Source: Lent with Saint Francis de Sales – The Visitation of Saint Mary of Annecy (visitationannecy.org)
Fourth Week of Lent – Sunday “Laetare”
« … He spat on the ground and, with the saliva, he made mud. “
John 9:1-41
Sermon of March 8, 1617. Works VIII 336
This blind person used all means to recover eyesight; Blind, he acts blind. Moreover, if he had not been blind, Christ, by his remedies, would have blinded him! for saliva is aggressive and mud too, and putting mud in a healthy eye is Unacceptable! Christ covered his eyes with mud.
Look This blind person circulating on public roads, his eyes soiled with mud; Would he not be told, “Where are you going, wretched? Don’t you see that This doctor wants to play with you? He continued on his way anyway, he Go, he washed, and he lived.
We we must simply obey Christ when he tells us, “Recognize your faults.”
Note by the way, that for the paralytic healed at the pool of Bethesda, Christ heals him by asking for his consent: Do you want to be healed? But he doesn’t speak in the same way to this one, because he was blind from birth.
Note also the progression followed by Christ: he first sees the blind person, as the sun sees the earth, acting upon it; it covers the mud eyes, that is, makes known to him his misery; then he addressed to him these words: Go to the pool of Siloam, name that means the envoy. Now, what is the pool to which He sends it if not the Sacrament of Forgiveness? In instituting it, does not Christ say: As my Father has sent me, I also send you; Those to whom you will give sins will be forgiven.
This beggar is cured by this doctor, because this doctor loves beggars; for us, although we are blind, as we are Let us not beg, we are healed by the heavenly physician who fills with goods they who starve and sends the rich away empty-handed.
Monday
And they were astonished and said, ‘Is he not the carpenter’s son?’
Mt 13:54
From the Treatise on the Love of God, Book VII, Chapter 13.
Works V, 49
One can hardly simply doubt that Saint Joseph had died before the Passion and death of the Saviour, who otherwise would not have recommended his Mother to Saint John. And how could one imagine that the dear child of his heart, his beloved infant, would not assist him at the hour of his passage? Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy. Alas! how much gentleness, charity, and mercy were exercised by this good nurturing Father towards the Savior when he was born a little child into the world! and who could believe, that this one going out of the world, this divine Son did not return the favor to him a hundredfold?
Storks are a true portrait of the mutual piety of children towards fathers and fathers towards children; for, as they are passing birds, they carry their fathers and mothers old, in their passages, just as being still small their fathers and mothers had carried them.
When the Savior was still a small child, the great Saint Joseph and the most glorious Virgin Mary bore him many times. Who will doubt that Joseph, having reached the end of his days, was not reciprocally carried by his divine infant in the passage from this world to another?
A saint who had loved so much in his life could only die of love; for his soul not wishing to love his dear Jesus between the distractions of this life, and having completed the service which was required at an early age of he, what remained but that he said to the Eternal Father Father, I have done the work which you had given me in charge; and then to the Son: My child, as your heavenly Father committed your body into my hands on the day of your coming into the world, so on this day of my departure from this world, I commit my spirit between yours”
Tuesday
“Now, in Jerusalem, near the Sheep’s Gate, there is a pool called in Hebrew Bezatha. It has five porticoes, under which were lying a crowd of sick people, there was one who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus said to him, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and walk.'”
John 5:2-3-8
From the Treatise on the Love of God. Book. 1 chap. 17.
Works IV 81-82-83
O God! Great minds who had so much knowledge of divinity, and so much propensity to love it, all lacked the strength and courage to love it well! … In short, Theotime, our puny nature, heartbroken by sin, does like the palm trees we have below, which make see some imperfect productions, and like trials of their fruits, but to wear whole dates, ripe and seasoned, this is reserved for warmer countries.
For thus our human heart naturally produces certain beginnings of love for God, but to come to love him in all things, which is the true maturity of love due to this supreme goodness, belongs only to hearts animated and assisted by heavenly grace, and which are in the state of holy charity; And this little imperfect love, whose impulses nature in itself feels, is only a certain will without willing, a will that would like, but does not want, a sterile will that produces no real effects, a “paralytic” will that sees the salutary pool of Holy Love, but which does not have the strength to throw itself into it; and finally, this will is an abortion of good will, it does not have the life of the generous vigor required to prefer, indeed, God to all things, of which the apostle, speaking in the person of the sinner, cries out: The will is good in me, but I do not find the way to accomplish it.
Wednesday
After healing the paralyzed on a Sabbath day, Jesus told the Jews, “I can do nothing of myself; I render my judgment according to what I hear, and this judgment is just, because I do not seek to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.”
Jn 5:17-30
From a sermon by St. Francis de Sales. June 6, 1617. Works IX 86-87
Die at will, oh that this point is necessary. Its necessity cannot be overweighted. One day the great Saint Basil, considering this, asked himself: Would it not be possible to serve God perfectly, doing great and harsh penances and austerities, even great works for Our Lord, preserving his own will? And suddenly afterwards he imagined that Our Lord was answering him: I emptied myself of my own glory, I came down from Heaven, I took upon myself all the human miseries, and in the final I died, and of the death of the Cross. And why all this?
Perhaps it is to suffer, and by this means to save men, or, by chance, have I done it by my choice? Oh! no, forgive me, the only cause for which I have done all that I have done has been to submit to the will of my Father who was such.
And to show that it is not my choice, you must know that, if my Father’s will had been that I had died of another death than that of the Father, or that I had lived with delight, I would have found myself just as prompt as I did, because I had not come into this world to do my will, but that of my Father who sent me.” O God! if our dear Saviour, whose will could only always be absolutely perfect, and therefore could not choose anything that was not pleasing to her Father, did not want to live according to her, how will it be that we will have the boldness to let ours live?
Thursday
“How could you believe, you who receive your glory from one another and do not seek the glory of the one God?”
Jn 5 44
From a sermon by St. Francis de Sales. December 6, 1620. Works IX 403-408-411
The servants of God preach and teach those they lead only to bring them to God, both by their words and by their works.
It is our works, good or bad, that make us who we are, and it is by them that we must be recognized.
So do not be satisfied with being questioned, saying: Who are you? to answer like little children to the catechism, “I am a Christian”, but live in such a way that we can add that we have seen a man who loves God with all his heart, who keeps the commandments of the Law, who attends the sacraments, and such other things worthy of a true Christian.
I mean that it is not enough to call oneself a Christian, if one does not do the works of a Christian. Because, finally, who are we? A little powder and ash. So let us freely say that we are nothing, that we cannot and know nothing. It is a great misery, that being what we are nevertheless we want to appear, and walk on tiptoe in order to make ourselves seen to everyone. But alas! What will we see when we are seen? A little dust and a body that will soon be reduced to corruption.
It is true that our dear Saviour and Master was well come to teach the great and small, learned and ignorant, nevertheless, he has always been found among the poor and simple. O that the Spirit of God is different from that of the world, which reports only what appears and brilliance!
Solemnity of the Annunciation
“The Angel then said to her:
Mary, you have found favor with God”
Luke 1,26
Sermon of St. Francis de Sales. July 2, 1621. Works X. 61
God, who is ONE, loves unity and union, and all that is not united is not pleasing to him. But He sovereignly loves what is united and conjoined, He is the enemy of disunity, for what is disunited is imperfect, disunity being caused only by imperfection. Our Lord, therefore, a lover of union, made three admirable ones in the Virgin Mary of Our Lady.
The first is that of the divine nature with human nature in its virginal womb, which is so high that it infinitely surpasses all that human and angelic understandings can conceive and understand of it. The divine nature is the sovereign perfection and the human nature, the sovereign misery: they are therefore two great opposites. Nevertheless God worked in the womb of the Virgin such an admirable conjunction of these two natures, that they made a person so that man is God, and God, without leaving to be God, is man.
The second union he made in Our Lady was that of motherhood with virginity, a union that is absolutely out of the course of nature, because it is to join two things that it is naturally impossible to find together. It is therefore a miraculous and supernatural union, made by the almighty hand of God, that has given this privilege to our glorious Mistress.
The third union is that of very high charity and very deep humility. The union of these two virtues is certainly admirable, especially as they are very distant from each other, so that it seems that they could never meet in the same soul. Charity lifts the soul upwards. Humility does just the opposite: it belittles soul below itself and all creatures. It is true that no one but God could unite these two virtues; but he, who is only one God, wants and loves unity, and delights in showing the greatness of his power by making such admirable
Certainly, our most glorious Mistress practiced these two virtues in a sovereign degree at the time of the Incarnation when the Angel Gabriel having announced to her this ineffable mystery, she answered: Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be made to me according to your word!