| Deliberation, Not Excitement, in an Important Choice |
At our Living Jesus Chat this Sunday we will be talking about the following article, taken from Selected Letters of St. Francis de Sales.To prepare for our chat, please read the article, which is reproduced below, and review the questions at the end.Click for Living Jesus Chatroom  The Annunciation – Johann Christian Schröder (Public Domain)To the Baronne de Chantal Sales, written 14 October 1604 (excerpt) VIVE JESUS Madam, May God give me as much power as I have will to make myself understood in this letter. I feel sure that you will be helped by at least some of my answers to your difficulties, especially in your doubts—insinuated to you by the enemy—about having chosen me as your director. I will see what I can do to explain briefly what I consider relevant to your needs in this matter.First of all, your choice shows every sign of a good and legitimate election; I entreat you to have no further doubt. You were carried along and almost forced to do it by a strong and consoling impulse; I thought carefully before agreeing to it; neither you nor I relied on ourselves in this matter but applied the judgement of your confessor, a good, learned and prudent man; we gave your initial excitement time to calm down, supposing your conscience had been mistaken; we prayed, not for one or two days but for several months. Taken together, these are beyond all doubt infallible signs that we acted according to God’s will.Had these impulses of yours been prompted by the evil spirit or by purely human motives they would have been very different. For these are terrible and vehement but vacillating. The first thing which they whisper to their victims is not to listen to any advice, or if they do listen, then the advice should come from people of little or no experience. They urge and speed you on, wanting you to strike the bargain quickly before terms have been stated, satisfied with a brief prayer which is little more than pretense when it comes to deciding really important questions.There is nothing like this in our action. Neither you nor I made the final decision in the matter; it was made by a third person who could only have had God’s ends in view. The fact that I demurred at first, which was only the result of the deliberation I was bound to apply to it, should put your mind entirely at rest; for believe me, it was not from any lack of inclination to serve you spiritually (this was great beyond words), but because in a matter of such moment I did not want to follow either your desire or my inclination but God and his providence. I beg you to take your stand there and not to go on arguing with the enemy on this subject; tell him boldly that it was God who wanted it and who brought it about. It was God who launched you on your first period of spiritual direction, profitable to you at that time; it is God who has led you to this decision and he will make this direction fruitful and useful even though the instrument is unworthy.For the second point, my very dear sister, let me repeat what I have already said, that from the beginning of your consulting with me on your interior life God gave me great love of your soul. When you spoke to me more openly I felt my love for your soul grow in a wonderful way and this made me write that God had given me to you. I could not, I think, have added to my affection for you in any way, especially when I was praying for you. But now, my dear daughter, a new quality has been added to which I do not seem to be able to give a name; I can only describe it by its effect which is a great interior sweetness that I feel in wishing you perfect love of God and all other spiritual blessings. I am not in any way adding to the truth, and what I say is said in the presence of the God of my heart and of yours. Every affection differs in some particular way from every other. My affection for you has a special quality which consoles me infinitely, and if all were said, is of great profit to me. Take this as a matter of absolute fact and have no more doubt about it. I did not want to speak as openly as this, but one word leads to another; besides, I feel you will know how to take it.Another thing to consider, my daughter, is this: the holy Church of God, imitating her Spouse, does not teach us to pray only for ourselves but always for ourselves and our fellow Christians, in the plural: ‘Give us’ and ‘grant us’ and many similar terms of this kind. When using this general form of speech, I had never before thought more particularly of any one person. Since I went to Dijon several people who asked for my prayers come to my mind when I say this word ‘we’, yourself almost invariably first among them; and when you are not first, which is rare, you are last, so that I have time to dwell on the thought of you. Can I say more than that? But please do not pass this on to anyone else; for I am saying just a little too much, though in all truth and purity. Well, now you have quite enough matter to help you battle against all those suggestions, or at least to give you courage to laugh at their author and spit in his face. I will tell you the rest one day, either in this world or the next. .. .Reflections: Regarding St. Jane de Chantal’s choice of St. Francis de Sales as a director, St. Francis mentions that the due diligence they took in deliberating about this decision are together as “infallible signs” of acting according to God’s will. Does this seem like a stretch? Or have we somewhat lost the ability to walk and act with confidence (contingent upon prayer and discernment) that we are doing God’s will in our life?How can we recognize the promptings of an evil spirit?How could prayer sometimes be nothing more than pretense, as is mentioned in the letter?What is this great affection St. Francis has for St. Jane? Is he just a bit too emotional and excited to have her as a directee?Why is it significant that major prayers we know (the Our Father, Hail Mary, etc.) are worded in the plural, and are said as such, even when we are alone?What if we cannot find a suitable spiritual director? Are there others on whom we can rely for advice? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time |