’s heart will be King of all of our hearts!” (AE XIII, 253).