Category: St. Francis de Sales
-
St. Francis de Sales on fasting.
—
|
1 comment on St. Francis de Sales on fasting.First in a series for Lent. + + + The first of the Lenten sermons of St. Francis de Sales treats of a fairly typical Ash Wednesday topic: fasting isn't virtuous in and of itself, but to be salutary must be done in a particular way. Here's the structure: Introduction: Fasting profits some and…
-
My Lenten reading/blogging: That other Francis, again.
For Lent this year I picked up a copy of The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent, part of a series of the saint's sermons published by TAN. I won't be giving up the Internet at all for Lent this year — not Facebook, not Twitter, certainly not blogging. (Though as usual,…
-
Direction of intention according to St. Francis de Sales.
Having time for just a quick post this morning, I thought I'd return to my series on the very practical body of Salesian spirituality, in particular, St. Francis de Sales's Spiritual Directory. There's a quite short, but useful, bit in it that I want to highlight. I had just gotten started on the series about the…
-
A new morning exercise, à la St. Francis de Sales.
I took a nice long hiatus from it while I was traveling, but I fully intend to get back to the series I had started on Salesian spirituality. Today seems like a good day. First, a recap of the three posts I wrote before we left: Salesian spirituality: Four examples. Francis de Sales: The…
-
Tiresome apologies for blogging.
No, not from me. + + + I don't have anyone in particular in mind today. Ever since partway through my last pregnancy I've had trouble putting my butt in the chair long enough to produce decent blog posts at a decent clip. I managed to blog about our European adventure reasonably well, but…
-
Pilgrimages.
I have really mixed feelings about our trip to Annecy, and I thought I would hash them out before we went to Rome. The Basilica of the Visitation was breathtaking. To take it in, I would have liked to sit there for a while, twenty minutes at least, contemplating the mosaic of Christ on the…
-
Catching up with a few travel notes.
The hotel wifi has been whiffling in and out, causing me to go down to the front desk and have conversations with the staff along the lines of, “The weefee, it works but not very well. It begins, it stops, it begins, it stops. From time to time it can find the network but then…
-
Francis de Sales: The patron saint of to-do lists?
I know I said in my last, introductory post to Salesian spirituality that I was going to look first at Don Bosco’s “Preventive Method,” what with the school year starting up now and all. But I changed my mind, because I happened to be looking at a short work of St. Francis de Sales, the…
-
Salesian spirituality: Four examples.
Shifting gears a little bit to write about what I've been thinking as a spiritual anchor for my upcoming school year, which we'll be starting late. Ever since I first got deeply into the Western classic Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales, I've been reading bits here and there about the…
-
If you are looking for spiritual reading during Lent…
…may I suggest you try Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales? I blogged about it at great length a couple of years ago, and I still think it is wonderful — astonishingly modern, given when it was written. I particularly recommend the “Everyman’s Library” edition that is translated by Father Michael…
-
Sightseers.
A little background, first. + + + One of the things I took away from my in-depth reading of Introduction to the Devout Life was the importance of making a distinction between sins and weaknesses. I wrote here: Sin and weakness are distinct problems, and so St. Francis means to give distinct advice about…
-
How to read Introduction to the Devout Life: a wrap-up post.
Over the last eight months, I've been blogging my way through St. Francis de Sales's Introduction to the Devout Life. The book charmed me almost immediately with its familiar, modern voice (at least in Father Michael Day's translation). Too, the advice was so much more practical than what you find in a lot of spiritual works: St. Francis explicitly writes…
bearing blog 