Part 2:Founder of the Oblates of St. Francis De Sales
Reluctance
The Very Reverend Father Brisson was professor at the Diocesan Seminary of Troyes and confessor to the Visitation Monastery in the same city. For more than thirty years he was daily importuned by the holy Superioress, Mother Mary de Sales Chappuis, who urged him constantly to found a Congregation of priests whose members would live according to the teaching and example of St. Francis de Sales and would guide the souls under their charge by the same and methods of sanctification; whereas, Father Brisson persistently and at times quite forcibly, asserted that he could not be brought to do it. He had sometimes prickings of conscience about the matter for he was too well persuaded of the genuine holiness of Mother Mary de Sales, only he wanted proofs from God that such was His positive will and he asked for such proofs.
Thus, one day when saying Mass he felt constrained to say: “Lord, if there be any truth in all that Mother Mary de Sales tells me, grant that after my Mass she may give me forty francs for Madame X—” The preceding evening Madame X. had confided to him her trouble at not being able to pay her rent and she had asked Fr Brisson to lend her sixty francs. He only had 20 in his possession. He did not mention the matter to anyone. Scarcely had he finished his thanksgiving than he was told Mother Mary de Sales wished to speak with him in the parlor. The “Good Mother” handed him, in silence, through the grating, 20 franc pieces.
“We must always do what God tells us,” she said, with tears in her eyes. But he still resisted.
Divine Intervention
However one day at an unexpected moment when he was indignant at the Good Mother’s insistence, Our Lord Jesus appeared to him, not speaking, but His whole attitude so enlightened Fr Brisson interiorly on this design of the Sacred Heart, that he was completely changed. He went to Annecy and there again, a vision was given him, this time of St Jane de Chantal who expressed her satisfaction at the foundation of the Oblate Fathers.
The new Congregation commenced with six members and received its formal approbation in 1875 and the final one in 1897.
(Excerpted from The Venerable Mother Mary de Sales Chappuis, Brooklyn 1924, Chapter 6)