24 January is the liturgical memorial of St Francis de Sales (1567-1622). He was a missionary preacher, ecumenical reformer, bishop of Geneva, well-known spiritual writer and co-founder of a religious order. Pope Pius XI appointed him as the heavenly Patron of writers.
In his encyclical Rerum omnium perturbationem, he praised St Francis “not only for the sublime holiness of life which he achieved, but also for the wisdom with which he directed souls in the ways of sanctity”.
One of the major pillars of Francis’ spirituality, as thoroughly developed in his classic book Introduction to the Devout Life, is that holiness is lived within the demands of daily life. He zealously and tirelessly taught that holiness should pervade the daily responsibilities which our personal calling implies. The Second Vatican Council recovered “the universal call to holiness” and forcefully promoted it in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. In a letter celebrating the 400th anniversary of St Francis’ birth, Pope Paul VI recalled the saint’s long-lasting contribution.
“No one of the recent Doctors of the Church more than St Francis de Sales anticipated the deliberations and decisions of the Second Vatican Council with such a keen and progressive insight.
“He renders his contribution by the example of his life, by the wealth of his true and sound doctrine, by the fact that he has opened and strengthened the spiritual ways of Christian perfection for all states and conditions in life. We propose that these three things be
imitated, embraced, and followed.”
The profound spiritual richness which imbued the saintly life of Francis de Sales can be recapitulated in his committed living of the dual command of holiness: love God and your neighbour. St Francis’ stress on the former helped him to undergo an experiential union with God in prayer, which he proposed to others. On the other hand, his living out of the second commandment, especially motivated by his spiritual friendship with the widow St Jane Frances de Chantal, helped Francis to undertake various pastoral projects, including the founding of the religious order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. In his letter on the fourth centenary of St Francis De Sales’ episcopal ordination, Pope John Paul II highlighted his spiritual leadership, both as his personal holiness and also as his unique contribution to the development of doctrine.
“With a particularly voluminous correspondence, he also accompanied with great discernment and a gradual pedagogy adapted to each situation, appropriately using highly coloured images, the souls who entrusted themselves to his spiritual direction .... Since he was passionately in love with God and man, his attitude to people was fundamentally optimistic and he never failed to invite them, to use his own words, to flourish where they were sown.
“Still today, and I am very glad of it, the works of Francis de Sales are part of our classical literature; it is the sign that his teaching as a priest and bishop finds an echo in the human heart and has an affinity with the deepest human aspirations. I invite pastors and faithful to learn from his example and his writings, which are always up to date.”
St Francis de Sales was declared a Doctor of the Church, Doctor of divine love, by Blessed Pius IX in 1877. His distinctive theological contribution can be traced in the following pericope: “Charity is a love of friendship, a friendship of preference, a preferential love, but an incomparable preference, sovereign and supernatural, that is as a sun in the soul to enlighten it with its rays, in all the spiritual faculties to perfect them, in all one’s powers to moderate them, but in the will, as on its seat, to dwell there and to make it cherish and love its God above all things.”
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap