Category: St. Francis de Sales
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Anxiety, or patience?
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3 comments on Anxiety, or patience?I told Jamie, who was writing about anxiety and OCD in the time of coronavirus last night, that I was going to find a particular quote from St. Francis de Sales about anxiety, and post it on my blog. I knew I had read it recently (I'm reading Introduction à la Vie Dévote in the…
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Back to basics, in a brand-new way.
Here we are, in Lent again. Days have come when the Bridegroom has been lifted from us — or when we feel, acutely, the absence of the Bridegroom — or try to notice it — and so, we fast. + + + I went back to St. Francis de Sales earlier this winter and reviewed…
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St. Francis de Sales on the worth of the Passion.
Occasionally theologians, visionaries, saints, and homilists assert that no human being ever suffered pain, abandonment, and humiliation to such a degree as did Jesus in his Passion. I certainly have heard that from the pulpit. I have had conversations in which people speak movingly of their belief that no one ever suffered as much pain,…
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Self-care with St. Francis de Sales.
(Read my other posts on Introduction to the Devout Life by following links here.) Introduction to the Devout Life may be read online here. Link goes to table of contents. But if you are willing to purchase a physical book, and believe me this work is worth it because it's the sort of thing you…
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Consolations and the prosperity gospel.
Amy Welborn recently put up a post on the prosperity gospel's more subtle forms, a "well-trodden road" that she's considered many times. This is an interesting discussion, because while some versions (the "health-and-wealth" gospel) are so obviously out of line with orthodox Christian thought as to be almost a parody, others are more difficult…
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Francis de Sales: The patron saint of to-do lists? (A repost for the new year.)
I wrote this post originally in August of 2014, when I was working through some ideas I'd drawn from various figures in Salesian spirituality. Its themes of resolution make it, I think, appropriate for the first post of the new year. Three years later, although I haven't made a daily habit out of the insights I…
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Lent notes.
I started Lent off without a specific plan to give something up “for Lent.” I understand that to forgo voluntarily some specific pleasure or luxury — chocolate, or Twitter, or cream in your coffee — is a valuable penitential practice for many. My husband gives up chocolate every year, Sundays included, and reports that its…
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St. Francis de Sales on “eternal happiness:” eternal multitasking.
Wrote this post on Sunday: This one will be short because I just got back from celebrating my husband's 42nd birthday, which we did by — for the first time — leaving all the kids at home, under the oldest's supervision, including the napping baby, and heading to a neighborhood bar to drink fizzy drinks…
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Attentive.
A little more on the notion of “attentive faith” that St. Francis de Sales described in great detail in that third sermon which I blogged yesterday. To sum up from memory (I do not have the book with me): Jesus praises the Canaanite woman, “How great is your faith!” So some persons can have a…
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St. Francis de Sales on faith. (And dogs.)
Part of my series for Lent 2015. + + + The third sermon in The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent is entitled "Faith," and is a meditation on the Gospel passage about the Canaanite woman, Matt. 15:21-28. After this, Jesus left those parts and withdrew into the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon.…
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St. Francis de Sales on temptation.
Moving on to the second in my collection of sermons by St. Francis de Sales for Lent: "Temptation." + + + The basic thrust of this sermon is that temptation is an inevitable part of the chosen life of the Christian, and that Jesus taught us that much when he went into the desert (Mt…
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Mortification through daily work: St. Francis de Sales again.
This isn't from my book of Lenten sermons, but from Introduction to the Devout Life. In the chapter on "Mortification," the saint first encourages fasting "a little" more than the minimum: If you are able to fast you would do well to fast a little more often than the Church demands, for besides elevating the spirit,…
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