| The Whole of Yourself Is to Be Buried and Abandoned Forever |
At our Living Jesus Chat Room this Sunday we will be talking about a letter written by Francis de Sales to St. Jane de Chantal, written from Annecy on May 18, 1616, 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  “…continue your exercise of complete self-renunciation….”Photo by Melissa Askew on UnsplashMy very dear Mother,I know that I shall have to go on being alone and silent today and perhaps tomorrow: if this is so, I shall prepare my soul as you are doing and as I told you.I agree that you should continue your exercise of complete self-renunciation, leaving yourself to Our Lord and to me. But include some acts of your own, my very dear Mother, some ejaculatory prayers expressing your renunciation, as for example: I really want this, Lord; take away, take away everything that clothes my heart. O Lord, no indeed, Lord, I except and withhold nothing; tear me away from myself. O self, I put you away forever, until my Lord commands me to take you up again. You must say this firmly from time to time, but calmly. Furthermore, my very dear Mother, you must not keep any sort of nurse, but as you see, you must give up even the nurse who will nevertheless still be there; and you must remain before the throne of God’s mercy like a poor, needy little creature, quite naked, never asking for any action or affection for this creature. At the same time, you must practice indifference with regard to all things of this kind which it may please God to prescribe for you, without stopping to consider whether it is I who am to serve as your nurse. As you see, if you took a nurse to your own liking, you would not be going out of yourself but still have your own way; but this is what you must chiefly avoid.Renunciation of this kind is admirable: that of your own esteem and even of what the world thought you (which really amounted to nothing, except in comparison with people who are indeed worthless), of your own will, your pleasure in all creatures and in natural love, and in short, renunciation of the whole of yourself which is to be buried and abandoned forever. We must neither see it nor know anything about it and act as though we had never in fact seen or known it, until such time as God orders us to do otherwise in whatever way he decides.Write and tell me what you think about this. May God make me all his forever. Amen. For I am his here and also where I am in you, most completely, as you know; for we are inseparable except in the exercise and practice of our complete self-renunciation for God’s sake. Reflections: What does it mean to prepare our souls for something? How can we do this?What is self-renunciation?What would it be like to make it a habit to say the prayer that St. Francis suggests, “tear me away from myself. O self, I put you away forever….” What would this mean in our everyday lives?Why are spontaneous prayers just as important as our timely, disciplined prayers?Was it imprudent of St. Francis to suggest St. Jane to “not keep any sort of nurse”?Is self-renunciation contradictory? Is it born out of a self-interested desire to be totally empty and filled with God? Is it, in fact, a selfish/self-centered pursuit? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time U.S. |