| “You Are Not the Only One to Bear This Cross” |
Hi, Susan,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 1 August 1605, 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  Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on UnsplashNo indeed, in God’s name, my very dear daughter, no! I am not going to be in the least distressed, I am not going to be afraid or in doubt about your helplessness or your difficulties. I am not so vulnerable now; the pains of labor are over as far as I am concerned. What can I fear for you at this stage? No, I feel sure in an indefinable way that all is well with your soul.As Rachel was unable to have children, she gave Bala to her husband as a second in marriage (at that time men were allowed to have several wives so as to multiply the people of God). Bala bore her children on Rachel’s knees; then Rachel took them as her own, so that Bala, her second, had no more responsibility for them, at least, no prime responsibility. O my daughter, I think that I have born you once and for all on the knees of the beautiful Rachel, our very dear and sacred Abbess; [The Blessed Virgin] she has taken you to herself; as for me, I no longer have the chief responsibility for you. Stay there on her knees, or rather humbly prostrate at her feet. That is the first reason why I am not afraid.The other reason is that there is nothing to be afraid of. When our sweet Jesus died there was darkness over all the land. I think that Mary Magdalene who was with your Lady Abbess, was deeply grieved because she could no longer see her dear Saviour clearly and distinctly; she could only see him indistinctly on the cross, she got up from her knees, fixed her eyes ardently on him, but she only saw a certain pale and confused whiteness where he was; yet all the time she was as close to him as before. Let this be done to you, everything is going very well. As much darkness as you like, but all the time we are close to the light; as much helplessness as you please, but we are at the feet of the Almighty. May Jesus reign! May we never be separated from him, either in darkness or in light!Do you know what occurs to me when you ask me for remedies? I do not remember that Our Lord asked us to heal the head of the daughter of Sion but only her heart. No, he certainly never said: Speak to the head of Jerusalem, but what he did say was: ‘Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem.’ Your heart is in a healthy state since your resolutions hold good. May there be peace in your heart, my daughter, yours is the lot of God’s children. ‘Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God’; he does not say that they are seeing God now, but that they shall see him.But here is a little hint of a remedy. Run within the barriers because they have been put up; it will not stop you from carrying off the ring, and with even greater certainty. [Reference to a game, called tilting at the ring. The players run within an enclosure to carry off a ring which is hung on a post.] Do not force yourself, do not make yourself miserable: after the rain it will be fine. Do not keep such an anxious and watchful eye on yourself. Naturally, when you get news of some scandal you feel very bad about it. It is not really surprising that a poor little widow should feel feeble and wretched. But what do you expect? Do you expect her to be far-sighted, strong, constant and self-sufficient? Accept gladly the fact that your state of mind matches your condition and that you are a widow, lowly and abject in every way, except that you do not offend God. Not long ago I saw a widow in a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and while the others were carrying large candles of white wax, she was only carrying a tiny tallow candle which she had probably made herself; and to make things worse the wind put it out. This neither brought her closer to the Blessed Sacrament, nor kept her at a greater distance; she got to the church as soon as everybody else.I repeat, do not be anxious: you are not the only one to bear this cross. But does this mean that I am now going to tell you how things are going with me, since you ask me to? It is in fact true; all day yesterday and the whole night, I have been carrying a cross similar to yours, not in my head but in my heart; but now it has been taken from me by the confession I have just made. All day yesterday my will was really so helpless that a feather could have crushed it. Well now, even if you were to have a very special cross all to yourself, what of it? The cross would be worth more on that account, and should be dearer to you. My dear St. Peter did not want his cross to be like his Master’s, so he had it put upside down; he had his head on the earth and his heart in heaven when he died.Make use of the little light you have said Our Lord, until the sun rises. The door has not been opened yet, but through the lattices you can see the forecourt and the outside of Solomon’s temple: stay where you are. It is not unfitting for widows to be somewhat in the background; there are a whole number of good people who are waiting their turn just as you are, it is reasonable that they should be preferred. And in the meanwhile, have you not got your little tasks to get on with while you are waiting? Am I being rather hard, dear daughter? At least I am truthful. Let us get on to something else; I have little leisure, for it is the feast day of our great St. Peter.I told you that you could see the Huguenots; now I say: yes, see them, but only rarely, and be brief and reserved with them, nevertheless gentle and very humble and simple. Your good patron’s [St. Monica, model of Christian widows] son was writing one day to the devout Maxima, his spiritual daughter, and he said something of this kind: be simple and gracious as a dove when you are speaking to heretics, having compassion on their misfortune; be prudent as a serpent to slip away from their company quickly at chance meetings or on other occasions and after occasional visits. That is what I say to you.Yes, daughter, I approve of your noting the interior movements which led to imperfections and faults, provided this does not make you anxious. As to your thoughts, you are not asked to account for those which just pass through your head, but only those which like bees, leave their poison and sting when they have wounded you.I am going to tell you something about myself, very briefly. I wish that you could see me as I am interiorly, provided that my imperfections did not scandalize you. Since you left I have not ceased meeting with set-backs, great and small; but neither my heart nor my spirits have been in any way upset, thank God. Never have I had more inner sweetness and happiness, until last night when my heart was covered over with clouds; and now that I am back from holy Mass, all is serene and bright. I have done, in part, what you wanted me to do, that is to say I have been putting aside some time for the relaxation of body and mind. I will do better every day, if God helps me; at least I have the will for it.I will not try and say how full my heart is for you, but I will say that it is full beyond compare; and this affection is whiter than snow, purer than the sun: that is why I have given it free rein since you left me, letting it have its way. O how impossible to tell, my Lord and God, how consoling it will be to love one another in heaven in this full sea of charity, when even these little brooklets of love give us so much!Four days ago, I received into the Church a young nobleman of twenty and heard his confession. He was as honest as the day and as valiant as a sword. O Saviour of my soul, what joy to hear him accusing himself in such a holy way of his sins; and to see in this God’s special providence for him, guarding and shielding him by interior movements of the heart and springs of action which are so hidden from the human eye, so high, so admirable! I was quite beside myself; how I kissed him to wish him peace!I hear from two sides that there are plans for raising me higher in the eyes of the world; one was the note which I read to you in the gallery of your castle of Sales, the other came from Rome. I answer before God: no, do not be in any doubt, daughter, I shall not as much as bat an eyelid to gain the whole world; it costs me no effort to despise it; if it is not for the greater glory of God no sort of response will stir in me. But all this is between father and daughter; I beg you not to let it go any further. And apropos of the word ‘daughter’, in future I do not want any other title of honour in your letters except that of ‘father’: it is more definite, more lovable, more holy, more glorious for me.How happy I should be to render your uncle some service one day, for I cherish him very much. I send my sincere greetings to your father-in-law and offer him my services. ‘I wish your little ones, whom I look upon as mine in Our Lord, a thousand graces’; these are the words of Monica’s son writing to Italica, his spiritual daughter. I beg Our Lord to make you grow in his love.God be with you, my very dear daughter; this great God to whom we are vowed and consecrated, and who has dedicated me forever and without any reserve to your soul which I cherish as my own and look upon as all mine in our Saviour, who in giving us his soul, joins us inseparably in him.May Jesus reign! Francis, Bishop of Geneva. Reflections: St. Francis mentions the experience of Mary Magdelene being physically close to Jesus on the cross yet feeling so distant. While that example is more obvious, how is it able to happen in our life that we become so distant from those in our life?What does it mean to have a clean heart?St. Francis suggests to his reader, a widow, to stay in the background. Is this to prevent pride or selfishness? Might this advice apply to us in some way?St. Francis says in the letter: “Do not keep such an anxious and watchful eye on yourself.” Yet we are told to examine our consciences and try to eradicate sin from our lives. How do we find the balance?We are often told to “not be anxious,” but how do we actually do this?Why is it important to put aside time for relaxation of body and mind? 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. this Sunday . Seats are limited, so come on time. |