From his earliest childhood, Françis de Sales, with the help and testimony of his parents but also and above all with the grace of God, had a great awareness of the presence of God in his life and around him. He will experience it intensely and concretely. And afterwards he will be able to say that ” God is God of the human heart! I must tend towards Him to unite me to his divine goodness to which I belong”.
Until the age of six, it was above all Madame de Boisy who took care of her little François, with great affection and tenderness, so well, what do they say, his first reflection as a child was to exclaim: The good Lord and my mother love me !” One day when his mother was in trouble, he heard her sigh: “God help us!” François looks at her and he said with confidence and emotion: ” My mother God be to you help, yes my good mother, let us have recourse to the Good Lord, he help!” Often, he accompanies his mother to the village church and he will consider this sacred place to be ” the most precious of world “because he was told that he was baptized there and that he became a child of God. François therefore owes this imprint of piety to his mother. tender, strong, practical which will mark him all his life. And this profound maternal influence will be followed by immediate effects, The living environment of François’ childhood is to be taken into account in his development and its inner growth. His eyes will open to the splendors of nature that the environment, he will be receptive to its beauty and with the help of his mother, his teaching, he will perceive the presence of the Creator and welcome him into his heart. All occasions will be good so that he is oriented towards the supernatural and that the sense of God penetrates him deeply. Thus, during a walk with his mother, they see peasants harvesting and she remarks to him: We believe that these people feed us; they have a lot of penalties; however they do well! The rain, the heat…the ripening of the fruits…all of this depends on God alone, men can do nothing about it”. Back at the castle, she teaches him to to thank this so beneficent God and to pray to him for any good or unpleasant event.
The contemplation of nature is therefore the starting point for the awakening to the faith of Francis and according to a testimony, his parents ” explained to him the mysteries of the Christian faith most clearly possible by means of resemblances and comparisons which they drew from nature “. since he will be a little apostle to the children of his father’s farmers. He will make them enjoy his lessons of religious instruction and will lead them to the chapel to pray to this God who is so good.
During his studies in Paris, François was immersed in a world steeped in pessimism, besides, the influence of Calvinism will not help matters. “Man is fundamentally bad”, hear- we say since Calvin (1560). The theory of predestination seeps into all walks of life: God destines some for heaven, others for hell… The most generous like François, (he is 20 years old) are demoralized and he himself almost died of despair. Then he turned to God with a deep cry: ” That at least I love you, oh my God in this life, if I cannot love you to eternal life!” All of Francis is there: God loved for himself. And all of Francis’ pastoral preaching will be to affirm loud and clear that God is not a Perverse, arbitrary God: ” Grace is so gracious that it spoils nothing in the freedom of our will.” (Treatise on the love of God, 12)
One night, some time before the birth, Mme de Boisy had a dream: she saw the son she was waiting for, when he grew up, he was a shepherd and he chased the sheep through the countryside, he gathered a huge herd. Seriously, she wanted to see in this dream an omen for her future and when she told her husband about it, he got angry because we know he had other ambitions for him. During his childhood, his father had said to him: ” A young lord must never be afraid “. But François is afraid of the night, of the darkness; he believes there are spirits lurking in the darkness. His father has noticed that he does not like driving around in the dark. Also at the first opportunity, he orders to climb the stairs of the tower, unlit. The child, trembling, remains on the step of the door, then he climbs resolutely into the dark, shouting aloud to overcome his fright: “My God, you are there! My God, You’re here!” His fear is finally gone and he continues briskly to the top of the tower. He will write to a nunand in 1619: “I, when I was young, was touched by the fear of darkness, and to get rid of it, I forced myself little by little, to go alone, the heart armed with confidence in God, in places where my imagination threatened me with fear; and finally I am so strengthened that the darkness and the loneliness of the night are to me with delight.
Francis de Sales is consecrated bishop in the small church de Thorens, December 8, 1602. Ten years later, he wrote to Jeanne de Chantal, on the anniversary of her coronation: ” I have said in my sermon that it was ten years since I had been consecrated bishop, that is to say that God had taken away from me even to take me from him and then give me to the people, that is to say, he had converted me from what I was for me into what I was for them.” December 1622. François de Sales is in Lyon. He is exhausted and very ill, he lodged in the gardener’s cabin in the Visitation. Blonay’s mother comes to visit him and he asks for a word that will remain engraved in the hearts of his dear visitandines. Francis replies: I got it for you already said so much: Ask nothing, refuse nothing !” On December 27, François, increasingly weakened, nevertheless went to visit the novitiate of the Visitation. Blonay’s mother asks him to write a thought for ” advance us in the virtue” . François writes on the paper she hands him with a pen: ” Humility” . Word he writes three times, at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the page. This will be his spiritual testament.