| Put Aside Your Worries and Be Useful to Your Neighbors |
,At our Living Jesus Chat Room this Sunday we will be talking about the following letter of St. Francis de Sales to the wife of the President of Brulart, 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 Maria Krasnova on UnsplashTo the wife of the President of Brulart, written from Annecy, on April 1611. My very dear Sister,As I am writing to your husband to introduce a friend of mine, a canon of Lyons, I am enclosing a little message for you, simply to greet you with all my heart, not only in my own name but also in that of your dear and good sister, Madame de Chantal, who is going from strength to strength in her recovery, and whose sanctity, let this be said only between ourselves, is increasing in the same way; for tribulation and illness are very fitted to advance sanctity because they lead to so much solid resignation of ourselves into Our Lord’s hands. Live for God alone, dear daughter, and because you are exposed to much talk and social life, make yourself useful to your neighbor in ways which I have often described to you. And do not think that Our Lord is any further away from you while you are caught up in the worries attendant on your state of life than he would be if you were enjoying the delights of a tranquil life. No, my very dear daughter, what brings him near to our hearts is not the tranquility but the faithfulness of our love, not the feeling we have of his sweetness, but our free consent to his holy will; and it is more desirable that his will should be wrought in us than that we should follow our own inclinations in him.Good day, my very dear sister, my daughter. I pray that this sovereign goodness may give us the grace of seeking him in a spirit of love, and I am all yours in him, Madam, Your very humble servant, Francis, Bishop of Geneva. Reflections: We talk about this a lot, but how do we find joy in accepting suffering?How do we resign ourselves into the Lord’s hands?How can we live for God alone?What does it mean to make yourself useful to your neighbor?Saintly people are often repelled by the social events of high society. Why are they so repelled and how would you handle invitations to such events?If the Holy Spirit gives us grace and inspiration to follow God’s will, can that really be considered a “free consent to his holy will.”St. Francis talks about tribulation. We often think that others around us do not suffer in the way we do. Why do we think this, and how should we deal with these thoughts? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time |