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“You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Francis de Sales authored the Treatise on the Love of God. Had he lived long enough, he also intended to write a book on the love of neighbor. What is common to both is charity - the love of God and neighbor. Charity was, and is, in the mind and heart of Francis de Sales, the virtue of virtues. We are called to love our God in a neighborly way, and we are called to love our neighbor in a God-like manner.
Needless to say, but say it we will, Francis de Sales has more than a little to share with us about the nature and practice of charity.
"Just as God created man in his image and likeness, so also God has ordained for us a love in the image and likeness of the love due to God's divinity…Why do we love God? The reason we love God is God himself…Why do we love ourselves in charity? Surely, it is because we are God's image and likeness…Since all people have this same dignity, we also love them as ourselves, that is, in their character as most holy and living images of the divinity…The same charity that produces acts of love of God produces at the same time those of love of neighbor…To love our neighbor in charity is to love God in others and others in God." (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 10, Chapter 11)
For St. Francis de Sales, the love of God and the love of neighbor are not two distinct experiences as much as they are two expressions of the same reality - two sides, as it were, of the same coin. (Recall Jesus’ command in last Sunday’s Gospel to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to render to God what is God’s.”)
“The great St. Augustine says that charity includes all the virtues and performs all their operations in us,” wrote St. Francis de Sales. “These are his words: ‘What is said about virtue being divided into four’ - he means the four cardinal virtues – ‘in my opinion it is said because of the different affections that proceed from love. Hence, I do not hesitate to define those four virtues thus: temperance is love that gives itself entirely to God. Fortitude is love that willingly bears all things for God's sake. Justice is love that serves God alone, and therefore disposes justly all that is subject to human beings. Prudence is love that chooses what is useful to unite itself to God, and rejects all that is harmful.’” (Treatise on the Love of God, Chapter XI, Chapter 8)
"The one who possesses charity has one's soul clothed with a fair wedding garment, which, like that of Joseph, is wrought over with all the various virtues. Moreover, charity has a perfection that contains the virtue of all perfections and the perfections of all virtues." (Ibid)
In charity we find the meeting place of the love of God, the love of self and the love of others. How well do we share this multi-faceted love with those we meet every day? Put another way, how faithful are we in giving what is due to the things of heaven and the things of earth?
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“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Even as we strive to be “children of God”, we are still imperfect people. Try as we might to do otherwise, there are still many ways in which we live according to the “flesh”. Each of us still retains our share of shadows; all of us still struggle with some elements of darkness. What are we – as children of God called to live in the light of the Spirit – to do about this dilemma? Francis de Sales certainly offers this encouragement:
“It is a great part of our perfection to support one another in our imperfections; what better way is there for us to practice love of our neighbor save in this support?” (Select Salesian Subjects, #0096, p. 22)
The presence of shadows – and even darkness – should not discourage us in our attempts to be who we are: children of God! The spirit does bear witness in our spirit, imperfect as we are.
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“To what can I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like a mustard seed…”
It seems paradoxical that Jesus would describe something as vast as the Kingdom of God in terms of one of the smallest of all seeds - the mustard seed. Still, consider how St. Francis de Sales describes eternity in a letter to the Duc de Bellegarde (Peer and Master of the Horse at the courts of both Henri IV and Louis XIII of France):
“Keep your eyes steadfastly fixed on that blissful day of eternity towards which the course of years bears us on; and these as they pass, themselves pass us stage by stage until we reach the end of the road. But meanwhile, in these passing moments there lies enclosed as in a tiny kernel the seed of all eternity; and in our humble little works of devotion there lies hidden the prize of everlasting glory, and the little pains we take to serve God lead to the repose of a bliss that can never end...” (Stopp, Selected Letters, p. 236)
Indeed, the Kingdom of God is a big thing. In fact, it is the biggest and the broadest of all things. As Jesus reminds us, however – and as Francis de Sales underscores – sometimes the biggest of things come in very small, ordinary and everyday packages!
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“He began to teach them...”
In her book entitled Saint Francis de Sales and the Protestants (in which she examines his missionary activity in the Chablais, one of the most seminal periods in the life of the “Gentleman Saint”), author Ruth Kleinman wrote: “Saintliness is hard to practice, but it is even more difficult to describe.” A notable exception to this dictum are the words we hear proclaimed today in the Gospel of Matthew on this Solemnity of All Saints. Jesus describes saintliness simply and succinctly. It is about living a life of Beatitude:
- Saintly are those who mourn, i.e., those who refuse to harden their hearts when faced with the needs of others.
- Saintly are those who show mercy, i.e., those who are willing to forgo old hurts and to forgive others from their hearts.
- Saintly are those who are poor in spirit, i.e., those who experience everything as a gift and who demonstrate their gratitude through their willingness to share what they have (regardless of how ordinary or extraordinary) with others.
- Saintly are the pure of heart, i.e., those who avoid artificiality and pretense and who have the courage to be their true, authentic selves.
- Saintly are the meek, i.e., those who know that power isn’t demonstrated by taking from others but about giving to others. It’s not about doing to others but about doing for/with others.
- Saintly are the peacemakers, i.e., those who bring people together rather than drive them apart.
- Saintly are those who hunger and thirst for what is right, i.e., those for whom doing good comes with the same frequency and urgency as the need to eat and drink.
- Saintly are those persecuted for doing what is right, i.e., those who are willing to stand up for what is right regardless of the cost(s) incurred.
And as it turns out, not only is saintliness not hard to describe, but it isn’t nearly as hard to practice as we might think. In a sermon on Our Lady, Francis de Sales observed:
“There is no need of putting ourselves to the trouble of trying to find out what are the desires of God, for they are all expressed in His commandments and in the counsels of Our Lord Himself gave us in the Sermon on the Mount when He said: ‘How blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the lowly, and the other Beatitudes.’ These are all the desires of God upon which we ought to walk, following these as perfectly as we can.” (Select Salesian Subjects, #0170, p. 37)
Saintliness? To be sure, it is hard work. But with the grace of God – and the support of one another – it is doable!
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“The souls of the just are in the hands of God...”
In one of his pamphlets that was later published in a broader collection entitled The Catholic Controversy, Francis de Sales wrote:
“We maintain that we may pray for the faithful departed, and that the prayers and good works of the living greatly relieve them and are profitable to them for this reason: that all those who die in the grace of God – and consequently, in the number of the elect – do not go to Paradise at the very first moment, but many go to Purgatory…from which our prayers and good works can help and serve to deliver them.”
“We agree the blood of Our Redeemer is the true purgatory of souls, for in it are cleansed all the souls of the world. Tribulations also are a purgatory, by which our souls are rendered pure, as gold refined in the furnace. It is well known that Baptism in which our sins are washed away can be called a purgatory, as everything can be that serves to purge away our offenses. But in this context we take Purgatory for a place in which after this life the souls which leave this world before they have been perfectly cleansed from the stains they have contracted. And if one would know why this place is called simply Purgatory more than are the other means of purgation above-named, the answer will be, that it is because in that place nothing takes place but the purgation of the stains which remain at the time of departure out of this world, whereas in Baptism, Penance, tribulations and the rest, not only is the soul purged from its imperfections, but it is further enriched with many graces and perfections. And agreeing as to the blood of Our Lord, we fully acknowledge the virtue thereof, that we protest by all our prayers that the purgation of souls – whether in this world or in the other – is made solely by its application.” (CC, pp. 353-354)
Notwithstanding the effects of our prayers and good works on behalf of our dearly departed, Francis de Sales reminds us that at the end of the day it is the life and death of Jesus Christ that purifies our souls, whether in this life or in the next. To that end, whether it’s the just or the unjust, whether it’s in this world or the next, we are all in the hands of God.
Here’s hoping that we pray for our faithful departed. Here’s hoping that our faithful departed pray for us. As children of God – be it in this world or the next – we are a communion of saints. We are in this together!
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“I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie.”
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 all that is true, it is never permissible to speak against the truth. Therefore, 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”. If you happen to tell a lie inadvertently, correct it immediately by an explanation or by making amends. An honest explanation always has more grace and force to excuse us than a lie does.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 30, p. 206)
Children of God that we are, let us try our level best this day not to lie. Better yet, let us try our level best to talk – and walk in – the truth.
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“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
Throughout history, great men and women have shared this one character trait – humility. In his commentary on today’s Gospel from Luke, William Barclay offers two methods for growing in this cardinal virtue:
First, keep the big picture in mind. “However much we know, we still know very little when compared with the sum total of knowledge. However much we have achieved, we may still have achieved very little in the end. However important we may believe ourselves to be, when death takes us or when we retire from our responsibilities, life and work will go on just the same.”
(Recall the famous quip once made by Charles de Gaulle: “Cemeteries are filled with people who couldn’t be replaced.”)
Second, compare your efforts with someone who is really on top of their game. “It is when we see or hear the expert that we realize how poor our own performance may be. Many a spectator has decided to sell his golf clubs after a day at golf’s Open Championship. Many a person has chosen never to appear in public again after hearing a master musician perform. Many a preacher has been humbled almost to despair when he has heard a real saint of God speak.”
Barclay concludes:
“If we set our lives beside the life of the Lord of all good life – if we see our unworthiness in comparison with the radiance of his stainless purity – pride will surely die and self-absorption will shrivel up.”
In providing a bumper sticker for the virtue of humility, perhaps St. Francis de Sales says it best: “Be who you are, and be that well.”
No less, but certainly, no more.
