An extract from the preface to volume XXV of the Works of our holy Founder will serve as an introduction: “The love of God is the distinctive character of Saint Francis de Sales; but there also lies the originality of his works (…). From its birth, the Visitation lives only on love, everything converges towards the same goal: it also grows, develops, is sanctified by the very sweet force of divine love. (…) Recollection makes up for the multitude of prayers, detachment from all things for rigorous poverty, mortification of the spirit and will for bodily penances, charity for solitude (…). Faults are reformed, virtues are acquired more by the attraction of love than by the rigor of asceticism. Hidden life of silence and prayer, in the practice of the virtues of humility, simplicity, gentleness, charity, resignation: such is the ideal proposed by Saint Francis de Sales to his Daughters. His dear Institute was truly the child of the love of his heart. He only reproduced in himself trait for trait his soul and his spirituality.” “All for love” this famous expression can shed light on the pilgrimage that we are going to make today following our holy Founders and the “child of love” of their hearts in 1614.
Training in prayer
On the first day of the year, our holy Founder gives what he calls a “Sacred cartel of challenge to my dear daughters of the Visitation as a happy new year for this year 1614” (St Fr. de S. XXV p.491) . It includes a general challenge for all and a particular challenge intended for each Sister. The fines for faults consist of prayers of apostolic significance: priests, Christians, sinners, the poor, rulers, heretics, etc. ; thus, even the repair of our oversights must serve to “help the Holy Church and the salvation of our neighbor”.
In this first challenge of the Order, we see our blessed Father very careful to form interior souls. Here is the general challenge: “The frequent thought of the word that God said to Abraham: ‘Walk before me and be perfect’ (Gen 17:1). And so that external action does not steal internal attention, my dear daughters will make six returns to God in the time not occupied in meditations, Offices, readings.
This is the particular challenge of our holy Mother: “Universal love for the worship of God, especially preparation and attention to the Divine Office, vocal and mental prayers, readings, sermons and devotional discourses; against memories of the world and temporal attentions. The penalty for every failure: Psalm 116 for the restoration of ecclesiastical perfection.” “Love to the worship of God”, with what zeal did she practice this challenge following the example of our blessed Father.
The note she wrote to him for the feast of Saint Joseph tells us a lot: “Here are the litanies of the glorious Father of our Life and our Love. (…) I took the leisure to review them, correct them and add accents, so that our daughter from Châtel would have an easier time singing them without making mistakes” (St Fr. de S. XVI p.104) Later in the Directory for the Office, our holy Mother will write for the feast of Saint Joseph: “It was the intention of our blessed Father that our entire congregation should have a particular devotion to this Saint and let us celebrate the feast with dignity.” Isn’t Saint Joseph the patron of interior souls? Five sermons from our blessed Father between February 8 and March 28 have reached us (St Fr. de S. IX p.15-45).
Since the Duke of Savoy refuses him permission to go to France where he had been invited to preach Lent, we see him taking care of the training of his daughters. He teaches us to have great esteem for the virtues which delight the Heart of the Beloved. He begins with the value of small observances: “There is sometimes more virtue in carrying a straw cross than not a very heavy cross, (…) because in these small obediences, one must have great attention to “I won’t fail” (p.19). Those who dream of sanctifying themselves during Lent are invited to constant renunciation and to welcome with love all mortification (cf. art. III of the Directory): “You must not do what you say, which you prefer to use for your sanctification forty days of fasting than spending so much time perfecting yourself. This will not make you saints, but yes, a long perseverance in mortifying yourself, in lovingly enduring the temptations, aridities and afflictions that will come to you, (…) applying the remedies to your sorrows, with patience and humility, with resignation to suffer too. long as it pleases the divine Majesty” (p.25).
The Gospel of the Transfiguration is an opportunity to give criteria for good prayer. The first: “if when we leave prayer, we have, in imitation of Our Lord, a shining face and our white garments, I mean if our face shines with charity and our body with chastity”. The second: we must within “consolation remember the Passion”. The third: obey the Father by listening to his Son. The fourth, seeing only Jesus alone: “This is the sovereign degree of perfection to see only Our Lord in whatever we do. Souls who have reached this degree take care to stay close to Him on Calvary, because they find Him more alone there than in any other place” (p.28).
When on Palm Sunday he contemplates Christ mounted on a donkey, he cannot fail to remind us of an essential virtue: “the donkey has great simplicity, that is why Our Lord chose her. There is no virtue that God loves so much and which attracts Him more in a soul than simplicity. (…) This is perfect simplicity, to have in everything we do only one pretension [goal] to please God. (…) Trouble, even for advancement in perfection, is contrary to perfect simplicity, since this virtue consists of a certain tranquility of heart and peace of the soul which stands at the feet of Our Lord. (…) The simple soul wants to work to make itself perfect, since God wants it, but it is not in a hurry, and leaves the event [outcome] to divine good pleasure” (p.33).
The Treatise on the Love of God can be discerned behind the thoughts expressed on Good Friday: “The Son of God is reduced to a cross. Who put it there? Love. Now, since he died of love for us, the least we should do for him is to live of love; (…) but with a love similar to his own, a strong and courageous love which grows among contradictions, never tiring of fighting for this divine Lover (p. 40 and 44). The Visitation only lives from love, we said at the beginning, it only lives for Him who died of love for us. Intimate union with Christ in prayer and the practice of the small virtues is for Francis de Sales the essence of religious life. He gives no other advice to a Poor Clare, Mother Claudine de Blonay, who is undertaking the reform of her monastery in Évian by returning to the source of contemplative life: prayer. He wrote to her in August 1614: “May this divine Goodness be forever praised, who himself has made himself a source of living water in the midst of your company; for to those who devote themselves to holy prayer, Our Lord is a fountain from which we draw through prayer the water of washing, of refrigeration [water that washes and refreshes], of fertility and sweetness (cf . IVD part II, chap.1).
The monasteries in which this holy exercise is not practiced, God knows what obedience, what poverty and what chastity are observed there before his divine Providence, and if the assemblies of girls are not rather companies of prisoners than true lovers of Jesus Christ. (…) Therefore raise your courage high to follow carefully and holyly its attractions, and while true meekness and humility of heart reign among you, do not doubt that you will be deceived. (…) Above all, let mutual, frank, spiritual dilection reign between you; the perfect [pooled] community; holy simplicity, gentleness of heart and love of one’s own abjection. » (St Fr. de S. XVI p.207). Poor Clares or Visitandines, if the external austerities are different, the interior virtues are identical, because it is the very life of Christ in the religious soul. But spiritual warfare is part of this life of love. “How often do we have passions in the sensual appetite, contrary to the affections which we feel at the same time in the reasonable appetite or will? (…) This consists of the war that we feel every day between the spirit and the flesh; between our exterior man who depends on the senses and the interior man who depends on reason.”
This war that our holy Founder describes in his Treatise (Book I chap.5) is experienced even in the retreat of a monastery. Sister Péronne-Marie of Châtel experienced this and received these words of consolation from him: “Raise your courage, arm yourself with the patience that we must have with ourselves. Wake up your heart often, be a little attentive to this enemy. When it happens that this bad girl [nature] suddenly attacks you, even though she makes you stagger a little, do not be angry, but call for Our Lord and Our Lady. Do not be ashamed of all this, any more than Saint Paul who confessed that he had two men within him, one of whom was rebellious against God and the other obedient. Be very simple; humble yourself without discouragement, encourage yourself without presumption” (St Fr. de S. XVI p.243). Vigilance, gentleness towards oneself, humility, simplicity, and above all trust in Jesus and Mary who keep us on the path of love.
TO BE CONTINUED
Source: Conference by Sr Marie Pierre