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“Praise no one before he speaks, for it is then that people are tested.”
Francis de Sales dedicated five chapters in his Introduction to the Devout Life to the subject of conversation. The fact that he would devote so much attention to this topic speaks to the importance – and the impact – of words.
Francis wrote:
“Physicians learn about a person’s health or sickness by looking at his tongue. In like manner, our words are a true indication of the state of our souls. ‘By your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned,’ says the Savior. We quickly move our hand to the pain we feel and our tongue to what we like. If you are truly in love with God, you will often speak of God in familiar conversation with your servants, friends and neighbors.’ The mouth of the just man shall meditate on wisdom and his tongue shall speak of judgment. Just as bees extract with their tiny mouths nothing but honey, so your tongue should always be sweetened with its God and find no greater pleasure than to taste the praise and benediction of His holy name flowing between your lips.” (IDL, Part 3, Ch. 26)
Spend just a few hours watching cable television and/or surfing social media and you’ll notice that there is no shortage of words on the airways and the Internet. These words may tell us a great deal about the people speaking them; these words may also tell us a great deal about the nature of our culture. Note the level of volume, shouting, harshness, suspicion and divisiveness that characterizes so much of our conversations – if you can call them that – these days.
Remarkable how prescient Francis de Sales’ advice sounds four hundred years ago given the context in which we live today.
“To speak little – a practice highly recommended by ancient sages – does not consist in uttering only a few words but in uttering none that are useless. With regard to speech, we must not look to the quantity but rather to the quality of our words. It seems to me that we ought to avoid two extremes. To be too reserved and to refuse to take part in conversation looks like lack of confidence in the others or some sort of disdain. To be always babbling or joking without giving others time or chance to speak when they wish is a mark of shallowness and levity.” (IDL, Part 3, Ch. 30)
Let’s be clear – words are not just words. They can shape and create reality, for better or for worse. How just are our words? What do our words tell others about the state of our soul? What do our words tell us about the health of our heart?
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“Be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct…”
Tomorrow we begin yet another season of Lent, a period of time during which many of us will – among other things – engage in fasting. Of course, fasting is not an end in itself, but rather it is a means to an end. As such, fasting is one of a number of means at our disposal for pursuing in our own unique ways the common vocation to which God calls each and every one of us – to be holy people, to live holy lives. (Francis de Sales calls holiness “devotion,” contemporary spiritual writer Matthew Kelly describes holiness as being “the best possible version of ourselves.”)
Regardless of how you image, define or understand what it means to be holy, Francis de Sales is very clear that if you are going to employ fasting as a means of growing in holiness, you can’t settle for half measures. When it comes to fasting, he says that you have to be “all in.” He observed:
“Your fasting should be entire and universal. That is, you should submit all of the members of your body and the powers of your soul to fasting. Keeping your eyes lowered, keeping better silence, or at least keeping it more punctual than usual, mortifying your hearing and your tongue so that you will no longer hear or speak of anything vain or useless, keeping your will in check and maintaining your spirit of the crucifix with some holy or humbling thoughts: if you do all this, your fast will be universal, interior and exterior, for you will be disciplining both your body and your spirit.” (Living Jesus, p. 110)
Note the words from today’s first reading: “Be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct.” How can I tell if my fasting is “entire and universal?” How can I tell if it is having an impact on every aspect of my life? How can I determine if it is helping me to become more holy? Look for changes in how you think, how you feel, how you speak, how you listen and, above all, how you behave. Fasting doesn’t become any more entire and universal than that!
Otherwise, it might be nothing more than a fast track to hell.
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“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites…”
In today’s Gospel Jesus gives instruction on the proper way to pray. He cautions us to “not be like the hypocrites,” who think that they will be heard because of their many words. In a sermon given on April 5, 1615, Francis de Sales made the following observation regarding prayer in general, and vocal prayer in particular:
“To mutter something with the lips is not praying if one’s heart is not joined to it. To speak it is necessary first to have conceived interiorly what we wish to say. There is first the interior word, and then the spoken word, which causes what the interior has first pronounced to be understood. Prayer is nothing other than speaking to God. Now it is certain that to speak to God without being attentive to Him and to what we say to Him is something that is most displeasing to Him…God tests more the heart of the one who prays rather than the words pronounced by one who prays.” (Fiorelli, OSFS, Sermons on Prayer, p. 18)
Authentic prayer is not a matter of words. Authentic prayer is a matter of the heart. Lent provides a perfect opportunity to revisit this truth…and to live by it.
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“If you are led astray and serve other gods…you will certainly perish…”
Other gods – idols – are defined as “an object of extreme devotion”. In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales cautions us from going to extremes when it comes to fasting or any other form of devotion. Beginning with a quote from St. Jerome, he wrote:
“’Long, immoderate fasts displease me very much…I have learned by experience that when an ass’ foal grows tired, it tends to wander away,’ meaning that those who are weakened by excessive fasting easily turn to soft living. Stags run poorly in two situations – when they are too fat and when they are too lean. We are very exposed to temptation both when our bodies are too pampered and when they are too run down, for the one makes the body demanding in its softened state and the other desperate in affliction. Just as we cannot support the body when it is too fat, so, too, it cannot support us when it is too thin. Lack of moderation in fasting and other forms of austerity makes many people’s best years useless for the service of charity. After all, the more some people mistreat the body in the beginning, the more they tend to pamper it in the end. Wouldn’t people do better to have a program that is balanced and in keeping with the duties and tasks their state in life obliges them to do?” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 23, p. 185)
A word of advice: When it comes to fasting of the body, the mind, the soul or spirit, avoid the temptation of going to extremes.
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“Both fasting and labor mortify and subdue the flesh. If your work is necessary for you to contribute to God’s glory, I much prefer that you endure the pains of work rather than of fasting. Such is the mind of the Church, for it exempts those who are working in the service of God and our neighbor even from prescribed fasts. One mind finds it difficult to fast, another to take care of the sick, visit prisoners, hear confessions, preach, comfort the afflicted, pray and perform similar tasks. These last sufferings are of far greater value than the first. In addition to disciplining the body, they produce much more desirable fruits…” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 23, p. 186)
And what are these “more desirable fruits”? Isaiah names a few: “releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.” Today, what is the kind of fasting that God may wish from us? The answer: the sacrifice, discipline and self-mastery that come more from focusing on what we can try to do, rather than on what we can try to do without.*****
"If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech…light shall rise for you in the darkness..."
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales wrote:
“Your language should be restrained, frank, sincere, candid, unaffected and honest. Be on guard against equivocation, ambiguity or dissimulation. While it is not always advisable to say everything that is true, it is never permissible to speak against the truth. You must become accustomed never to tell a deliberate lie whether to excuse yourself or for some other purposes, remembering always that God is the ‘God of truth.’ As the sacred word tells us, the Holy Spirit does not dwell in a deceitful or slippery soul. No artifice comes close to being so good and desirable as plain dealing…” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 30, p. 206)
Whether in fasting from telling lies – or being committed to telling the truth – what steps can we take today to make the light rise a bit higher and brighter in the darkness for ourselves and others by the type of speech we choose to speak?
