Jane was deeply touched by his Lenten sermon.
This is part of a series of articles on the lives of Visitation saints and holy persons. Look at the “Recent Activity” in the column to the right for other articles.
Then, in March 1604, Jane’s father invited her to hear Francis de Sales preach. This young Catholic bishop governed his see from Annecy in Savoy (now in eastern France), because Calvinists controlled Geneva, Switzerland, the diocese’s official center. Jane was deeply touched by his Lenten sermon and recognized Bishop Francis from a vision she had received previously. It had come with the inner certainty, “This is the man to whom you must entrust yourself.”
Francis noticed Jane’s attentiveness, but not until August did the two have a long conversation in which Jane opened her heart. Francis left the room without responding. Then, after a night of prayer, he agreed to become her spiritual director.
Jane later recalled: “O Lord, how happy that day was for me! I could feel my soul . . . step right out of its inward imprisonment, where the orders of my previous director had kept me shut up.” Jane’s servants agreed. “Madame’s first director only made her pray three times a day and we were all annoyed by it, but the bishop of Geneva makes her pray all the time, and no one is inconvenienced in the least by that.”
Doing God’s Will Can Be Wholeheartedly Embraced
Even though they spent relatively little time together, Francis and Jane formed a strong bond of friendship that endured for almost twenty years. Their friendship was mutually beneficial. Francis shaped the order, but Jane influenced his thought and supported him in prayer. Several of his books—including the classic Introduction to the Devout Life—drew upon their correspondence.
Francis helped Jane to see that her family responsibilities weren’t just something to put up with until she could enter religious life. They were God’s present will for her. This idea—that doing God’s will doesn’t require taking vows but can be wholeheartedly embraced by laypeople in everyday life—was quite radical then. Jane saw its wisdom and found freedom in seeking God’s will in the present moment.
Francis also advised Jane to be deliberately cheerful—for example, by speaking not of “my poor dead husband” but of “my husband who is resting in the arms of God’s mercy.” When the death of Francis’ younger sister threatened Jane’s equanimity, Francis commented: “Your vigorous heart . . . loves and wills so powerfully, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, for what good are the hearts of the half-dead? But we have to work particularly hard at . . . loving God’s will . . . not only on bearable occasions but on those which are unbearable.”
Jane got the message. “Lord Jesus, I don’t want options anymore! Pluck whatever string of my lute you wish—it will play this one harmony alone forever and ever. Yes, Lord Jesus! Without ifs or buts or exceptions, may your will be done to fathers, children, everything, even myself.”