| For the Love of God, Love Yourself in this State of Abjection |
At our Living Jesus Chat Room this Sunday we will be talking about part of a letter written by Francis de Sales to St. Jane de Chantal, written from Cluses on August 6, 1606, 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  Image from PixabayLove your abjection. But what does that mean, you ask, to love your abjection? For my understanding is darkened and powerless for any good. Well, my daughter, it is no more than just that. If you stay humble, still, gentle and confident in this state of darkness and helplessness, if you don’t get impatient, if you take things calmly, if you don’t let yourself be upset by all this, but embrace this cross and stay in this darkness willingly (I will not say happily, but I do say whole-heartedly and firmly), then you will be loving your abjection. For what else is it than being obscure and helpless? Love yourself in this state for love of him who wants you to be like this, and you will be loving your own abjection.The Latin word for abjection implies humility, and humility implies abjection; so that when Our Lady said: ‘Because he has regarded the humility of his handmaid,’ she means: ‘because he has looked graciously on my abjection and lowliness’. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the virtue of humility and abjection, because humility is the recognition of one’s own abjection. Now the high point of humility is not merely recognizing one’s abjection but loving it; and this is what I have encouraged you to do.In order to make myself clearer let me explain that there are two sorts of troubles which beset us, abject and honorable. Many put up with honorable ills, few with the abject. For example: consider a Capuchin friar all in rags and feeling the cold; everyone honors his torn habit and pities him because he is cold. But take a poor workman, a poor student, a poor widow in the same case; people jeer at them and their poverty is abject. A religious will patiently suffers a rebuke from his superior, everyone will call that mortification and obedience; a gentle man who accepts the same sort of rebuke for the love of God is called a coward; so that is an abject virtue, a despised form of suffering. Here is a man who has an ulcer on his arm, another has one on his face; the former hides it and only has to bear his affliction; the latter cannot hide it, and together with the affliction he suffers scorn and abjection. Now I say that we must love not only the affliction but also the abjection.Moreover, there are abject virtues and honorable virtues. Among lay people patience, meekness, mortification, simplicity, are generally speaking abject virtues: almsgiving, courtesy and prudence honorable ones. There are actions which are equal in virtue, some being abject and others honorable. Giving alms and forgiving injuries are works of charity: the first is honorable, the second is abject in the eyes of the world.I am taken ill amongst people who find this a nuisance: here we have abjection added to affliction. Young women of the world, seeing me dressed as a real widow should be dressed, say that I am putting on pious airs, and when they see me laugh, though modestly, they say that I still want to be sought after; they will not believe that I no longer want honor and rank which are not mine, and that I really love my vocation without repining: all these things are little examples of abjection; to love this sort of thing is to love one’s own abjection ….Nevertheless, my daughter, mark this, that even while we love the abjection which comes of some evil, we must not stop trying to remedy the evil. I shall do what I can not to have a bad sore on my face; but if it comes, I shall love the abjection it brings. And this rule is even more important in a matter of sin. I have done wrong in this way or in that: I am grieved about it, although I willingly embrace the abjection that ensues; and if the two were separable, I should carefully keep the abjection and remove the evil and the sin. And we must not forget charity which sometimes requires us to remove the abjection for our neighbour’s edification; but in that case we must only hide it from his eyes, and not from our own heart which is thereby edified. ‘I have chosen,’ says the prophet, ‘to be abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. ‘Finally, my daughter, you want to know which are the best sort of abjections. I answer such we have not chosen or which are least welcome, or, rather, those for which we have little inclination; but, to put it plainly, I mean those connected with our vocation and profession. As for example, this married woman would chose anything rather than abjection connected with the married state; that nun would obey anyone rather than her superior; and I myself would rather be rebuked by a superior in religion than by my father-in-law at home. I answer that the particular abjection laid upon each of us is the most profitable; choice takes away the better part of our merit. Who will grant us grace really to love our abjection, my dear daughter? Only he who so loved his own abjection that he was willing to die so as to preserve it. I have said enough. Reflections: What is abjection, and why should we love it?What is the relationship between humility and abjection?Why do people honor religious who deliberately choose a life of poverty, but people who suffer from societal poverty are scorned and looked down upon? What is the difference between these two types of poverty?Why are some virtues abject and some honorable?Discuss the tensions between loving the abjection that comes from evil yet trying to remedy that evil.Why is it so difficult to accept the abjection that we receive from those we live with, or work with? 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. |