Translated from the Italian
Sr. Mariagrazia Franceschini, of the Order of the Visitation of Santa Maria (the Visitandine Sisters founded by St. Francis de Sales with St. Giovanna de Chantal) and a scholar of the charism of the co-founder, presents the link between St. Francis and the spirituality of the Visitandines present in the diocese in the monastery of the Visitation in Moncalieri.
“To give God women of prayer”, that is, to form people capable of expressing adoration of God in spirit and truth with the totality of their lives, as a response of grateful and total love: this is the reason, declared by himself , which induced Francesco de Sales, bishop of Geneva (1567-1622) to open the first house of the Visitation in Annecy (Haute-Savoie) – it was June 6, 1610. At first a simple diocesan institution, the brief of Paul V, who erected it in a religious order in 1618, opened it to the international horizon and the Visitation spread rapidly as well as in the Duchy of Savoy, in the kingdom of France and in other European states; in the nineteenth century it crossed the Atlantic and today we find it present in America, from north to south, in Africa, in the region of the great lakes, in Congo and Guinea eq.,
The time of the foundation of the Visitation is the 1600s: a Europe troubled by continuous wars that redraw the borders each time, while the different national identities are becoming clearer. A Church now lacerated by the schism, committed to the implementation of the lines that emerged in Trent. A varied cultural reality in the full ferment of new insights.
Sister Mariagrazia Franceschini ovsm
The place is Annecy: a town in Haute-Savoie, overlooking the lake of the same name, enclosed in the circle of its walls under the austere gaze of the castle of the Duke of Nemours, on the border between the Catholic Duchy of Savoy and the territories of Geneva, a stronghold and emblem of Calvinism and whose bishop had been exiled to Annecy for years. Going up the shady alleys and canals of the old city you reach the suburb of La Perrière, here – it was sunset on 6 June 1610, the feast of the Holy Trinity – three young women, escorted by a procession of nobles and common people, arrive at the house called La Galerie to initiate the experience of common life on the basis of a draft of the Constitutions drawn up by Francesco de Sales. I’m Giovanna Francesca di Chantal, 38, baroness of Burgundy, widow and mother of 4 children, “clear mind, ready, decisive, vigorous heart, capable of loving and wanting powerfully “, Jacqueline Favre, 18, open and free spirit, lover of dance and beauty, daughter of Senator Antoine Favre, true Savoyard, highly cultivated humanist and one of the most famous jurists of the her time, Jeanne Charlotte de Brechard, 30 years old, Burgundian, behind her a mysterious story of human suffering and supernatural splendor, entered by providential ways into the spiritual irradiation of the bishop of Geneva. Waiting for them is an older woman, Anne Jacqueline Coste, who made herself available to them, a simple woman of the people whom the Lord himself took pains to inform of what Francis de Sales was accomplishing. Lover of dance and beauty, daughter of Senator Antoine Favre, true Savoyard, highly cultured humanist and one of the most famous jurists of her time, Jeanne Charlotte de Brechard, 30 years old, Burgundian, behind her a mysterious story of human suffering and supernatural splendors , entered by providential ways into the spiritual irradiation of the bishop of Geneva. Waiting for them is an older woman, Anne Jacqueline Coste, who made herself available to them, a simple woman of the people whom the Lord himself took pains to inform of what Francis de Sales was accomplishing. Lover of dance and beauty, daughter of Senator Antoine Favre, true Savoyard, highly cultured humanist and one of the most famous jurists of her time, Jeanne Charlotte de Brechard, 30 years old, Burgundian, behind her a mysterious story of human suffering and supernatural splendors , entered by providential ways into the spiritual irradiation of the bishop of Geneva. Waiting for them is an older woman, Anne Jacqueline Coste, who made herself available to them, a simple woman of the people whom the Lord himself took pains to inform of what Francis de Sales was accomplishing. entry by providential ways into the spiritual irradiation of the bishop of Geneva. Waiting for them is an older woman, Anne Jacqueline Coste, who made herself available to them, a simple woman of the people whom the Lord himself took pains to inform of what Francis de Sales was accomplishing. entry by providential ways into the spiritual irradiation of the bishop of Geneva. Waiting for them is an older woman, Anne Jacqueline Coste, who made herself available to them, a simple woman of the people whom the Lord himself took pains to inform of what Francis de Sales was accomplishing.
An autograph letter from St Francis de Sales to Giovanna Chantal on display at the Don Bosco House Museum in Valdocco, Turin
The secret of the expansion that the Visitation experienced in the seventeenth and early decades of the eighteenth is to be found in the capacity of Francis de Sales to grasp the signs of the times and to perceive the new needs of spirituality that were emerging in the people of God. for years the father and spiritual teacher of a great variety of people, whose deepest yearnings he has learned to discern and whom he guides with unparalleled wisdom. Francis is also a pastor, and of a diocese among the largest of his time and undoubtedly among the most difficult, in continuous and direct confrontation with the Calvinism and proselytism of his ministers, often overbearing, not rarely armed. From these experiences lived with a prophetic gaze, a heart docile to the Holy Spirit and inhabited by the love of Christ, the Visitation is born.
His proposal at the time was absolutely innovative: to aim for the highest peaks of love to the point of union with God along a path of humble love, of interior asceticism, of cordial charity, friendship, fraternal along the unfolding of the days, in simplicity. and modesty. In conceiving the Visitation, Francis was also moved by his profound pastoral concern: to make this path accessible to the greatest number of women, even to those who, despite having the thirst for the heights of the union of love with God, at that time, to different titles could not have access to existing monasteries or, although they felt called to an exclusive dedication to God, they no longer recognized themselves in forms of life burdened by an infinite number of external practices, characterized by great external austerities, but impoverished in terms of spiritual depth. .
The monastery of the Visitandines in Moncalieri
Francis de Sales, deeply aware that the only response to the Calvinist drift was holiness lived within the Church, wanted the Visitation to serve the Church itself, not with “apostolic works”, but with an “apostolic life”, that is, of Gospel fully lived, of witness and fruitfulness of good offered unconditionally to all brothers. He loves to describe the Visitation as a reality in which everything is simple, poor, modest, but immediately adds: “except the aspiration of those who live there”, an aspiration of fullness of love that knows no other limit than that of the Heart same of God. But one cannot understand the profound soul of the Visitation if one does not penetrate the universe of the “Treatise on the love of God”, the other work which Francis de Sales was working on in those same years.
In the diverse religious universe of his time, Francis de Sales thought of and proposed the Visitation as an “academy of love”, according to the definition that Henry Brémond would later give, as a place where one can learn, exercise, communicate the art of love of God, the one that alone makes us fully human. The Visitation was born therefore contemplative, in the declared intention of the founder as already in the life of the first sisters. Oriented to the achievement of the pure love of God, in abandonment to his benevolent will, recognized and blessed in the plot of humble daily events as in the great hours of history: the lines of force that innervate life in the monastery find their sure theological and the complete expression in the pages of the “Treatise”.
A painting depicting Saint Francis de Sales with the nuns of the Visitation
For this reason, the most beautiful portrait of a nun of the Visitation – a goal that has never been reached but to which one always strives again – is what Francis sketches in book X of his “Treatise”, describing “the bride” par excellence: “the one who loves the most, the most lovable and most loved, who not only loves God above all things and in all things, but loves only God in all things […] and since it is only God that she loves in everything she loves, she loves him he loves equally everywhere […] he loves his king equally with the whole universe or without the whole universe. She does not even love heaven except because there one can love the Bridegroom ». How it is possible to achieve this is still Francis who traces the way and indicates the adequate means. The way is the imitation of Jesus, or rather, leaving in oneself free space for him, to the point of being able to say with Saint Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me ». The means are the virtues most dear to the Savior who defined himself “meek and humble of heart”: therefore humility towards God and gentleness towards neighbor, declined in all situations of life.
The humus that makes all of this life, and life full, beautiful, concrete, is prayer, a reality that gradually becomes all-encompassing until it envelops and penetrates the whole of existence. Prayer which essentially means relationship, “friendship of predilection”, to use the words of Francis de Sales, with the people of the Most Holy Trinity, and which knows all the nuances, delicacies, unthinkable depths, boundless horizons of this relationship.
Sister Mariagrazia FRANCESCHINI ovsm
Source: vocetempo.it/visitazione-laccademia-dellamore