| Ten Blessings for a New Convent |
| ,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 January 26, 1615, taken from Selected Letters of St. Francis de Sales. Towards the end of January of that year, St. Jane set out with Soeur de Blonay to make the first foundation from Annecy at Lyons. St. Francis blessed them before they set out and privately handed Soeur de Blonay a little packet of notes, one of which she was to give to Mere de Chantal every evening when they reached the inn where they were to spend the night. Each paragraph below is apparently a note that was to be given to St. Jane each evening.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 Rog Shafi on UnsplashThis is your father’s wish, my very dear daughter: may God be with you on your way; may God keep you clothed in the garment of his charity always; may God nourish your soul with the heavenly bread of his consolations; may God bring you back safe and sound to your father’s house; may God be your God for ever, my dear Mother. These are the blessings which Jacob called down upon himself when he set out for Bethel, and I wish them to my own self, my very dear and only daughter, as you leave this place where you stay even when you are far away, and from which you are distant even though you remain.Go in peace, my very dear daughter, go in peace where God calls you; stay peacefully here in the holy peace of God in which he holds and keeps you. The souls which God has made one are inseparable, for who can separate what God has joined? No, neither death, nor any other thing will ever separate us from the unity which is in Jesus Christ; may he live for ever in our heart. Amen. And now, my dear daughter, since God is the unity of our heart, who will ever part us from him? No, neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come will ever separate us or divide our unity. So let us go on, my very dear daughter, with but one heart, wherever God calls us; for though our roads are different this cannot make us different from one another because we are pursuing one same object and one same subject.O God of my heart, keep my very dear daughter in your hand; may her angel always be at her right hand to protect her, may the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, always delight her by looking on her with her kindly eyes. My very dear daughter, heavenly providence will help you: invoke it trustfully in all the difficulties which may hedge you in. As you go on, my very dear Mother, my daughter, you should grow in courage and rejoice because you are pleasing Our Lord, and his pleasure alone pleases the whole of Paradise.As for me, I am wherever you yourself are, since his divine Majesty has willed it so for all eternity. So let us go on, my dear daughter, happily and joyously doing the work which our Master has marked out for us. My very dear Mother, my daughter, I have been thinking about the story of the great St. Ignatius [of Antioch] who carried Jesus Christ in his heart and cheerfully went to serve as food for the lions and suffer the martyrdom of their fangs: and here are you, here are we, going to Lyons, please our Saviour, to render Our Lord various services and prepare souls for him so that he can be their Bridegroom. What can stop us from going joyfully in the name of our Saviour, since this saint went so blithely to be martyred for our Saviour?Blessed are the souls of those who walk according to the will of the divine Spirit and seek him with all their heart, leaving everything, even the father he gave them, for the sake of following his divine Majesty!O Lord Jesus, save, bless, confirm and preserve this heart which it has pleased you to call wholly to your divine love; and since you have led it to consecrate itself to your holy Name, may your holy Name fill it as with the balm of divine charity, spreading in perfect unity an odor of manifold sweetness for the edification of its neighbor. Yes, Lord Jesus, fill this soul to overflowing with grace, peace, consolation and blessing as it goes forth in your holy Name to be and stay wherever your glory calls. Amen. A thousand blessings to our dear daughters. May God who called them to live together bless them; may their holy angels always be near them, bestowing many graces and heavenly consolations on their dearly beloved hearts, and may the Blessed Virgin open her motherly heart to them and protect them by virtue of her loving motherhood. Reflections: What are the purposes of the blessings of others? Why doesn’t God just bless us? And what does it mean that we can call down God’s blessing; do we have control over God?There are a million places where we could live and work. How can we go in peace where God calls us and not feel like we’re “missing out”?What is the importance of a guardian angel? Will they not help us if we don’t know about them or if we don’t call upon them? And why can’t God just guard us?How can we know the work God calls us to?And to use St. Francis’s question in regard to St. Ignatius’s martyrdom: “What can stop us from going joyfully in the name of our Saviour, since this saint went so blithely to be martyred for our Savior?”What was the effect of giving St. Jane a note of encouragement each evening? Is there some way we can use this method to encourage one another?St. Jane founded many convents of Visitation Sisters. And yet today, religious communities are faltering. How were the conditions different then, and what can we do to bring back a more fertile ground for religious vocations? 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. |