| If You Are Striving for Perfection, Give Away Your Cloak as Well |
At our Living Jesus Chat Room this Sunday we will be talking about a letter written from Francis de Sales to Madame des Gouffiers, written from Annecy on May 1621, 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  “If a man will contend with thee in judgement and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.” (Matthew 5:40)Henrik Olrik, Altarpiece – “Sermon on the Mount” (Public Domain)I will not dwell on the indeed more than fatherly love I feel for you, my very dear daughter, for I think that God who made my heart will tell you; and if he does not make you understand, no effort of mine will. But why am I telling you this? Because, my very dear daughter, I have not written to you as often as you may perhaps have wished, and sometimes people measure affection by the number of written sheets rather than by proofs of true inward feelings which only show on rare and well-defined occasions, and which are of more use.I will come straight to the point and tell you openly and without disguise what my soul bids me tell you. How long, my very dear daughter, will you want to go on scoring other victories over the world and everything in it than those which our Saviour sought and at which he exhorts you to aim by so many clear indications? What did he do, he, the Lord of the whole world? It is a fact, my daughter, he was indeed the rightful Lord of all the world: and did he ever go to law to get even as much as where to lay his head? People wronged him in a thousand ways: did he ever go to law? Did he ever arraign anyone before a tribunal? Never; indeed, he did not even want to accuse the traitors who crucified him before the tribunal of God’s justice. On the contrary, he called for mercy upon them. And this is the lesson he has instilled again and again: ‘If a man will contend with thee in judgement and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.’I do not wish to be rigid in this matter, nor do I condemn those who go to law provided they are acting in a spirit of truth, discrimination and justice; but I will say, cry aloud, write, and write in my own blood if need be, that whoever wants to be perfect and really a child of Jesus Christ crucified must follow this teaching of our Saviour’s. Let the world rage, let worldly prudence fume and fret for all we care, and let all the wise men of our time invent as many loopholes, pretexts, excuses as they please: but against all prudence we should listen to the words: ‘If a man will contend with thee in judgement and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.’Of course, you will say to me, this applies in certain cases. Quite true, my very dear daughter; but thanks be to God this is precisely the case in which we find ourselves, for we are striving for perfection and we want to follow as closely as we can in the footsteps of the man who said with truly apostolic love: having food and drink, and clothes to cover us, let us be content with that; and who cried out to the Corinthians: ‘Already indeed there is plainly a fault among you, that you have lawsuits one with another.’ Now listen, my daughter, listen to the opinion and advice of this man who no longer lived in himself but Jesus Christ lived in him: ‘Why,’ he adds, ‘do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?’ And note, daughter, that he is not talking to a woman who is striving (after so many clear indications) to live a perfect life, but to all the Corinthians; note that he wants them to ‘suffer wrong’; note that he says there is ‘a fault among them’ if they proceed against those who cheat or defraud them.But why was this sin? Because in this way they were giving cause for scandal to worldly unbelievers who said: look how Christian these Christians are! Their Master said: ‘If a man wants to take away your coat, give him your cloak as well,’ see how for the sake of temporal goods they will risk losing eternal possessions and the tender and brotherly love they ought to have for one another. And again, St. Augustine bids us notice that Our Lord does not say, if anyone wants to take away your ring, give him your necklace, both of which are superfluous; but he is talking about coats and cloaks which are necessities.O my very dear daughter, this is God’s wisdom, his prudence, which is a most holy and adorable spirit of simplicity and childhood, and to use the apostle’s words, the most holy foolishness of the Cross. But then human prudence will return to the attack and say to me: how far do you want us to go? What! Are we to be trampled underfoot, grossly insulted, made to look fools, have our very clothes torn from our back without ever saying a word? Yes, that’s right, I want just that; and if I do, it is not I who want it, it is Jesus Christ who wants it in me. And the apostle of the Cross and the Crucifix cries out and says: ‘Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst and are naked and are buffeted’; and finally, ‘we are made as the refuse of this world, the off-scouring of all’, like a bit of apple or chestnut peel, or a nutshell. The inhabitants of Babylon do not understand this teaching but those who live on Mount Calvary follow it.O Father, you will say to me, you are very severe all of a sudden. Indeed, this is nothing sudden; for since the time when grace was given me to know a little about the fruits of the Cross, this conviction has taken a firm hold of my soul and has never changed. And if I have not lived up to it this was due to weakness and not to lack of conviction; the world’s clamor and scandal may have made me do outwardly the evil which I loathed in my heart. And might I dare to add this, to my confusion and just in my daughter’s ear? I have never returned evil for evil and hardly ever harmed anyone except with reluctance. I am not examining my conscience, but roughly speaking, I think I am telling the truth; and all the more inexcusable am I.But what do I really want to say to you? I am writing this letter very hurriedly and I have been obliged to take it up on two separate occasions; and love is neither prudent nor discreet, it forges straight ahead. You have so many honorable, wise, spiritual, friendly and devout people where you are; would it not be easy for them to persuade your sisters to some sort of settlement which would leave you enough to live on, judged by heaven’s standards? Are they tigresses who cannot hear reason? What about good Father Binet, would he not be happy to serve God in this matter which really practically affects the salvation of your soul, or on which, at least, your progress in the way of perfection entirely depends? And then Madame de Chantal? should she not be believed? For she is surely, I will not say only very good and kind, but also sufficiently prudent to advise you in this matter …Leave, O leave the world to worldlings: what need have you of the things people think essential for living in the world? Two thousand crowns and even less will be enough and plenty for a woman who loves her crucified Saviour. An income of a hundred and fifty or two hundred crowns is riches for a woman who believes in evangelical poverty. But if I am not a nun in an enclosed order but just living in association with some convent, I should only have barely enough to keep one or two servants to call me Madam. Well, and what of it? Have you ever discovered that Our Lady had that much? What does it matter whether people know that you are of a good house and family according to the world’s standards, provided you belong to God’s house?Oh, but I should like to make some pious foundation, or at least be of real help to some religious house; for my health is not good and this would make people put up with me more cheerfully. Yes, my very dear daughter, I knew very well that your piety was a prop for your self-love, and pitifully human. In short, we do not love crosses if they are not made of gold, studded with pearls and precious stones. It is a very lordly, though most devout and admirably spiritual abjection, to be looked up to in a congregation as a foundress, or at least a great benefactress. Lucifer would have been glad to stay in heaven on a condition of that sort. But living on alms as our Saviour did, accepting other people’s charity when we are ill, we who are high born and noble of spirit, this is indeed very difficult and hard to bear. True, it is hard to man, but not to the Son of God, who will do it in you.But is it not a good thing to have a little property of one’s own to use as one likes in God’s service? The words ‘as one likes’ show where we differ. But I mean ‘as you like’, Father; for I am still your daughter, this being God’s will. Very well then, what I like is that you should be satisfied with what Monsieur Vincent and Madame de Chantal think fit, and that you should let the rest go for the love of God, the edification of your neighbor and the peace of soul of your sisters; and that in this way you should consecrate it to love of your neighbour and to the glory of a truly Christian spirit. O what blessings, graces and spiritual riches will pour down on your soul if you do this, my very dear daughter! You will gain abundantly and more than abundantly; God will bless the little you have and he will make you content and happy. No, no, it is not difficult for God to do just as much with five barley loaves as Solomon did with all his cooks and caterers. Be at peace. I am most constantly,Your real servant and Father,Francis, Bishop of Geneva. Reflections: Why is St. Francis de Sales so adamant about not making recourse to the law in life matters? He said that lawsuits were OK, but “whoever wants to be perfect” will not do so. Is this a double standard? Is there a comparison here between marriage and consecrated life?St. Francis comes down hard on this woman, saying “your piety was a prop for your self-love.” Is this too harsh for a spiritual director?Reflect on this verse: ‘If a man will contend with thee in judgement and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.’Is St. Francis de Sales saying we shouldn’t strive for worldly success in this world and just content ourselves with just getting by?What are some new worldly things that have arisen in our age that St. Francis could not have written about, but which he might warn us against had he known about them?Our world has made us so depend on “worldly ways and things,” how do we really and truly live in this world and not “of this world”? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time |