| The Liberty of Children Who Know They Are Loved |
At our Living Jesus Chat this Sunday we will be talking about the following letter of St. Francis de Sales to St. Jane de Chantal, 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  Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on UnsplashTo the Baronne de Chantal, written from Sales on 14 October 1604 … excerpt…I approve of your dividing your time between your father and your father-in-law and your working towards the good of their souls in the manner of the angels, as I described it. If your stay in Dijon is a little longer than the other, it does not matter; it is also your first duty. Try to make yourself more agreeable and more humble every day towards both your fathers, and work towards their salvation in a spirit of gentleness. It will probably suit you better to spend the winter at Dijon.I am writing to your father, and because he asked me to write something for the good of his soul I did it in all simplicity, perhaps too much so. My advice centers on two points: firstly, that he should review his life as a whole so as to make a general confession, without which no man of honor should die. Secondly, that he should try to divest himself gradually of worldly ties, and I have told him how to set about this. I put forward these matters quite clearly and gently, I think, and suggested that he should not make a sudden break with worldly affairs but do it gradually by unknotting and loosening ties here and there. He will probably show you the letter; help him to understand it and put it into effect. You owe him the great charity of leading him to a happy end and no considerations of respect should prevent you from working towards this with humble ardor; for he is your nearest relation and God has put you under an obligation to love him. And the first thing you should love in him is his soul, and in his soul, conscience, and in his conscience, purity, and in this purity, his eternal salvation. And the same goes for your father-in-law. Perhaps your father who does not know me well may take my liberty amiss; but make me known to him, and I trust he will love me chiefly on account of the very liberty I have taken.I am writing a letter of five sheets to Monsieur de Bourges in which I explain to him how to preach; I have also told him freely what I think about various duties in an archbishop’s life. I have no fear that he will take offence at this. Well now, what more could you wish? Your father, brother, children-they are all infinitely dear to me.Now for the next point, about the spirit of liberty. I will try and explain what this is. No upright man is the slave of actions which involve mortal sins, and he is emancipated from them: this kind of liberty of spirit is necessary for salvation and this is not what I mean. What I mean is the liberty of children who know that they are loved. And what is that? The complete detachment of a Christian heart following God’s known will. You will soon see what I mean if God gives me the grace to explain the marks, signs, effects and occasions of this liberty.The first thing we ask of God is that his name may be hallowed, that his kingdom may come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What else can this be but the spirit of liberty? For as long as God’s name is hallowed, his Majesty reigning in our heart, his will being done, the soul does not mind about anything else. The first sign: the heart enjoying this liberty is not at all attached to consolations and accepts affiiction with all the meekness possible to the flesh. I am not saying that the soul does not love consolation and long for it, but without clinging to it.Second sign: a man who has this spirit does not set his heart on spiritual exercises, and if illness or some other emergency prevents them, he is in no way upset. Again, I am not saying that he does not love them, but that he is not attached to them. Thirdly, he does not lose his joy, because no loss or lack can sadden one whose heart is perfectly free. I am not saying that it is impossible for him to lose his joy, but it will not be for long.The effects of this liberty are great sweetness of mind, great gentleness and a ready kindness in everything which does not entail sin; it is that supple and gentle attitude which is ready to do anything virtuous and charitable. For example: try interrupting the meditation of someone who has got attached to this exercise. You will see him taken aback, upset and irritated. A person who has real liberty of spirit will leave his prayer with an unruffled face and a heart well disposed towards the importunate friend who has disturbed him.For it is all the same to him whether he is serving God by meditating or by bearing with his neighbor; both are the will of God, but helping his neighbor seems to be necessary at that special moment. The occasions which call for this liberty are to be found whenever anything happens against our inclinations; a person not attached to his inclinations does not get impatient when he cannot have his way.There are two opposite vices which beset this liberty: in stability and constraint, lack of discipline and slavishness. Instability or lack of discipline is a certain excess of liberty which makes one want to change one’s devotional exercises or state of life without adequate reason and without knowing whether it is God’s will. The least pretext is enough to make one change an exercise, a plan, a rule; a mere trifle causes one to give up a rule or good habits, and in this way the heart grows dissipated and distracted; it is like an orchard unfenced on all sides so that the fruit is not for the owner but for any chance passer-by.Constraint or slavishness is a certain lack of liberty as a result of which the mind is overwhelmed with irritation or anger when it cannot carry out its plans, even though something better may offer. For example: I plan to do my meditation every morning; if I lack stability and discipline, the very least thing will make me put it off till evening—a dog that disturbed me and kept me from going to sleep, a letter I have to write although it is not at all urgent.If, on the contrary, I am moved by a spirit of constraint and slavishness I shall refuse to leave my meditation even though a sick person greatly needs my help, or even if I have to see to the dispatch of a very important letter which cannot well be postponed; and so on.It remains for me to give you two or three examples of this liberty which will make you understand what I cannot quite explain. But first of all, here are two rules to be observed if you are not to come to grief in this respect. No one should leave his exercises and go against the ordinary rules concerning the virtues unless he sees it to be the will of God. Now the will of God shows itself in two ways: necessity and charity. This Lent I want to preach in a certain little town in my diocese. If, however, I fall ill or break my leg, it is no good worrying about not being able to preach, or even regretting it, for it is a sure thing that God wants me to serve him by suffering and not by preach ing. But if l am not ill and an opportunity offers for me to go to another place, and if in this place some people will turn Huguenot unless I go, that is a sufficient indication of God’s will to make me change my plan without any fuss.The second rule is that when charity requires us to use our liberty it should be done without giving scandal and without injustice. For example: I may know that I should be more useful somewhere far away from my diocese: I cannot use my liberty in this matter for I should give scandal and commit an injustice: I am under an obligation to stay where I am. Thus, it is a false use of liberty for married women to go away from their husbands without a legitimate reason, putting forward the pretext of devotion and charity. So, this liberty should never interfere with one’s calling; on the contrary, it tends to make everybody content and happy in their particular walk of life, for people must realize that they are put there by God’s will.Now take the case of Cardinal Borromeo who is going to be canonized in a few days. He was one of the most precise, unbending and austere men imaginable; he lived on bread and water, he was so strict that after he became archbishop, he only entered his brothers’ house twice in twenty-four years, and that was when they were ill; he only went into his own garden twice. Nevertheless, this strict man, who often accepted invitations from his Swiss neighbors in the hope of winning them back to the truth, made no difficulty about drinking a couple of healths or toasts with them at every meal, over and above what he needed to still his thirst. Here you have a trait of holy liberty in the most austere man of our times. A lax person would have overdone it, one of slavish mind would have feared to commit mortal sin, a true spirit of liberty does it out of love.Bishop Spiridion of old once took in a famished pilgrim during the season of Lent. There was nothing to eat in his place except salt meat, so he had some cooked and served to the pilgrim. Of course, he did not want to take it in spite of his hunger; Spiridion did not need it but out of charity he ate some first so as to remove the pilgrim’s scruple by his example. Here you have the loving freedom of a holy man. Father Ignatius Loyola who is also about to be canonized ate meat on Wednesday in Holy Week because the doctor ordered it and thought it expedient for some little trouble he had. A man of slavish mind would have contested the point for a good three days.But I want to show you a sun that shone more brightly than all these, a soul that was truly free and detached, cleaving only to the will of God. I have often wondered who is the most mortified of the saints I know, and after some reflection I have come to the conclusion that it was St. John the Baptist. He went into the desert when he was five years old and knew that our Saviour and of his coming on earth in a place quite close by, one- or two-days’ journey perhaps.How his heart, touched with love of his Saviour from the time he was in his mother’s womb, must have longed to enjoy his presence! Yet he spends twenty-five years in the desert without coming to see Our Lord even once; and leaving the desert he stays to catechize without visiting him but waiting till Our Lord comes to seek him out. Then when he has baptized him, he does not follow him but stays behind to do his appointed task. How truly mortified was his spirit! To be so near his Saviour and not see him, to have him so close and not enjoy his presence! Is this not a completely detached spirit, detached even from God himself so as to do his will and serve him, to leave God for God, and not to love God in order to love him better? The example of this great saint overwhelms me with its grandeur. Reflections: The beginning of this excerpt gives advice to share time between father and father-in-law. St. Francis seems to equate them on the level of family, but today we often see blood family as taking precedent over family that is created through marriage. Why is St. Francis’s emphasis so important?What is family?What is true liberty?While we are in the season of Lent, why is it important to have disciplines but not allow them to rigidly and legalistically guide our behavior?Does it seem like our spiritual (and physical) disciplines are often not so much for our benefit, but for the benefit of those in our lives? How so?Isn’t it easy to get annoyed when someone in our household disturbs our regular time of prayer? How can we admonish such a person and yet follow St. Francis’ advice? |