by St. Francis de Sales

Not all of us are called to do great things for the love of God and our neighbor, but we can all do little things each day with greater fidelity and love. Therein lies the essence of St. Francis’s teaching in these talks given to the nuns of the Visitation convent in Annecy in the Savoy.

In the early years of the Visitation, St. Francis came often to hear the nuns’ confessions, offer Mass, and give informal talks on the sort of modest virtues that were to be embodied in the life of the community. Often St. Francis gave these talks out of doors under the trees surrounding the convent, the beauty of the natural setting suggesting many of the charming and homely images he uses to illustrate the points he wants to make. Written down by the nuns as the talks were delivered or shortly afterward, these Spiritual Conferences were copied and widely circulated among Visitation houses, and cherished as precious monuments to their founders faith, wisdom, and kindly good sense.

Just like the Visitation nuns, many of us in the world cannot, for various reasons, adopt the rigid austerities or heroic self-sacrifice of the great ascetics of the Christian tradition. We, too, must be content with striving for lives of simple virtue and humble service to Christ and His Church. For this reason, we publish those of St. Francis’s spiritual conferences that teach us simplicity, humility, generosity, and other such simple virtues for everyday life.

Because this edition of St. Francis’s talks to the nuns of the Visitation convent is intended specifically for laypersons, we have generally omitted points that pertain exclusively to convent life and have occasionally adapted St. Francis’s wording (such as when he begins a phrase with the address “Sisters”) so that the beautiful universality of these virtues will not mistakenly be circumscribed by the context in which St. Francis spoke of them.

Some of the original conferences address more than one virtue. In certain cases, we have divided those conferences into separate chapters, giving each the name of the virtue explained.