| Feet Should Be Well Shod but Hearts Stripped of Worldly Affection |
At our Living Jesus Chat Room this Sunday we will be talking about a letter written by Francis de Sales to “a Lady”, written from Lyons on 19 December 1622, taken from Selected Letters of St. Francis de Sales. (For context: St. Francis had left Annecy on 8 November to join the court of Savoy at Lyons for a meeting with the court of France.)Because of its brevity, a second letter will be included, written to St. Jane de Chantal from Annecy, mid-December of 1609 (which is a fragment from a letter the rest of which is lost. It concerns Anne-Jacqueline Coste, a servant whom St. Francis met in Geneva. She followed him to Annecy when the Visitation was founded in 1610.)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 Robin Ooode on UnsplashLetter One (To a Lady)A thousand thanks to your beloved heart, my very dear daughter, for the favor it has shown my soul in giving it such sweet proofs of affection. Dear God, how happy are those who are under no obligation to courts and compliments and who can live peacefully in holy solitude at the foot of the Crucifix! Not that I ever held vanity in high esteem, but I find it even more vain when I am surrounded by the feeble splendors of the court.My very dear daughter, the further I advance in this mortality the more contemptible I find it and the more lovable that holy eternity for which we long and for the sole sake of which we should love one another most tenderly. Let us live only for this life to come, my very dear daughter, which alone deserves the name of life, and compared with which the life of the great in this world is a most pitiful death. I am with all my heart most truly all yours, my very dear daughter, and remain,Your very humble and very affectionate servant,Francis, Bishop of Geneva. Letter Two (To St. Jane) Your Anne-Jacqueline pleases me more and more. The last time I saw her she asked me after confession whether she could have permission to fast on bread and water in Advent and to go barefoot all the winter, so as to prepare and accustom herself to being a nun. O dear daughter, I must tell you what I said in answer, for I think it will be as apt for the mistress as for the servant. I said that I wanted the daughters of our congregation to have their feet well shod but their hearts quite bare and stripped of worldly affections, their heads well covered and their spirit bare, in that they had achieved perfect simplicity and completely renounced their own will. Reflections: Why can splendors and “pomp and circumstance” feel so rewarding to some, and yet so empty and vain to others?Is longing for eternity a risk of causing us to not be present enough in this world?If we are made for eternity, why do we have to pass through this life of time and decay first?In the first letter St. Francis warns against the splendors of the court and yet in the second letter, he advises against a physical poverty of extreme fasting and shoeless-ness. How do we balance between the two extremes? And why is that important?Read this line from the second letter: I want “the daughters of our congregation to have their feet well shod but their hearts quite bare and stripped of worldly affections, their heads well covered and their spirit bare, in that they had achieved perfect simplicity and completely renounced their own will.” Discuss how living in moderate austerity can help us become stripped of worldly affections and help renounce our own wills? 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. |