St. Francis de Sales - Intro to Devout Life Highlights - Part 1

Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers. He was canonized in 1665 and made the patron saint of writers in 1923. His book, Introduction to the Devout Life, discusses the importance of devotion in our lives. Devotion is what causes us to obey God's commandments quickly and diligently. It is possible for anyone, regardless of their vocation, to live a devout life. True devotion perfects everything and does not hinder anyone. We should not be discouraged by our weaknesses, but rather strive to resist them. God created us to show us His goodness and grace. The world often forgets this and focuses on worldly pursuits. We must combat even venial sins and strive for active charity. Venial sins hinder devotion and can lead to worse sins if left unchecked. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. So today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers. He was made the patron saint of writers by Pope Pius XI in 1923. And he was canonized by Pope Alexander VII in 1665 on April the 8th. We're going to read some of his quotes today. Quotes that I've highlighted from his book. Introduction to the Devout Life, where he's writing to Philothea, which I believe tradition says was his niece. And he's informing her about the devout life and what it is and how to carry it out. And so from the first chapter, he says, Devotion is spiritual agility and vivacity by means of which charity works in us, or we in her, with love and readiness. And as charity leads us to obey and fulfill all God's commandments, so devotion leads us to obey them with promptitude and diligence. So he distinguishes there, which I think is an important distinction, that charity causes us to obey the commandments, but devotion is what causes us to obey them quickly and with discipline, with a, again, diligence, consistent application, and quickness and readiness. So that is the subject of many of the following quotes. He's trying to show us what devotion is. Elsewhere in chapter 2, he says, If devotion can soften torture and death itself, can it not lighten the daily path of duty? And I think that's another important thing to keep in mind, that if we're going to really fulfill God's will and perform our duty, devotion is what will lighten that path. When Jesus says in the scriptures that my burden is light and my yoke is sweet, it's light and sweet to those who have devotion, to those who have true charity. St. Francis of Sales was famous for his charity. And the more we go through these quotes and read, you will, if you've never read them before, I highly encourage you to read the book. It's very, very powerful. And these, again, are just some highlights. There's about 300 pages of wonderful, wonderful wisdom in this book. He says elsewhere in chapter 3, True devotion hinders no one, but rather it perfects everything. And whenever it is out of keeping with any person's legitimate vocation, it must be spurious, end quote. So, it perfects everything. True devotion does not hinder someone, but rather it perfects everything. That's what gives life vigor to what we do. He ends chapter 3 with, quote, Where so ever we may be, we may and should aim at a life of perfect devotion, end quote. And so he emphasizes that this is possible for anyone to achieve in any vocation or any role of life. You don't necessarily have to be a religious person. You don't necessarily have to be a religious... He says it is not merely an error, but a heresy, to suppose that a devout life is necessarily banished from the soldier's camp, or the merchant's shop, or the prince's court, or the domestic home. He says hearth, but hearth and home. So again, as I just mentioned, he says it's a heresy to think that you cannot have the devout life if you are a soldier in the camp, or a merchant at your shop, or a prince at court, or if you have a domestic home, if you're married, if you have children, and your vocation is domestic life. All of us can be devout. We all can't be contemplative monks or nuns, but even if we're not, we can have the devout life. He says there are other forms of devotion suitable that are not monastic or religious in nature, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Job, Tobias, Sarah, Rebecca, and Judith in the old law, and in the new law he mentions St. Joseph, Lydia, and St. Crispin in their trades, St. Anne, St. Martha, St. Monica, Aquila, and Priscilla in their households, Cornelius, St. Sebastian, and St. Maurice in their military charges, Constantine, St. Helen, St. Louis, and St. Edward in their thrones. They were kings and queens and emperors. So it's important for us to remember that no matter what our vocation is, many of us are married and, you know, we're lay people, but no matter what our vocation is, we can fulfill it with true spiritual devotion. Chapter 5 was the first step in purifying the soul, and he reminds us to, quote, Be not discouraged by infirmities. Our perfection consists in struggling against them. Victory does not lie in ignoring our infirmities, but in resisting them. End quote. And this is important because most of us, at least, maybe I shouldn't say most, but a lot of us today, are told that to even have an infirmity is such a problem that it's not worth it. It's not worth fighting for. It's not worth fighting for. It's not worth fighting for. It's such a problem that it leads to great discouragement, right? We are told that to even have an infirmity is a really, really bad thing, and it leads to this discouragement, which makes our spiritual life more dry. It makes life harder. So, victory does not lie in ignoring the infirmities, but in resisting them, and that's a common thing, too. A lot of people ignore the infirmities and the weaknesses that they must confront, and resisting them is a labor, as we just heard in the gospel for last Sunday, yesterday. We're called to labor in the vineyard of Christ. And laboring is how we participate with God in our salvation, and this is tied into this, where we cannot ignore our weaknesses or our infirmities, but we must resist them. Deliver me, O Lord, said King David, from cowardice and faint-heartedness. The faint-heartedness, the unwillingness to resist, Deliver me, O Lord, said King David, from cowardice and faint-heartedness. The faint-heartedness, the unwillingness to face our own infirmities, and to rely and continually pray for God's grace to overcome them. He says elsewhere in chapter 10, quote, God did not create you because He had any need of you, for you are wholly useless to Him, but only that He might exercise towards you His goodness, bestowing on you His grace and glory, end quote. And he says, consider the wretchedness of the world which forgets this, and goes on as though the end of creation were to plant and to build, to amass wealth and to live in frivolity. So this is what we see a lot of today. People having misunderstandings of God, like He doesn't need human beings to be happy, He was perfectly happy and content in Himself. But He created you so that He might exercise towards you His goodness. So He made you so that He could show you His goodness, and so that you could receive His grace and glory. That's why all men are called to become Catholic, to be baptized, and to participate in the sacramental life, because that is how you receive sanctifying grace, which is God's life in you. And He made us for that purpose. That's what the basic purpose of the book is. That's what the basic catechism teaches us in Lesson 1. The purpose of life is to know, love, and serve God. But then very poignant for our times, and he's again saying this back in the 15-1600s, consider the wretchedness of the world which forgets this. Forgets what? That God created you so He could give you His goodness and grace, so you could partake in glory. Consider the wretchedness of the world which forgets this and goes on as though the end of creation were to plant and to build and to amass wealth and to live in frivolity. A lot of what we see today, this is the purpose of most people, to amass their fortunes and to build the things they wish to build and to pass their time in comfort and frivolity and, you know, happy occasions and pleasant experiences. It's no shock that so many of them are so discontent even though they put on a thin facade that life is good. There are many things today that are... that tempt us away from remembering the devout path. Satan doesn't want us to be following the devout path. He wants us to be caught up in the world, to think that the end of our life is to enjoy this life. But that is not our purpose. Our purpose is much greater than that. Our purpose is to partake in the glory of heaven where we get to worship God, our Creator, who gave us life. So St. Francis de Sales is inculcating that to be devout we have to keep this purpose before our mind and renew it each day because it's easy to forget, because we see with worldly eyes and we do not see the spiritual world with our eyes. We see it with the eyes of faith. He says elsewhere, there is a wide difference between a chance falsehood concerning some trivial matter which is the result of carelessness and taking pleasure in falsehood or deliberately telling lies. Because this is in a chapter where he says we must lay aside our disposition to venial sins. And this is so contrary to the spirit of the age because the spirit of this age is that we must lay aside the spirit of the age because the spirit of this age is even mortal sin can be disregarded. People don't have to fear God if they commit mortal sin. You know, God will save them even if they have mortal sin, even if they're not sorry. And so alien to tradition is that, that St. Francis de Sales teaches we must lay aside our disposition to even venial sins. We have to work to combat even that. We have to pray for the grace to overcome even our venial sins, not just to avoid mortal sin. And this is the attitude of someone who's truly devout. Again, because that's the theme of the book. Someone who's truly devout to God does not wish to continue even in venial sin. Even though venial sins in and of themselves will not keep you out of heaven, they will make your purgatory worse if you go to purgatory. And if left unchecked, they will lead to mortal sin. And so he says later on in the chapter, venial sins do not destroy the soul, but they hinder devotion. And so clog the powers of the soul with bad habits and inclinations that it loses that active charity, which is the life spring of devotion. So if we hold on to venial sins, if we know we have them and we don't wish to remedy them and to be freed from them by doing acts of penance and works of mercy, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, even going to confession to confess venial sins has been recommended by many saints and popes, including the last pope, Pope Pius XII. Frequent confession, even for venial sins, will lead to an increase in devotion and will strengthen you to avoid those venial sins. So this is the attitude that we should have. But the reason that St. Francis de Sales is so brilliant is because he doesn't inculcate this desire to avoid venial sin the way most people today do, which is with a very harsh fear. He shows you and persuades you with truth and reason to become devout and try to avoid your venial sins out of love for God, not just out of a fear that if you do one thing wrong, God is ready with the whip to destroy you. We destroy ourselves because we refuse to practice the Catholic faith, to put into practice the religion that God has revealed. But God is not ready with the whip to crush us for the slightest offense. He is calling us to devotion. He wants us to be devout. And St. Francis is helping us get there. He also says in a chapter heading, we must purify ourselves from the taste for useless and dangerous things. And he says the evil lies not in doing the thing, but in caring for it. And that is a very careful distinction that he makes and something that I really had to realize. Because certain things are not evil to do. For example, any sport, if you play golf or baseball or bowling, any physical activity like that that's an organized sport, or whether you just play it for fun, doing the sport itself, participating in the act of bowling a ball or hitting a golf ball, is not evil in itself. But when we care too much for it, it can become evil. He says it is a pity to sow in our hearts such vain and idle inclinations which occupy the place of better things and hinder our soul from devoting all its energies to higher pursuits. So, it's an important lesson for many people today, including myself, that there are many things that we can do that in and of themselves are not sinful, but we can't care for them too much. We can't place too much, we can't give too much of our heart to it or a disproportionate level of love or affection for it, because then it will mess up the hierarchy and we have to love God above all things. That's the gospel. And if we start to put too much of our heart into what he calls useless and dangerous things, it can be dangerous to our soul. He says, therefore I say that although it is lawful to amuse yourself, to dance and to dress and to hear good plays and to join in society, yet to be attached to such things is contrary to devotion and extremely hurtful and dangerous. So, as I just said, it is lawful to amuse yourself with such things if they do not go against the moral law. You can dance properly, right? Obviously, there's many dances today that are grossly wicked and evil, but he's referring to appropriate dance or dress or a play that is moral or to join with friends in society, to have camaraderie, but to be attached to those things is contrary to devotion and extremely hurtful and dangerous because it hinders devotion. The evil lies not in doing the thing but in caring for it, he says. And that's very hard to do. It's very easy for the heart to become attached to these things. And so when I read this and remind myself of it, I try to look at are there things that I'm still attached to in an excessive way that will hinder my devotion. He goes on, purifying ourselves from evil inclinations. Certain inclinations, imperfections, and their results are faults and deficiencies. For instance, he mentions, quote, St. Jerome, relates that St. Paula was naturally so disposed to sadness and melancholy that when she lost her husband and children, she nearly died of grief. This was an imperfection, not a sin, as it was against her desire and will. Some are naturally light of purpose and some are naturally more disputatious. Others are disposed to impatience and anger or to softness. Indeed, there are few in whom we do not perceive some such imperfections. But although they are natural infirmities, still by care and watchfulness, they must be restrained and corrected, and at last overcome and cured, end quote. Sorry, he says, and this, my daughter, remember he's talking to Philothea, and this, my daughter, you must do. So even if you have natural inclinations, and I know for me it's more to impatience and to anger than it is to softness, but we have to work and labor to curb these imperfections. We don't get to make excuses and say, you know, it's just who I am. God made me this way. He may have made you with a certain temperament, right? We learn about the temperaments like the choleric and the sanguine, the phlegmatic and the melancholic. Like here he mentions St. Paul being very prone to melancholy. So God may have given you that temperament, but he gave it to you so that you had something to labor against to earn your salvation. He didn't give it to you so you could use it as an excuse and a crutch to hold on to your flawed ways. Scripture tells us St. Paul had a thorn in his side that God would not remove. Well, why? Isn't God charitable? Why would he leave St. Paul with a proverbial thorn in his side? It's because St. Paul also had to work out his salvation. The thorn was a gift of God so that he would have to labor in the vineyard, as we heard in the Gospel on Sunday. I summed up the previous chapter with true devotion is agile, nimble, and mobile. We can rise and move to God. Earthly attachment weighs us down and encumbers us, like so many weights and chains holding us down. Stay nimble and agile by not caring so much for earthly amusements. And again, it doesn't mean you can't have recreation, because we need recreation. We need lawful and moral recreation. But we don't want our heart to become attached to the recreation. We don't want our heart to so love the recreation that it becomes one of the reasons why we get up in the morning. How many times have we heard people say, my life has no meaning if I can't drink coffee, or I can't play golf, or I can't eat certain foods, or if I had to give up wine or smoking, life would have no meaning. And some people, it seems like that's a joke, but a devout soul wouldn't even feel the inclination to say that because their heart really is not attached to those things. They can use them if they need to, and they can take proper recreation, but they're not attached to the recreation itself. Lastly for this section, and then we'll continue to review some of his highlights, and perhaps someday I'll read this entire book, but whole books are very long and hard to get through in audio form, and we do need to get through Pope Leo's encyclical. But lastly for here, he transitions from part one of the book to the second part, which is Counsels Concerning the Soul's Approach to God in Prayer and the Sacraments. And the first chapter is The Necessity of Prayer. Prayer brings our mind into the brightness of divine light and exposes our will to the warmth of divine love. Nothing else can so purge our mind from its ignorance or our will from its depraved affections. He says, Jesus is the light of the world and it is therefore in him, by him, and for him that we must be enlightened and illuminated. So whatever we need to know and we do not know, we must pray to be relieved of our ignorance. We must pray to be relieved of our depraved affections, as we just read about not being too attached to the things of the world and to earthly amusements. If we are attached to them, what's the solution? Despair? No, that's the solution of Satan. The solution of Christ is to pray. The sacred counsel of Trent said we must do all that lies within our power and pray for the grace to do that which we cannot do. We must pray for the grace to do what we cannot do, because with God all things are possible. Any imperfection or flaw or even vice can be overcome. Vice is habitual mortal sin. Even vice can be overcome and the main way it will be overcome is by prayer and the sacraments. But if you don't pray, then you likely will not even approach the sacraments because your will must be disposed to receive the sacraments in order for you to receive them. You have to desire the sacraments before you're going to go and receive them. So if you're not even praying, then it's very unlikely that you're going to spontaneously go to the sacraments of confession if you are trying to get rid of a vice or a flaw. So we have to pray every day. We have to say the rosary every day. We have to be doing our morning and evening prayers and we have to prioritize them. The devout soul prioritizes them. And it's hard. But it's more hard because we make it hard. So on today, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, I pray that the feast would remind you to pray for the grace from St. Francis de Sales to be devout because the world needs devout Catholics. The reason that the world is in such chaos today is because there are so few who really believe the truth anymore. There are so few who value the truth above their comfort and their worldly amusements as we just heard from St. Francis. The hearts of the world have become too attached to the things of the world, the comfort, the ease, the wealth, the luxuries. And on top of that, if there are some Catholics left, so few are devout. Myself included. I am nowhere near the end of my journey towards devotion. We must continue that journey and never despair of growing more and more devout as our life goes on. We must continue to pray and labor in the vineyard to become more devout because evil thrives today because there are so few devout souls, so few who really put the things of God above the things of man. And St. Francis de Sales did that and that's why he's a saint and that's why he converted so many back to the Catholic faith through his writing and his preaching. May God bless you and thank you for listening.