Pope Francis has challenged young people to be missionaries and go out to all the world with the Gospel.
St. Francis de Sales’ own life provides the how-to!
“Let us attempt to trace the portrait of the evangelizer such that Francis de Sales was in the Chablais by means of his own person.
We find there the portrait of the great missionaries of the Church, since the apostle Paul. First of all, the missionary is in the front line, a bit alone, even if Francis de Sales was accompanied by his cousin in the entire first part of his sojourn. It is Francis who carries and conducts the mission. He lived poor, deprived of resources. He had little by way of human support. Certainly the baron of Hermance, who governed the chateau of the Allinges where the only Catholic army of the Chablais resided and where Francis de Sales went each night to sleep, took care of him;but Francis refused to preach the Gospel protected by weapons.
The duke of Savoy followed his mission from afar, but gave him neither an official delegation for the mission nor financial means. And slowly, patiently, without being discouraged, Francis pursued his mission by laboring there each day. His hope was in God alone. Prayer and daily Mass were his strength.
Even if he was insulted and mocked, , he treated them with a great respect and a profound charity and took them seriously. He privileged dialogue to confrontation.
He put in motion an apostolate of contact which had for its sole model only Jesus going along his way in Galilee and in Judea. He had Jesus in his eyes as in his heart. Francis went ordinarily by foot, by pastoral choice, as was the habit quite simply of a rustic gentleman; this manner permitted him to encounter workers in their shops, the peasants in their fields or villages.
Thereby he established a simple relation, man-to-man. By way of such a relationship, when a sympathy is established, the friend then became in turn his witness in relation to his own friends. The apostolate of contact is a beginning. He followed it by his preaching. Francis preached with the same care for his rather small flock of faithful in the Chablais as he would for a crowd of the faithful. He took the same means as his adversaries, namely,the Scriptures, in speaking of the totality of the Bible, as they did. “The ministers wish to combat only with Scripture, I wish it; they wishfrom Scripture the parts that please them, I will grant it.”
But it is above all his personal example of life–by way of his courage, his faith, his charity, and his perseverance–that touched the hearts and lead to conversion.
Francis evangelized by word, life, and faith. He wished to reawaken in his separated brothers the spirit and heart of Jesus Christ. He went slowly and surely to accept and to love and to reverse all the oppositions that he encountered and met on his route.”
Source:Mission according to St. Francis de Sales, based on his mission to the Chablais, by JEAN-LUC LEROUX, O.S.F.S.
http://web1.desales.edu/assets/salesian/library/Leroux-Mission.pdf
Contact us to learn more of how you can be a missionary for Christ like St. Francis de Sales! http://visitationspirit.org/contact-us/
Remember his Missionary Dispositions:
Poverty
Hope in God Alone
Daily Mass and Prayer
Respect and Charity
An apostolate of Contact
Jesus in Heart and Vision
Simple relationships
Love of Scripture
Perseverance, charity, faith and courage
Personal example of love