Saint Francis de Sales

Having finished his humanities in Annecy, he was sent to Paris, to the Collège de Clermont, run by the Jesuits, to study rhetoric and philosophy there. He applied himself with ardor to his studies and obtained the top places among his fellow students. Thanks to his modesty and simplicity, these successes never flattered his self-esteem, for he sought above all his advancement in the science of the Saints and solid virtues. "Our Lord," he would say, "is my master in the science of the Saints; I often go to Him so that He may teach it to me; for I would care very little about being learned if I did not become a Saint." Admitted into the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin established at the Jesuit college, this was for him the beginning of a whole new life. Mary was the confidante of his sorrows as well as his joys, and he often said in a holy transport: "Ah! who could not love you, my dearest Mother? May I be eternally all yours, and may all creatures with me live and die for your love!" Churches and monasteries were the places he loved most: after prayer, he liked to converse with the religious in these havens of piety, and thus to retemper his fervor alongside these men who had renounced everything to embrace a life of penance, humility, and prayer.

Francis de Sales, having finished his rhetoric course, moved on to philosophy: he was then fifteen years old. He joined to this study that of theology, to which he applied himself with ardor. With the permission of his tutor, he followed at the same time at the Royal College courses in Holy Scripture and Hebrew. These multiple occupations did not make him cut back on any of his exercises of piety. His inclination for the ecclesiastical state continued to grow, and with it his love for the chastity that he had resolved to preserve until death and whose guardianship he had entrusted to the Queen of Virgins. But the spirit of darkness could not let this flower of holiness bloom on such a vast stage without trying to wither and blight it under the wind of temptation. Vain had been his efforts until then to make Francis's virtue stumble: neither the grandeurs of the century nor the sweetness of family had been able to compress in his heart the impulse that carried him toward the Church; the spectacle of worldly festivities, no more than the insinuations of perverse companions, had been able to diminish in his soul the love of God and the treasures of perfection of which this pure love is the principle and the source. The father of lies understood that he had to try another way to shake this firm and precocious virtue. He began to attack him through discouragement, by insinuating the thought that perhaps he was not in a state of grace. This temptation kept growing, to the point that he ended up imagining that hell would probably be his share for eternity. Such a painful and cruel thought made him say: "Lord, if I am not to see You, grant at least this softening to my pain: do not permit that I ever curse and blaspheme You. O love, O charity! O beauty to which I have vowed all my affections! Shall I then not enjoy your delights! Shall I then not be intoxicated with the abundance of the goods of your house! Shall I then not pass into the place of the admirable tabernacle where my God resides! O most lovable Virgin! You whose charms cannot gladden hell, shall I then never see you in the kingdom of your Son, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun! What! Shall I not participate in the immense benefit of the resurrection! Is my sweet Jesus not dead for me as well as for others? Ah! be that as it may, Lord, if I cannot love You in the other life, since no one praises You in hell, may I at least put to profit to love You all the moments of my short existence here below!" In such cruel anxiety, Francis was soon reduced to a sad state of wasting away and weakness. His piety was in vain in inspiring him with the most just and consoling reflections; he could not be reborn to confidence and hope.

However, the hour of deliverance was about to strike. Having one day entered, upon leaving the college, the church of Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, he went to throw himself at the feet of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and with many tears made this prayer to her: "Remember, O Virgin Mary, my tender Mother, that it has never been heard that any of those who have had recourse to your protection and implored your assistance have been rejected. Full of this confidence, O Virgin, mother of virgins, I run to you, I throw myself at your feet, groaning under the weight of my sins. O Mother of the Word! Do not despise my prayers, but show yourself propitious to my needs and hear me." After this prayer, he made a vow of perpetual chastity and promised to recite the rosary of six decades every day. It is done: at that instant the temptation vanishes, the anguish disappears, and with hope return serenity and health! Purified in this way by the fire of trial, Francis de Sales drew from this school a tender and profound commiseration for persons tempted or weary of interior sorrows, and became very skillful in the direction of souls.

After a six-year stay in Paris, Francis de Sales, accompanied by his tutor, returned to the bosom of his family. It is impossible to express the joy of his parents at the sight of the noble young man in whom the graces of the body vied with the graces of the soul, and who united perfect distinction of manners with knowledge as profound as it was varied. They were enraptured by what they saw and heard, and he was happy in the happiness of his family, attributing to the Author of all gifts the well-deserved praises addressed to him from all sides. But his stay with his parents was not to be long. Desirous of giving him an education worthy in every way of his high birth and, above all, of having him embrace the career of the magistracy, his father did not delay in sending him to the University of Padua, in the State of Venice, to follow the courses of the famous Guy Panciroli, the leading jurisconsult of that time.

Under the guidance of his tutor, Francis de Sales crossed the Alps and arrived safely in Padua at the beginning of the year 1587. He devoted himself with ardor to the study of jurisprudence and theology, and the time left free by his university classes he employed in exercises of piety. He took as his director a pious and learned Jesuit, Father Possevin, shared with him the attraction that drew him toward the ecclesiastical state, revealed his whole soul to him, and abandoned himself to his wise counsel. The holy religious, after having well examined his vocation, recognized the finger of God in it; he even went further, and, in a prophetic impulse, affirmed that Providence was calling him to one day become Bishop of Geneva and one of the greatest prelates of the Church.

Under the skillful direction of Father Possevin, Francis de Sales studied theology: the Summa of Saint Thomas and the works of Saint Bonaventure became, along with the Controversies of Cardinal Bellarmine, his favorite books. To this study he added the reading of the Fathers, such as Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Bernard, and Saint Cyprian. This extra work did not make him neglect his exercises of piety, to which he encouraged himself with these words: "For what end are you in this world? Ad quid venisti? The days of man are short and pass like a shadow. Let us do good while we have time: the night approaches when one can no longer work." It was then that he entered the Congregation of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and drew up for himself rules of conduct divided into four parts. In the first, he proposes to make an examination every morning to pass the day well. After having humbled himself before God, he begs the Lord to come to his aid in the dangers to which he might be exposed; then, reviewing what he will have to do during the day, he examines before God how to conduct himself well, and after a firm resolution to do what he will have judged to be most perfect, he recommends his whole being to God and asks Him to conform in all things to His holy will.

The second part relates to the sanctification of the day and the night. "As soon as I wake," says Saint Francis de Sales, "I will address my thanksgivings to the Lord; I will think of the devotion of the shepherds who came at dawn to adore the divine Child of Bethlehem, of the fervor of the three Marys, who, touched by a lively sentiment of piety, rose very early on the day of the Resurrection to go see Jesus Christ at the tomb. Following these beautiful models, I will honor Our Lord as the light of the world who dissipates the darkness of sin, shows the way to paradise, and I will consecrate my whole day to Him. I will assist during the day at the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and I will summon to this great action all the powers of my soul with these words: Venite et videte opera Domini, quæ posuit prodigia super terram; transveamus usque Bethleem et videamus hoc verbum quod factum est, quod Dominus ostendit nobis. I will perform my meditation exactly every day; and, if I do not have time during the day, I will take it from my sleep rather than miss it. To dispose my soul to it, if I wake during the night, I will awaken my heart with these words: Media nocte clamor factus est: Ecce sponsus venit, exite obviam ei; then, thinking that it is during the night that Jesus came into the world, I will pray to Him to be born again in me; the exterior darkness will make me think of the interior darkness into which lukewarmness and sin cast souls, and I will conjure the Lord to dissipate this darkness by His sweet and beneficent light. I will also recall these words of the Psalmist: 'During the night, lift up your hands to the Lord, and bless Him. Weep in your beds for the sins of the day. I will water my couch with my tears.' If some nocturnal fears come to besiege me, I will reassure myself with the thought that my guardian angel watches over me, and above all by the consideration of the presence of God, saying to myself: What can he fear who is with God? 'He who keeps Israel will not slumber; the Lord is at my right hand to prevent any evil from happening to me. His truth will cover you with its shield; you will not fear the terrors of the night. The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?'"

The third part includes the manner of occupying oneself in prayer. "I will begin," he says, "by recalling all the good that God has done for me, all the good thoughts and pious sentiments He has inspired in me in the past, all the graces He has granted me, especially the grace of certain illnesses and infirmities, which, by weakening my body, have been so useful to my soul, and I will deduce from this the firm purpose never to offend the God who has been so good to me. To this picture of God's kindness I will oppose the vanity of the grandeurs, riches, and pleasures of the world, their short duration, their uncertainty, their end; I will despise them, I will hold them in horror, and will say to them: Withdraw far from me, deceptive goods by which the demon seduces and loses souls: I want nothing of you, I have nothing in common with you. Then I will consider the ugliness and misery of sin, which degrades man, which is unworthy of an honest heart, which, far from giving true and solid contentment, brings with it only remorse and bitterness, which finally displeases God, a consideration alone more than sufficient to make it hated forever. From these reflections I will bring closer what my conscience tells me of the excellence of virtue, which is so beautiful, so noble, so worthy of an upright and honest soul, which sanctifies man, makes him an angel, and almost a God, which makes him taste the pleasures of paradise on earth and makes him the object of the complacencies of his Creator. In order to excite even more strongly in me the horror of vice and the love of virtue, I will admire the beauty of reason, this torch descended from heaven to light our steps: alas! one only goes astray by closing one's eyes to its light. But above all I will consider death, the judgments of God, purgatory, hell, saying to myself: What will all present things serve me then? From there I will rise to the contemplation of the perfections of God, which I will study, first in the life and death of Jesus Christ, in Mary and all the Saints, where an emanation of these beautiful attributes shines with such pure brilliance, then in heaven itself, where I will enter by thought, and where, after having admired the felicity of the angels and Saints, I will rest gently in the love of the divine goodness: I will taste it in itself, this infinite goodness; I will drink from this life-giving water at its very source, and I will say to Him: O Lord! You alone are good by essence, goodness itself, eternal, inexhaustible, incomprehensible..."

Saint Francis de Sales then examines the rules to follow in the commerce of civil life. "I will not despise," he says, "and will not appear to avoid anyone; I will take care not to act too freely with anyone, not even with my best friends; I will say or do nothing that is not in order; I will especially avoid offending, stinging, or mocking others, and I will honor everyone according to his merit or dignity; I will observe modesty, speaking little and well. I will be a friend to all and familiar with few; I will observe a gentleness that has nothing affected, a modesty that banishes all air of pride, an ease that keeps austerity away, a complaisance that forbids itself contradiction, whenever conscience does not prescribe it; I will be cordial without dissimulation; however, I will open myself more or less, according to the persons with whom I will be. I will vary the type of my conversation according to ranks and characters. If necessity forces me to have relations with the great, I will carefully keep on my guard; for one must be with them as with fire, one must not approach too closely; I will have in their presence much modesty and at the same time an honest freedom..."

These rules, approved by his tutor and his director, served not only for his personal sanctification, but for that of several others. The chastity of Francis was several times put to hard tests, but he always emerged victorious in this struggle against hell. To better preserve this virtue in the midst of a corrupting world, he added, to fasts and hairshirts, the discipline with which he macerated his innocent flesh. After some time he fell into a state of languor to which were added an acute fever, gout, dysentery, and universal rheumatism. Francis welcomed these evils with entire resignation to the will of God. Stretched out on his bed of pain, pale and wasted, he was a prey to the most cruel sufferings. The doctors having declared that there was no cure to be hoped for, the holy young man asked to receive the Sacraments. At the height of the illness, when all hope seemed lost, an extraordinary change took place; strength returned little by little and soon the recovery was complete. Attributing this unhoped-for cure to God and the Blessed Virgin, he rendered them the most fervent thanksgivings and from then on consecrated himself with new ardor to the service of the altars and the practice of Christian virtues.

Francis de Sales, while seeking the means to sanctify himself more each day, devoted himself to study with ever-increasing ardor; he followed the course of jurisprudence with honor, and, in the first days of the month of September 1591, he was able, after the most brilliant examinations, to receive solemnly from the hands of the Bishop of Padua the crown and the cap of doctor. Having thus reached the goal he had set for himself in coming to this city, he left it in the midst of a unanimous concert of blessings and praises. But, before taking the road back to the country that had seen him born, he wished, with his father's consent, to make the pilgrimage to Rome and that of Loreto. He visited with great sentiments of faith and piety all the monuments of the capital of the Christian world, then he went to Our Lady of Loreto. "Scarcely," says Father la Rivière, "had he bent his knees in this marvelous sanctuary, than, as if he had entered a burning furnace, he felt himself inflamed with an extraordinary charity." He received the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist in this venerated sanctuary, consecrated himself there again to Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, and renewed his vow of chastity: God granted him extraordinary graces in return. From Loreto he went to Ancona, set sail for the port of Cattolica and from there to Venice. Francis left this city to return to his homeland, passed through Pavia, Milan, Turin, the Mont Cenis, and arrived in Savoy in the spring of the year 1592. He was then in his twenty-fifth year, tall and well-built, skilled in the near-universality of human sciences, and enhancing with an unequaled modesty and gentleness the happy expression of his face and the grace of his bearing.

Rightly proud of such a son, the Marquis de Sales was not content to hold him up as a model to his other children; he also wished to present him to the world. The first person to whom he introduced him was Claude de Granier, Bishop of Geneva. This venerable prelate had no sooner caught sight of Francis than he felt, as he himself said, "supernaturally inclined, not only to a very special affection, but also to a great feeling of veneration." He then added, addressing the priests who surrounded him: "This young nobleman will become a great personage, a pillar of the Church: he will be my successor in this bishopric." Such, however, were not the views of the Marquis de Sales: he dreamed for his son of the honors of which the world is so jealous. Scarcely had Francis returned to Annecy when his father demanded that he go to Chambéry to be received as a lawyer at the Senate of Savoy. Francis consented all the more readily as this illustrious tribunal counted two ecclesiastics among its lawyers. Moreover, he had no reason to repent having yielded on this point to his father's demands: his reception, which took place in Chambéry in the most solemn manner on November 24, 1592, first gave him the opportunity to form a close bond with the pious and learned Antoine Favre, the ornament of th e Senate of S Antoine Favre Jurisconsult and intimate friend of the saint. avoy and an intimate friend of his family; then, in his thanks to the Senate, the opportunity to deliver a magnificent eulogy on justice, which he presented as "the most beautiful of all virtues, virtue in its entirety, descended from heaven and born of God, the bond of the world, the peace of nations, the support of the fatherland, the safeguard of the people, the strength of a country, the protection of the weak, the consolation of the poor, the inheritance of children, the joy of all men and the hope of eternal happiness for those who administer it worthily."

The Marquis de Sales was overjoyed, and, thinking only of securing his son's future through an alliance worthy of him, he set his sights on the daughter of the Lord of Végy, who, in addition to a great fortune, possessed the most beautiful qualities of mind and heart, and he wanted Francis to come with him to visit this young lady. Francis, who was annoyed by this step, nevertheless lent himself to his father's wishes; he accompanied him to Sallanches in Faucigny, where she resided; but he was so cold, so reserved in his interview with this young person, that nothing led her to suspect that he had come to her home for anything other than a simple courtesy visit. In the meantime, the Baron d'Hermance arrived from Turin at the home of the Marquis de Sales to offer Francis, on behalf of the Duke of Savoy, the dignity of senator in the Senate of Chambéry. This was all that was needed to increase the hopes his father had conceived. But the young man declared that no power on earth would make him accept this high position and that he was resolved to embrace the ecclesiastical state. This determination thwarted all the plans of the Marquis de Sales; he therefore did everything in his power to hinder its execution. But nothing could shake this beloved son who, seeing everyone opposing his just desires, entrusted himself to divine Providence to hasten their fulfillment.

The Canon Louis de Sales, his cousin, in whom he had the greatest confidence and who knew all the secrets of his heart, was the instrument that heaven used on this occasion, and here is how. The provost of the chapter of Geneva having died, the virtuous canon thought that the brilliance of this dignity, the first in the diocese after that of the bishop, could, if it were conferred upon Francis, lead the Marquis de Sales to finally give him permission to embrace the ecclesiastical state. To this end, with the consent of his bishop, he had the title of provost solicited at the court of Rome for Francis de Sales. The Holy See promptly acceded to his request, and, in the month of May 1593, the good canon presented himself to his uncle, the bulls of collation in hand. This nomination, which Francis expected less than anyone else, for things had been done without his knowledge, caused the greatest surprise to the Sales family; but it could not at first abort the all-too-human designs of the Marquis. It was necessary for Francis to throw himself at his feet, to implore him with tears in his eyes, to tell him that he had made a vow of chastity in Paris, and to recount how, some time before, God had manifested to him that He wanted him under the banner of the cross by allowing him to fall three times from his horse, in the forest of Sonaz, onto his sword which had come out of its scabbard and formed a perfect cross with it.

Scarcely had the paternal consent been given to the holy young man than he hastened to strip off his secular clothes to put on the ecclesiastical habit that his pious mother, the confidante of his plans and the soul of his resolutions, had long since had prepared for him. This beautiful day for Francis was May 13, 1593. He was then twenty-six years old. A few days later, he was solemnly installed as provost, and he received from his bishop the invitation to prepare for the ordination of Trinity to receive the Minor Orders and the subdiaconate. Mgr de Granier himself conferred these holy Orders upon him and enjoined him to preach in his cathedral on the day of the Octave of Corpus Christi. Francis, distrusting himself, tremblingly acquiesced to the voice of his bishop; but, after having addressed himself to God with confidence, he felt extraordinarily strengthened and encouraged, and he appeared for the first time in the pulpit with as much assurance as if he had filled the ministry of preaching for many years. The immense crowd, which had gathered around him to hear him, withdrew so amazed by his eloquence and his doctrine that, from all sides, people cried out: "Happy the womb that bore this blessed fruit of holiness!"

Francis de Sales left the castle of his fathers to settle in Annecy. This city offered a vast field for his zeal and his charity. Visiting the sick, assisting the destitute, reconciling enemies, consoling the afflicted, instructing the ignorant, catechizing children, bringing sinners back to the paths of salvation, such was his daily occupation outside of the time taken by the duties of his capitular office. In order to appease the anger of heaven offended by the crimes of the earth, he founded, under the title of the Holy Cross, following the example of the pious associations that existed in Italy and Provence, a Confraternity of Penitents, whose members were obliged to frequent the Sacraments, to prayer and good works, and were bound to visit the sick and prisoners, and to reconcile enemies. The erection of this Confraternity took place on September 1, 1593, and Francis de Sales was both its venerated head and its wise legislator.

While working in this way for the sanctification of his neighbor, he took care not to forget his own. Despite the external works required by his devotion to the cause of God and that of His Church, he gave himself more and more to the interior life, uniting himself through continuous aspirations to the Author of all good and constantly immersing himself in the meditation of the greatness and mercies of this infinitely great and infinitely merciful Being. It was in this way that he prepared himself to receive the priestly anointing. After having been ordained a deacon on September 18, 1593, he was ordained a priest on the following December 18. In laying his hands upon him, the venerable Bishop of Geneva could not hold back his tears; it seemed to him that he saw at his feet a seraph rather than a man. The prelate's emotion spread to the congregation, and the ordination ceremony ended amidst the sobs of all those who were its happy witnesses.

Francis de Sales rose as if transfigured. It was no longer the humble Levite who had chosen for his part the lowest degrees of the sanctuary; it was the priest of Jesus Christ who felt all that was royal and great in his priesthood, who knew all the sublimity and holiness of the dignity to which he had just been promoted; thus, not judging himself yet sufficiently prepared to ascend to the holy altar, he wished to prepare himself for three days for his first Mass. It was, in fact, on December 21, the feast of Saint Thomas, that he celebrated the holy Mysteries for the first time in the cathedral of Annecy. His recollection during this awesome action penetrated with deep admiration all those who were around him, and on his face "shone," to use the words of one of them, "I know not what of angelic and divine which compelled people to love, honor, and esteem him."

He began the exercise of his priestly ministry with truly apostolic preaching in the various churches of Annecy and in the parishes surrounding that city. His sermons, in which the elegance of form vied with the solidity of doctrine, made a deep impression. The news of them spread as far as Geneva, among the heretics who began from that moment to tremble, and looked upon him as their most terrible adversary, and the only one capable of standing up to their ministers and crushing them by the vigor of his word. From the pulpit he passed to the confessional, and, for entire days, he was occupied in hearing at the holy tribunal the faithful of every rank, age, condition, and sex who came to ask his ministry to reconcile them with God. The crowd, which every day pressed around this zealous and charitable director, grew to such a point that, at the insistence of the entire Chapter, Mgr de Granier appointed our Saint to the office of grand penitentiary of his diocese, although he was still only twenty-seven years old. From then on, one saw appear in full light the marvelous gift that Saint Francis had received from heaven to direct consciences.

In the meantime, the Duke of Savoy, informed of his brilliant successes and his ever-growing merit, had him offered for the second time the dignity of senator in the Senate of Chambéry. But however much insistence his sovereign put into making him this offer, and whatever motives his father and the senator Favre alleged to make him accept it, he opposed to all the requests the refusal and the reasons he had opposed to the same offer a year earlier. It seems that so much disinterestedness and self-denial should have imposed silence on envy. It was not so, however, and the provost of Geneva not only saw himself the target of jealousy but was also slandered in the most odious way. It is the nature of the works of God to be contradicted: that which Providence was about to accomplish through the ministry of Francis de Sales could not but be marked with this divine seal. The tribulation, however, was not of long duration: the detractors of the holy priest were not long in being confounded, and he was able in all safety to occupy himself with the salvation of souls and the glorification of our Father, who is in heaven.

The Lord, moreover, was about to make his apostolic zeal shine with a brighter luster by calling him to deploy it on a larger stage. A portion of the diocese of Geneva, the province of the Chablais, was, although situated in Savoy, ravaged in a frightening manner by Protestantism, which reigned there as master, thanks to the signal weakness of the diplomacy of that era. The Duke of Savoy resolved to put an end to the progress of heresy there: to this end, he asked the Bishop of Geneva to send a missionary endowed with courage beyond all trial. Francis presented himself to his bishop to fulfill this mission, so delicate and so perilous; and despite the opposition of his father, he departed resolutely, having no other baggage than his breviary and a few books of controversy, and no other companion than his cousin, the Canon Louis de Sales, for the fortress of Allinges which, by its dominant position, commanded the country. This citadel had been chosen by him as his headquarters. Upon his arrival, he could not restrain his tears at the sight of the ruins left by the heretics, and he exhaled his sorrow in these terms: "This is then how the Lord has torn up the hedge of his vineyard and overturned the wall that protected it; it is now deserted, uprooted, and trampled underfoot; this land, once so beautiful, has been desolated by its own inhabitants, because they have violated the law of God, changed his ordinances, and broken his covenants. The ways of Sion mourn, because there is no one left who comes to her solemnities. The enemy has laid his hand on all that she had most precious; the law and the Prophets have disappeared, the stones of the sanctuary have been scattered... O Jerusalem! O Chablais! O Geneva! Convert yourself to the Lord your God, and may your contrition become as great as the sea!"

From the very next day, they went together to the town of Thonon, the principal seat of heresy, where what remained of the Catholics was reduced to a small number. Francis de Sales, always followed by his companion, went successively into all the surrounding villages, walking continually on foot, a staff in his hand, preaching several times a day with a perseverance all the more meritorious as it was less crowned with success and as it was tested by more difficulties and obstacles. It was, among the Protestant ministers who flooded the province, a competition as to who would most hinder the progress and efforts of the tireless apostle: calumnies, insults, threats, ambushes, everything was put into action to stop him. Hell, which pushed these ministers of error, even stirred up against Francis the tenderness of his relatives who, alarmed by the perils he ran for his life, did everything possible to recall him to Annecy. But nothing could make him abandon the cause. Neither the rain, nor the snow, nor the ice, nor the cold, nor the roads rendered impassable, were capable of interrupting the course of his apostolic excursions. The privations of all kinds did not break him for a single instant; and although he knew positively that he was marked for the dagger and the rifle of vile assassins, he nonetheless continued to evangelize with ardor a population that error held under its despotic domination in a true state of trembling and fear.

The little hope there was of converting such obstinate heretics could not break his courage: "I am still only at the beginning of my work," he said, "and I want to continue and hope in God against all human appearances." He spent almost a year without seeing success crown his enterprise: the happy results of the mission, which he had preached to the Catholic garrison of the Allinges, had been the only encouragement given by heaven to his efforts. As he could not make himself heard by the Protestants, he resolved, to make the truth enter more easily into the families, to put into writing the defense of the Catholic religion, with the refutation of heresy. To this end, he composed the book of Controversies. The victorious manner in which he answered the attacks of the Protestant ministers, and the spectacle of the apostolic life he led, struck many heretics: his courage and his intrepidity in the midst of dangers of all kinds finished opening their eyes, and they surrendered to his paternal exhortations, returning to the fold of the Catholic Church. As these new converts could, by remaining in the country, be exposed to relapses, he had them taken in by his father at the Château de Sales, where their needs were generously and liberally provided for.

The momentum being given, conversions multiplied: the heretical ministers, both in public conferences and in private colloquies, were reduced to silence, and on all sides, religion resumed the place that, sixty years earlier, heresy had made it lose. Public voice carried far the admirable fruits that the zeal of the holy Apostle had produced, especially after the Baron d'Avully and the lawyer Poncet, the two pillars of Protestantism in the Chablais, had solemnly abjured Calvinism. The father and mother of Francis thrilled with joy; his bishop was in rapture; Father Possevin and the Senator Favre, who were both in Chambéry, wrote to him to congratulate him. But instead of becoming proud of the concert of praise that rose on this occasion around him, the fervent missionary, on the contrary, returned all the glory to God and flew to new conquests.

The town of Thonon, which he had renewed so to speak, no longer sufficed for his zeal. He saw, moreover, that it was necessary to strike heresy at the center of its hearth if he wanted to shelter the Chablais from its reach. He therefore went to Geneva, in the company of the Baron d'Avully and a few other persons, to have a dispute with La Faye, one of the most famous ministers of the time: it was not difficult for him to confound him; for, for all response to his arguments, he obtained only insults and outrages. This brilliant victory over heresy had an immense impact. The Apostle of the Chablais was regarded as the invincible athlete of the truth.

At this news, the Duke of Savoy hastened to send him the expression of his congratulations and asked him to indicate by what means he could, for his part, second his zeal and contribute to developing the fruits of his mission. Francis asked him first to increase the number of apostolic workers in the Chablais and to ensure them revenues for their maintenance, then to restore the ruined churches there and to have those that were closed opened, and finally, to invite the inhabitants of the province to attend Catholic preachings. He suggested to him, moreover, the idea of establishing in the country a company of infantry or cavalry, to occupy the dangerous leisure of an idle youth; to found a Jesuit college in Thonon itself, and above all, to remove heretics from public office.

Pope Clement VIII, who was then seated on the chair of Saint Peter, learning, for his part, all that the holy priest was doing at the gates of Geneva for the Catholic religion, did not believe he should entrust to anyone other than him the glorious but delicate mission of measuring himself hand-to-hand, in the very city of Calvin, with the learned Theodore de Bèze who still passed, and with reason, despite his great age, for the standard-bearer of heresy and its firmest support. Francis received the order of the Pope as if it had come to him directly from heaven; but, before putting it into execution, he believed he should go to Turin i n order to put t Théodore de Bèze Successor to Calvin in Geneva, theological opponent. o better use, for the success of his work, the good dispositions of the Duke of Savoy who was summoning him to his side. This trip succeeded admirably for him, and he did not delay in returning to Thonon where his first act, despite the well-founded fears that the rage of the heretics gave rise to, was to celebrate publicly the Mass of Christmas night 1596, in the church of Saint-Hippolyte. Heaven rewarded him for this act of courage: three parishes of the Chablais, the Allinges, Mezinges, and Brens, returned at his voice, a few days later, to the fold of the Father of the family, and he was able without hindrance to accomplish in all liberty at Thonon the ceremony of the blessing and imposition of Ashes, on the first day of Lent. And, as if these labors were not enough for his apostolic heart, he composed and published at the same time his *Considerations on the Symbol*. The minister Viret tried to attack this book. Francis answered him with a refutation that reduced to silence this skillful and fallacious artisan of error and lies. This new defeat of heresy brought about the conversion, then the solemn abjuration, of several Calvinists.

The moment, however, had arrived for Francis to measure himself against Theodore Beza. He had just received the abjuration of the first municipal magistrate of Thonon and completed the conversion of the garrison of that city. It was more than enough to excite the hatred of the Protestants and put them on guard against his person. But the man of God feared nothing. Although he knew, beyond any doubt, that the Genevans were disposed to make him pay with his head for the boldness of penetrating into their city to try to snatch from heresy its main support, he went several times to Geneva, at the peril of his life, in the first months of the year 1597, without being able to find a favorable opportunity to have a face-to-face interview with the heresiarch. Finally, on Easter Tuesday, after having given Holy Communion secretly and by night to some Catholics of Geneva, he went to knock at the door of Theodore Beza. It was the latter who received him, and he did so with a politeness and urbanity from which he did not depart, moreover, during the whole time of his interviews with the Saint. This conference lasted three hours: it had no other result than to excite the anger of Theodore against the Catholic religion; but the first moment of temper passed, urbanity regained the upper hand in his heart, and he politely invited his visitor to come back to see him.

As soon as Francis was back in Thonon, he hastened to report to the Sovereign Pontiff on his interview with the minister. The Pope replied by praising his zeal and exhorting him to continue the battles of the Lord. However precious the encouragements and congratulations of the Holy See were to him, our Saint did not need, it can be said, this testimony of solemn approval to pursue his mission to the end. His heart was too devoured by the salvation of souls for him to be able to leave his work unfinished. He returned twice more to Theodore Beza. But unfortunately, he had no power over this heart of stone, hardened in evil for a long time: the old heresiarch recognized the truth; but he did not have the strength to embrace it, and, held back by human respect, he died, externally at least, in the practice of the so-called reformed religion.

While working with all his might to bring Theodore Beza back into the fold of the Catholic Church, Francis de Sales did not neglect the labors he had begun in the Chablais: thus, he established parish priests in several parishes that had long been without a guide and pastor; he gathered several times, to confer with them on the needs of the mission, the priests who were placed under his orders; he vindicated the exorcisms of the Church by writing a *Treatise on Demons*; he sought to re-establish the ancient monastic observances in the abbey of Abondance, located on the borders of the Chablais and the Faucigny, which had fallen from its initial regularity; he calmed a popular riot in Thonon that had formed, formidable and threatening, against the life of Father Esprit de Baume, who was helping the Saint in his apostolic works; he took an active part in the diocesan synod assembled by his bishop; he solemnly planted a cross on the road from Annemasse to Geneva; he then flew to Annecy to devote himself to the relief of the plague-stricken, and with such zeal that he contracted the contagious disease himself at their bedside; he established a Jesuit college in Thonon; he made himself, in a word, all things to all men and became by his works, by his virtues, by his science, the terror of the heretics, to the point that the Protestant ministers ended up refusing altogether to enter the lists with such a formidable jouster.

Francis de Sales was entirely given over to his occupations, when the Duke of Savoy, who had crossed the mountains to come and examine the fortifications of his States on the French border, wanted to judge for himself the progress that the Catholic religion had made in the Chablais, thanks to such a herald. In the first days of October 1598, His Highness, accompanied by Cardinal Alexander de Medici, the Pope's legate in France, the Bishop of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, and the Bishop of Geneva, went to Thonon where our Saint was preaching the Forty Hours' devotion in the church of Saint-Augustin. Enhanced by the presence of such great personages, the pious exercises were carried out with a solemnity impossible to describe and in the midst of an extraordinary influx: the Blessed Sacrament was carried twice in procession through the streets of the city; several hundred people, among whom were ministers of error, abjured Calvinism in the hands of the prelates.

After God, who alone works great wonders, the honor of these splendid feasts went entirely to Francis de Sales, who had been the instrument of divine Providence in their organization. "Here is the apostle of the Chablais," exclaimed the Duke of Savoy while presenting him to the cardinal: "he is a man of God whom heaven has sent us; it is he who first dared to penetrate alone into this country at the peril of his life, he who sowed the divine word, pulled up the weeds, planted the cross, and made the Roman faith germinate in these regions from which it had been banished for more than sixty years by the efforts of hell. I have indeed seconded such a holy enterprise with my sword, but all the glory of this good work is due to this zealous missionary." The virtuous prince did not stop there: he entrusted our Saint with the distribution of abundant alms in favor of the countless miseries that were encountered in the Chablais, and drew inspiration from his experience and his advice to take new measures and enact new ordinances in the interest of the Catholic religion within these populations, recently returned to unity and continually exposed to returning to their initial errors.

He did even more: at the request of Bishop de Granier, whom the frosts of age warned that he would soon have to account to God for his episcopal administration, he offered Francis the coadjutorship of the bishopric of Geneva. This was a thunderbolt for the latter. He esteemed himself too little to ever have pretensions to such a dignity, and although quite recently heaven had glorified his holiness in Thonon itself by granting to his prayers the resurrection of a child who died without baptism, he looked upon himself as the least of men, as an earthworm, as the most despicable of sinners. He consequently opposed a formal refusal to his sovereign and his bishop, and he came to take a few days of rest with his family, not wanting to accept any reimbursement for the expenses he had made for his own maintenance during his four years of mission in the midst of the heretics.

The Bishop of Geneva did not consider himself beaten by his refusal; but, instead of renewing his requests to him, he sent him his first chaplain with the letters patent of the Duke of Savoy, who named him coadjutor of Geneva, and a letter from Cardinal Alexander de Medici, who pledged to have this nomination accepted by the Pope. At this sight, the Saint understood that he could no longer back down: appalled, he ran to the church of Thorens to throw himself at the foot of the altar where the Holy Eucharist was kept; then rising after having remained a few moments in prayer, he gave his consent to the bishop's messenger, all moved.

The news soon spread on all sides, and everyone vied to address the most congratulations to the new coadjutor and his virtuous parents. However, the shock had been too strong and too violent for the temperament of the Saint, considerably shaken by the fatigues of all kinds inseparable from his apostolic labors in the Chablais. He fell ill, and so seriously, that in a few days he found himself at the very end. Everyone was in consternation; his family, the bishop, the canons, could not be consoled. But the Lord had his designs: this illness was not to go as far as death; it happened so that God might be glorified. Indeed, the prayers that rose from all sides toward the supreme arbiter of life and death earned the sick saint, against all hope and all expectation, the grace of a prompt recovery and an even prompter convalescence.

In the month of February 1599, Francis left for Rome, sent by Bishop de Granier to explain to the Pope the sad and deplorable position that the political events occurring between France and Savoy were creating for the diocese of Geneva. He stopped for a few days in Turin to confer about his mission with the apostolic nuncio; then he headed by long stages toward the holy city where his brother Louis and his friend Antoine Favre had preceded him by a few hours. Clement VIII welcomed him with extreme kindness, publicly calling him the Apostle of the Chablais, and ratifying the choice that the Bishop of Geneva had made of his person for his coadjutor, he preconized him Bishop of Nicopolis in partibus infidelium. His Holiness, unable to tire of seeing him, of hearing him, and departing from the customs of the Roman court regarding the bishops of Savoy, wanted, in a solemn examination presided over by himself, to highlight to the eyes of all the eminent personages that Rome counted the science of the new Prelate. The Sovereign Pontiff was not deceived in his expectation: Francis justified it in all points and deserved to hear this praise come out of the august mouth of the Vicar of Jesus Christ: Bibe, fili mi, aquam de cisterna tua et fluenta putei tui; deriventur fontes tui foras et in plateis aquas tuas divide. This circumstance put him in contact with Baronius and Bellarmine who were among his examiners and with whom he contracted, from that moment, a close friendship. He bonded especially during his stay in Rome with the venerable Ancina, a priest of the Oratory, who was later raised to the episcopal see of Saluzzo. It is thus that Saints seek Saints: there is between them a secret attraction, and when they have met, their souls stick to one another, as once the soul of David to that of Jonathan.

After having satisfied his devotion to Saint Peter and the Catacombs, Francis de Sales left Rome on March 31 of the same year: he had completely succeeded in his mission to the Pope. The pilgrimage he had made, in 1591, to the venerated sanctuary of Loreto, had left in his heart memories too deep for him not to desire, since he was in Italy, to refresh himself again in the meditation of the Incarnation of the Son of God under the humble roof that had seen this adorable mystery accomplished. He therefore headed for Loreto, upon leaving the eternal city, and there, kneeling on the marble of the Santa Casa, he let escape from his blessed lips this prayer that posterity has collected and which would deserve to be written in letters of gold on the walls of the holy dwelling of Mary: "These are then here, O beautiful Spouse of the eternal King, your cedar beams and your cypress floors! And it is then behind these walls, O divine Love, that you were one day arrested, looking through the windows and through the lattices! You were grazing here among the lilies, until the day declined and the shadows were lowered. It is in this place, O Lord, that you were made my brother. Eh! who will then do me the grace that I find you outside attached to the breasts of my mother, and that I kiss you without being despised by anyone anymore? O God! you have taught me since my early age; but I very much want you to teach me more here, and I will present you a drink of the best wine and the juice of my pomegranates!" From Loreto he went to Bologna by following the shores of the Adriatic Sea, then to Milan where he venerated the precious remains of Saint Charles Borromeo, and finally to Turin where he communicated to the Duke of Savoy the apostolic letters that the Holy Father was addressing to the Bishop of Geneva in response to all his requests.

A month later, he was back in Annecy where he signaled his presence by restoring health to a sick woman and by publishing his book of the Standard of the Cross, to avenge the cult of the cross from the invectives of the minister la Faye. He then left for Thonon where, under the title of Holy House, he founded, with the agreement of the Holy See, a sort of University where all trades, all sciences were to be taught, and where the new converts could find a secure asylum and honorable means of subsistence. He had the priory of Thonon and its revenues restored at the same time by the Duke of Savoy to the Bishop of Geneva. Then he placed priests in all the parishes and obtained from His Highness the funds necessary for the maintenance of these zealous ministers of Jesus Christ. It was putting the finishing touch to his work and perpetuating the good that his preachings had produced in the Chablais.

A troublesome event almost compromised, if not destroyed, his work, at the moment when he was placing the crowning touch on it. Hostilities had broken out between France and Savoy. Henry IV himself, at the head of his troops, had advanced as far as Annecy. The Protestants of Geneva and Bern wanted to take advantage of this circumstance to snatch from the Catholic religion the province of the Chablais that the preachings of Francis de Sales had brought back from the paths of heresy: they offered the most Christian king to lend him a helping hand in his expedition. Henry IV had too much perspicacity not to guess their secret projects: he accepted their offers; but when they asked him to extend to the countries conquered or to be conquered in Savoy by his arms the Edict of Nantes which allowed the free exercise of Protestantism throughout the French territory, he did not even deign to answer them. He did even more: at the solicitation of the Saint who had come to plead the cause of Catholicism with him at the castle of Annecy, he ordered the French governor of the Chablais to maintain intact in this province everything that had been so happily done there for the Catholic faith. Francis took it upon himself to deliver the royal ordinance to the governor himself. It was while carrying out this mission that he fell into a French ambush: he was taken prisoner by the soldiers and led by them to the Marquis of Vitry, their captain, who, after recognizing who he was, hastened to restore him to liberty and to have him escorted with honor to the fort of the Allinges where the governor was. The latter, Calvinist though he was, received him with extreme benevolence, and, after having taken cognizance of the documents he had handed to him, hastened to execute the orders and recommendations of the king.

Under the favor of the protection of Henry IV, the holy missionary was thus able to complete his work, either by effecting more striking and more numerous conversions, or by organizing new parishes. The peace treaty that occurred between France and Savoy very happily inaugurated an era of peace and prosperity for the Chablais. Completely reassured about the perseverance of those he had returned to Jesus Christ and the Church, Francis de Sales was able to come and preach Lent in Annecy. But a great trial awaited him upon his arrival in this city: his old father was at the very end. Religion does not stifle the feelings of nature, it only purifies them. Francis, whose heart was so loving and who seemed to have meekness as his share, could not learn this sad news without feeling moved to the depths of his soul. He rushed in all haste to the castle of Sales, and he had the consolation of preparing himself, at the terrible passage from time to eternity, the one to whom he owed his birth and of whom he was the glory and the joy. Recalled soon to Annecy by the duties of his ministry, he was not present at the last moments of the venerable old man. One day when he was going to mount the pulpit, a messenger came to announce to him that this beloved father had ceased to live. As he had to preach on the resurrection of Lazarus, he had enough power over himself to suppress his emotion during the whole time of the sermon; but at the end, no longer able to contain his grief and stop his tears, he shared, while sobbing, this cruel event with his audience, and asked for the suffrage of their prayers. At the sight of his desolation, the assistants burst into sobs in their turn, and it was, for a few moments, only a deep groaning throughout the church.

His filial piety brought him back the same day to the castle of Sales. He personally arranged the funeral pomp of his father's cortege. During the ceremony, he stood constantly behind the coffin, and he only moved away from it after he had seen it deposited in the tomb of his family. He then returned to his pious mother, whose immense sorrow he sought to soften by everything that faith and tenderness could suggest to him. This duty of a good son accomplished, he returned to Annecy, where he finished his Lenten preachings in the midst of the greatest successes. God, who has a balm for all wounds, a remedy for all evils, a consolation for all sorrows, and who never forgets to place compensation next to sacrifice, was preparing an agreeable surprise for him in the midst of his mourning. The bailiwick of Gaillard, composed of seven or eight parishes and located at a short distance from Geneva, abjured heresy entirely at the voice of two Jesuit Fathers whom the Saint had sent there in his place. This event was a true happiness for him; for he rejoiced in the good that others did more than in the good he could do himself, so great was his humility. He possessed this virtue to such a degree that he did not want to receive episcopal consecration the whole time he remained coadjutor. When he was pressed on this point, he contented himself with replying: "As long as God leaves us Monseigneur our Bishop, I will change neither my rank in the Church, nor the color of my habit."

The insistence of his friends redoubled in this regard at the beginning of the year 1602. He was leaving for Paris, where Bishop de Granier was sending him to the court of France to fight the pretensions of the Genevans, asking Henry IV to confirm the usurpation they had committed to the detriment of the Church of Geneva on several villages enclosed in the country of Gex. But, while accepting this mission, delicate above all, Francis refused to be consecrated, preferring to present himself to the most Christian king with all the simplicity of a priest. We will not recount the various incidents of this trip. Let us only say that it began in a tragic manner: a violent storm assailed the boat that the Saint and his companions had taken to cross the Saône, the boatmen could not resist the current, the furious waves were going to swallow everything, the passengers were in despair; only Francis remained calm and impassive, raising his eyes to heaven as if to ask for help and assistance. At the moment when everyone thought all was lost, the skiff rose above the waves, and by dint of oars, they managed to reach the shore. Everyone wanted to thank the Saint for the protection from above that he had obtained for them by his prayers; but he hastened to divert the conversation, by directing their gratitude toward the one who commands the waves and knows how to appease their fury.

Passing through Dijon, he took letters of recommendation for the king to whom, moreover, the Apostolic Nuncio made it a duty to present him the day after his arrival in Paris. Henry IV addressed him to his minister Villeroi, whom he charged with the examination of the affair. Despite this easy entry into the matter, the blessed prelate had to make a rather long stay in the capital of France before obtaining a solution. He took great care to put this time to profit for the religion of which he was the minister. Thus, he gave the Lenten station at court; he pronounced at Notre-Dame the funeral oration of the Duke of Mercœur; he preached on Quasimodo Sunday at the castle of Fontainebleau, before Henry IV; he converted to Catholicism several ladies of high rank who were unfortunately engaged in the paths of heresy; he occupied himself with the direction of several persons commendable for their piety, among others the famous Madame Acarie, beatified by Pius VI under the name of Mary of the Incarnation, and he took a large part in the work of the establishment of the Carmelites in France, a work with which the Duchess of Longueville was then actively occupied, jointly with M. de Bérulle.

But these affairs, as important as they were, did not make him lose sight of the main goal of his trip to Paris. He left the minister Villeroi neither pause nor truce, so well that the latter ended up yielding to his insistence by obtaining from the king everything that the Bishop of Geneva was asking for. As soon as our Saint had received the assurance that success had crowned his negotiations, he set out on the road to return to Annecy: he had been in Paris for six months. Upon arriving in Lyon, he learned of the death of Bishop de Granier. This prelate, burdened with years and merits, had succumbed to an illness contracted by him in Thonon, where he had just solemnly opened the holy year of the Jubilee. Francis, seeing himself by this event called to replace him henceforth in the exercise of his charge and his pastoral functions, took the road to Annonay in Vivarais, to consult the high experience of Bishop Pierre de Villars, resigning Archbishop of Vienne and his former metropolitan, who was living, retired for a year, in this city. From Annonay he returned to Lyon; then he went to Gex, where he installed as parish priest his cousin and faithful companion, the canon Louis de Sales, and he retired to the castle of his fathers to make, for twenty days, under the direction of Father Forrier, a Jesuit of Thonon, the retreat preparatory to his consecration. His mother, for her part, also wanted to make a retreat, in order to dispose herself to the graces she hoped to receive during the episcopal consecration of her dear son. It was during the days that preceded this retreat that he wrote, to the Community of the Filles-Dieu of Paris, a remarkable letter, to recall to the fervor of their first observance these hospital nuns, somewhat fallen from their ancient regularity. During his retreat, Francis de Sales made a rule for his interior life, in which he speaks thus of mental prayer: "It is there that one looks at heaven more closely and that one finds the earth very distant from one's eyes and one's taste; it is there that souls engaged for the public make for themselves in their heart like a cabinet, where they study the law of their master and receive it from his own hand. It is there that mountain so high, that one does not hear the noise of creatures, where one tastes how sweet and suave God is."

His retreat finished, the ceremony of his consecration was accomplished with the greatest pomp on Sunday, December 8, 1603, feast of the Immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin, in the parish church of Thorens where he had been baptized. The holy temple had taken on a sumptuous ornamentation due to the care of Mme de Sales. Bishop Vespasian Gribaldi, former Archbishop of Vienne, was the consecrating prelate: he was assisted by Bishop Thomas Pobel, Bishop of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and Bishop Jacques Maistret, Bishop of Damascus in partibus infidelium.

"The ceremony began early," says M. Hamon, according to all the historians of his life; "but a miraculous fact came to interrupt it, to the great admiration of all the assistance. While the holy prelate was on his knees, motionless with recollection before the consecrating bishop, his face suddenly appeared inflamed and radiant, symbol of the divine light that was filling his whole interior at that moment, and which made him see, as in a great day, according to what he himself recounted shortly after, the three persons of the Holy Trinity consecrating him pontiff, the holy Virgin covering him with her love and her protection, and the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul standing at his two sides as his defenders and his supports. After he had remained thus for half an hour in ecstasy without any movement, more like an angel of heaven than a man of the earth, he fell into a faint, but soon rose again to the great astonishment of everyone, assuring that he was in all the fullness of his strength, and that they could continue his consecration. They did so indeed; and, as the consecrating bishop executed the exterior ceremonies on him, he saw clearly and distinctly, these are his own expressions, the Holy Trinity operating in his soul the mysterious effects signified by the visible rites that the pontiff was accomplishing. During all that time, the three prelates felt, as they protested later, an abundance of interior suavity such that it seemed to them to be in paradise, so much did holiness visibly imprint its character on the whole person of the consecrated prelate, or rather so much did the divinity that was acting invisibly in his soul make a ray of its presence shine outward. For him, corresponding to the abundance of graces that he was receiving, he made the vow to consecrate himself entirely, without any reservation, to the service of souls and to die for them, if it were expedient."

The day after his consecration, he sent his cousin, the canon Louis de Sales, to Annecy to take possession of his see in his name. The following Saturday, December 14, a day consecrated to the holy Virgin, he made his solemn entry into his episcopal city. "I am very glad," he said, "that the holy Mother of the sovereign Pastor is my introducer into the fold of her Son."

The Holy See having charged him to go and establish reform in the famous monastery of Puy-d'Orbe, in the diocese of Langres, he went there in the month of August of the year 1608. From there he went to Franche-Comté to discuss a project of exchange between Prince Albert, Archduke of Austria, and the clergy of Burgundy, relating to the salt waters of the city of Salins, and to pronounce a final decision in the name of the Holy See. Throughout his journey, he was welcomed with the veneration that eminent holiness inspires. Having finished his mission to the satisfaction of both parties, he left France and returned promptly to Savoy, where he resumed the visitation of his diocese with the same zeal and success as in the past. It was around this time that he put the finishing touches to his *Introduction to the Devout Life*. The work is divided into five parts: in the first, he defines true devotion as follows: "It is a spiritual agility and vivacity, by which charity makes us do promptly, diligently, and affectionately what God asks of us. Insofar as love makes us pleasing to God, it is called grace; insofar as it gives us the strength to do good, it is called charity; but when it has reached this degree of perfection, of making us not only do good, but of making us do it carefully, frequently, and promptly, it is called devotion."

In the second part, here is how he teaches the soul to unite itself with God: "Recall, as often as you can, your spirit into the presence of God, look at what God is doing and what you are doing; you will see his eyes turned toward you and perpetually fixed upon you with incomparable love: O God! you will say, why do I not always look at you, as you always look at me? Why do you think of me so often, and why do I think so little of you? O my soul! our true place is God; as birds have nests to retire to, and stags have asylums to take cover in, so our hearts must choose a place each day, either on Mount Calvary, or in the wounds of Our Lord, or in some other place close to him, to make their retreat there on all sorts of occasions and to be there as in a fortress against temptations. Happy the soul that can say to Our Lord: You are my house of refuge, my rampart, my roof against the rain and my shadow against the heat! Remember, Philothea, to retire often into the solitude of your heart during conversations and business: this solitude cannot be hindered by the multitude of those who surround you; for they are not around your heart, but around your body. Thus, let your heart remain, all alone, in the presence of God alone... Aspire often to God by short but ardent heart-felt longings; admire his beauty, invoke his help, adore his goodness, give him your soul a thousand times a day, fix your inner eyes on his dwelling, reach out your hand to him like a little child to its father, so that he may lead you." In the third part, he deals with the practice of virtues; in the fourth, with human respect, anxiety, sadness, aridity, and spiritual disgust; and, in the fifth, with the annual renewal of good resolutions through serious examinations of conscience, and in-depth considerations on the excellence of the soul, the price of virtue, the examples of the Saints, and the love of God and Jesus Christ for us. This book caused a prodigious sensation and was soon translated into all languages.

In 1609, Francis de Sales was charged by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul V to carry out the reform of the Abbey of Talloires; he went immediately to this monastery, and thanks to his wise advice, regular discipline soon flourished again in that house. Scarcely back in Annecy, he received from Henry IV the order to go to Gex, to confer with the Baron de Luz, the King's lieutenant general in Burgundy, on measures proper to the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in that country. He left immediately for that city, had eight parish churches that the heretics had seized returned to the Catholics, and had the consolation of bringing back a good number of heretics through his preaching and conferences. Once his business was finished, he went to the Château de Montholon to bless the marriage of the Baron de Thorens, his brother, with the eldest daughter of Madame de Chantal, and returned promptly to Annecy. Some time later, he had the sorrow of losing his venerable mother, from whom he received the last breath. "It has pleased God," he wrote to Madame de Chantal, "to withdraw from this miserable world our very good and very dear mother, to place her beside him in his paradise, as I hope, all the more so because she was one of the most beautiful and innocent souls that it was possible to find... God is good and his mercy is eternal; all his wills are just and his decrees equitable; I submit to them despite the pain of this separation, a pain very sharp no doubt, but nevertheless always tranquil; for I say like David: 'I am silent, Lord, and I do not open my mouth to complain, because it is you who have done it': without that I would have been inconsolable; but I dare neither cry out nor show dissatisfaction under the blows of this paternal hand, which I have learned to love tenderly since my youth."

The Order of the Visitation, of which we have spoken sufficiently in the life of Saint Chantal, on December 4, was one of the most beautiful works of Saint Francis de Sales. From the beginning, he gave the nuns provisional rules as a trial: "We will begin," h e said, "with poverty, Ordre de la Visitation Religious order founded by Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal. because our Congregation will not claim to enrich itself except with good works. Here, to begin with, is what the enclosure will be: No man will enter the house except in cases where the thing is permitted for monasteries. Women themselves will only enter with the permission of the superior. The sisters will only go out for the service of the sick, after the year of novitiate. They will sing the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin to have in that a holy and divine recreation; and, for the rest, they will occupy themselves with all sorts of good exercises, notably that of holy and cordial prayer. I hope that the thing will succeed: not being able to do better for the moment, it is good to do this." The holy Bishop, redoubling his care for his holy daughters, often recommended to them a constant equality of soul, prayer, and holy communion. To become true spouses of Jesus Christ, "it is necessary," he said, "that all here let themselves be treated, corrected, and polished, and establish themselves solidly in humility, in the perfect abnegation of one's own will, in detachment from all things. From there, one will rise to the practice of virtues; and in the choice one will prefer, not the most brilliant, but the humblest, the smallest practices of gentleness, of patience, of bearing with one's neighbor, of application to please everyone in all things, except sin; finally, modesty in the gaze, in speech, and in demeanor."

Francis de Sales, to encourage them in the practice of these virtues, told them: "Everything turns to good for those who love God: our miseries serve to make us humble; our affections, our trials, and our persecutions well borne, merit for us an increase of happiness without end. All is vanity, except eternity. Each day brings us closer to this eternity, and already we have almost one of our feet in it: provided that it is happy for us, what does it matter if the passage, which lasts only a moment, is a little stormy!... Is it possible that, knowing that our sufferings of three or four days produce eternal consolations, we do not bear them with good grace? Since God is our father, a father so tender, that he watches continually over us, and that not a hair falls from our head without him, how are we not always preoccupied with the care of loving and serving him?" — "Before enjoying God," he said again, "one must suffer much for God."

These conversations of the holy bishop with his nuns were piously collected by the latter, who transmitted them to us in a book entitled: *Spiritual Conferences*. Francis de Sales exposes there three laws of the spiritual life, which are of "incomparable utility and proper to give great peace and interior sweetness, because they are all of love." The first is to do everything for God and nothing for oneself; the second, to never reduce one's exactitude in all one's duties in the midst of the evils of this life; the third, to bless God in adversity as in prosperity. The holy bishop then recommends to his daughters to abandon themselves entirely to God: "The Saints who are in heaven," he tells them, "have such a union with the will of God, that, if there were a little more of the good pleasure of God in their going to hell, they would instantly leave paradise to go there. We must likewise on every occasion let ourselves be led to the will of God, without worrying about the harmful or favorable consequences that will flow from it, assured as we are that nothing could be sent to us from this paternal heart, from which he does not make us draw profit, if we have confidence in him." He also takes care not to forget external and internal modesty, and above all humility. "The daughters of the Visitation," he tells them, "will always speak very humbly of their little Congregation, and will prefer all others to it in terms of honor and esteem; nevertheless, they will also prefer it to all others in terms of love, testifying willingly, when the occasion presents itself, how pleasantly they live in this state. Thus everyone prefers their country in love, not in esteem; thus every pilot cherishes the vessel in which he sails more than the others, although they may be richer."

To these beautiful instructions, Francis de Sales added some advice proper to protect his holy daughters against inconstancy: "God," he tells them, "has given man reason to guide him; and yet few men let themselves be guided by it; one follows one's passions, one's whims, one's changing mood; what pleases one day displeases the next; one loves and hates the same person, according to the mood of the moment; one is joyful or melancholy, often without knowing why... That is not the Christian spirit: the inequality of events must never bring into our souls an inequality of mood; among the variety of accidents, one must always remain invariable, content to serve God constantly, courageously, and boldly, without any discontinuation. It is in the peace of a heart that is always equal that God shows himself, just as, when the lake is very calm and the wind does not agitate its waters, the sky on a serene night is so well represented there with the stars, that one sees as much of its beauty by looking down as if one were looking up." The nuns, thus formed, made rapid progress in virtue and holiness; thus one spoke everywhere only of the new Order. Attracted by the perfume of so many virtues, new aspirants came to increase the fervent community, which in a short time established a house in Lyon and in Moulins.

The Order of the Visitation, beginning thus to spread, Francis de Sales gave it a definitive constitution. The bishops were established as immediate superiors of all the houses of the Order. After having regulated the conditions for the admission of aspirants, the number of members that each house must have, he divided the sisters into three categories: those of the choir, the associates, and the domestics; then he prescribed the enclosure, obedience to the superior, the employment of the day, the days of fasting, etc. What elevates the merit of these rules to the highest degree is the spirit of charity and humility in which the pious legislator wants them to be observed. After having thus drafted his Constitutions, Saint Francis de Sales submitted them to the approval of the Holy See and requested the erection of his Congregation into a religious Order. The Sovereign Pontiff Paul V, by a bull of April 23, 1618, authorized him to erect his institute into a religious Order under the Rule of Saint Augustine.

Upon his return to Annecy, the holy bishop, learning that a man named Bernard Paris was in his death throes, went immediately to his bedside, and making the sign of the cross over him, miraculously healed him. While he was thus restoring health to others, he thought only of preparing himself for death, which he felt was near; and one day when his brother, seeing him so pensive, asked him the subject of his sadness: "I am not at all sad," he replied, "but I am listening to hear when the hour of departure will sound... There is nothing left in this world capable of rejoicing or satisfying me. I think only of heaven and the blessed eternity that awaits us. The further I advance in the life of this mortality, the more miserable I find it, and I am astonished that men attach themselves so strongly to the things of the earth." His swollen legs, covered with sores and violent internal pains, warned him moreover that he did not have long to live; yet he changed nothing in his habits or his labors. He even went to Thonon, then to Pignerol, where the chapter of the Feuillants was to be held, which he was to preside over in the name of Pope Gregory XV. Thanks to his consummate prudence, he triumphed over all difficulties, re-established the most perfect order in the community, and had a superior elected. From there he went to Turin, where all the wishes of the court called him. Retired to the convent of the Feuillant Fathers, he fell gravely ill there; but what made him suffer most cruelly was learning that a great famine reigned in Savoy and that his people were suffering without him being able to relieve them. "Ah!" he said, "when I return to Annecy, I will sell my miter, my crozier, my clothes, my dishes, and everything I possess, to help my poor." As soon as he was healed, he left the court and set out for Annecy, where the people welcomed him with joy.

His first occupation was to relieve the poor who were in the greatest destitution: he distributed to them everything he possessed, and when his purse was exhausted, he had recourse to that of several charitable persons, who hastened to help him in his good works. During this time, the Duke of Savoy invited him to go with him to Avignon, and the holy bishop, despite the poor state of his health which inspired just fears in his friends, yielded to the invitation of his prince. "We must go," he said, "where God calls us; we will go as long as we can, and we will stop when illness no longer permits us to go." As he foresaw well that this journey would be his last, he put his affairs in order, and after having devoted part of the day of November 7 to making an exact review of his conscience, he exclaimed: "Truly, it seems to me, by the grace of God, that I no longer hold to the earth except by the tip of my foot, for the other is already lifted in the air to depart." After saying goodbye to his relatives and friends, to his canons and his dear daughters of the Visitation, he left on November 9, leaving them all in mourning and tears. On his way, he visited the monasteries of the Visitation of Belley, Bellecour, and Valence, and finally arrived in Avignon, where he was received like an angel from heaven.

During his stay in this city, he occupied himself only with holy things, having contact with the great ones of the court only for the interests of religion. After a few days spent in this city, he set out for Lyon with the King of France and the Duke of Savoy. While the city was celebrating the Lyon Episcopal see of Saint Eucher. arrival of the two sovereigns, the holy bishop, fleeing the noise and tumult, had retired to the monastery of the Visitation to speak to the nuns about God and eternal goods. One day when these holy daughters asked him to write on paper what he desired most from them, he wrote only this one word: "Humility." Saint Chantal, who was then visiting her monasteries, arrived in Lyon where she had the happiness of conferring with her holy director. The holy bishop was overwhelmed by the numerous visitors who came from all parts to consult him, and yet these visits did not make him neglect his other duties: he went to visit the poor to whom he brought relief, and he preached wherever he was asked. On the day of the feast of Saint John, seeing his sight failing, he said to those around him: "This means that it is time to go, and I bless God for it; the body that sags weighs down the soul." Shortly after, he had a fainting spell which was followed by an apoplexy: people rushed around him to relieve him. As the illness worsened, he asked for Extreme Unction and responded to all the prayers with the greatest sentiments of piety: at his prayer, the ecclesiastics who watched at his side often suggested to him acts of faith, hope, charity, conformity to the will of God, contrition, and humility. The holy sick man, when he had emerged from the drowsiness into which he constantly fell back, conversed with his God, imploring his mercy and trusting in him. He loved to repeat these words of the Holy Scripture: "O my beloved! show me the place where you feed your lambs, where you rest in a continuous noon"; and he thus exhaled the ardent sighs that overflowed from his heart: "O my God! all my desire is before you, and my groans are known to you: my God and my all! my desire and the desire of the eternal hills!" Finally, his last hour having arrived, he lost the power of speech after having pronounced the holy name of Jesus, and while those present recited the prayers for the commendation of the soul, at the moment when the invocation was said: Omnes sancti Innocentes, orate pro eo, he rendered his pure and innocent soul to God, on the day of the feast of the Holy Innocents, with the same calm, the same tranquility that had presided over his whole life.

After having followed the holy bishop from his cradle to the grave, we shall now examine in particular the beautiful qualities and eminent virtues that embellished and crowned such a holy life.

Francis de Sales, in order to rise to such a high degree of holiness, applied himself early to the prayer that unites the soul to God. "Prayer," he said, "placing our understanding in the divine clarity and light, there is nothing that so purges our understanding of its ignorances, and our will of its depraved affections. It is the water of blessing which, by its watering, makes the plants of our good desires grow green and flourish, washes our souls of their imperfections, and slakes our hearts of their passions." — In prayer, he conversed with Our Lord like a child with his father; and in these divine communications with his beloved, nothing was capable of distracting him, as he confessed one day to a canon of Annecy: "I do not know what I have done to Our Lord, His mercy is incomprehensible toward me; for no sooner am I placed in prayer than I forget everything, except Him; it seems to me then that I am no longer anything but His." — The aridities he experienced in this holy exercise made him say: "When Our Lord gives me good feelings, I receive them in simplicity, with a very profound reverence mingled with confidence, holding myself very humble, very small, and very lowered before Him, like a child of love. When He does not give me any, I do not think about it, and I do not pay attention to whether I am in consolation or in desolation."

To the exercise of prayer, he joined that of the presence of God: "Oh, how happy," he exclaimed, "is the soul that, in the tranquility of its heart, lovingly preserves the sacred sentiment of the presence of God! For its union with the divine goodness will temper its whole spirit with infinite sweetness... And why should the soul gathered in God be anxious? Does it not have every reason to remain at rest? For what would it seek, since it has found the One it was seeking? It only remains for it to cry out: I have found the One my heart loves and will not leave Him." — To perfect himself in this holy exercise, which he called the guardian of purity and innocence, he had recourse to several holy industries. "We must have God before our eyes," he said, "always and in all places, as well when alone as in company, at all times, even while sleeping, lying down modestly in the presence of God, as would one to whom Our Lord, while still alive, would command to sleep and lie down in His presence." — "Do," he said again, "like little children who, with one hand, hold onto their father and, with the other, pick strawberries or blackberries along the hedges. Likewise, handling the goods of this world with one of your hands, always hold the hand of the heavenly Father with the other, turning back to Him from time to time to see if He finds your occupations agreeable. Among affairs that do not require such strong attention, look more at God than at the affairs; and, when affairs require all your attention, from time to time at least look to God, like sailors who, to arrive at the land they desire, look to the sky." Besides prayer and recollection, he devoted a few days each year to a spiritual retreat.

The vivacity and greatness of the holy Bishop's faith are revealed in these words: "O God! My soul finds nothing difficult to believe among the effects of divine love: the beauty of our holy faith seems so ravishing to me that I die of love for it, and it is my opinion that I must clasp the precious gift that God has made to me in a heart all perfumed with devotion. When our spirit, raised above natural light, begins to see the sublime truths of faith, O Lord, what joy! The soul melts with pleasure upon hearing the word of its heavenly Spouse, which it finds sweeter than the honey of all human sciences, or upon seeing His face, not, it is true, in the full light of glory, but in the faint clarity of daybreak. Oh! What delights the holy light of faith gives to the soul, which shows with incomparable certainty, not only the origin and destination of creatures, but the birth of the divine Word, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is one only God, most adorable and blessed for ever and ever! The learned Plato never knew this, the eloquent Demosthenes was ignorant of it. The happy pilgrims of Emmaus said, upon hearing the words of faith: Was our heart not all burning while He spoke to us on the way? Now, if divine truths provide such great sweetness when they are still only proposed in the obscure light of faith, O God! What will it be when we contemplate them in the clarity of the noon of glory? The Queen of Sheba exclaimed, after having heard the words of wisdom that came from the mouth of Solomon, that what she had been told of this wisdom was not half of what experience made her know; but when, arrived in the heavenly Jerusalem, the King of glory manifests to us with an incomprehensible clarity the wonders of sovereign truth, and we see nakedly what we have believed here below; oh! Then what raptures, what ecstasies, what admiration, what love, what sweetnesses! No, never, we shall say in the excess of our transports, would we have thought to see such delectable truths." — One of his maxims was that one must walk before God according to the spirit of faith and not according to human sense. "A person," he said, "is very sweet, very agreeable; she loves me and does me service; to cherish her only for that is to love according to the flesh and the senses; for animals, which have only the flesh and the senses as their guide, love their benefactors and those who treat them with sweetness and affection. But a person is rude, harsh, uncivil; I approach her, I show her affection, I do her service, not because I have pleasure in it, but because that is according to the good pleasure of God; that is acting in the spirit of faith. I am sad, and because of that I do not want to speak; parrots do so. I am sad; but, since charity wants me to speak, I will do it; that is living by faith. I am despised, and I get angry; peacocks and monkeys do so. I am despised and I rejoice in it: that is imitating the Apostles. To live by faith, therefore, is to do the actions, say the words, have the thoughts that the spirit of faith requires of us. The soul, supported by the spirit of faith, encourages itself among difficulties, because it knows that God loves, supports, and helps the miserable who hope in Him; it attaches itself to God and often says that everything that is not God is nothing, that what is not for eternity is only vanity." — All the Saint's actions were done only with a view to God. "We must no longer," he said, "use our heart, our eyes, our words to satisfy our mood and our inclinations, but only for the service of the heavenly Spouse."

The hope of one day possessing the goods of the future life made him sigh after the hour of departure. "Oh!" he said, "that the duration of my exile is prolonged! My soul languishes far from my homeland... When will it be that all our hopes will be only for paradise?... When will divine love consume us to make us die entirely to ourselves and live entirely to God?... O my God, what consolation I find in the assurance I have that my heart will be eternally engulfed in the love of the heart of Jesus! Let Providence lead us where it pleases, what does it matter? We shall arrive at this port." — His confidence in God is no less admirable. "Our Lord," he said, "taught me this lesson from my youth, and if I were to be reborn, I would want to let myself be governed even in the smallest things by this divine Providence, with the simplicity of a child and a profound contempt for all human prudence. It is a great enjoyment for me to walk with eyes closed under the guidance of Providence. Its designs are impenetrable, but always sweet and suave to those who trust in it. Let us therefore let it lead our soul, which is its boat; it will make us arrive at a good port. Happy are those who trust in Him who can as God, and wants as a father to give us everything that is good for us; unhappy, on the contrary, are those who put their trust in the creature: the latter promises everything, gives little, and makes one pay very dearly for the little it gives." — In temptations, he exclaimed: "The more I feel weak, the more I put my trust in God." — If the Lord delayed in answering his prayer, he said: "Providence only defers its help to provoke our confidence. If our heavenly Father does not always grant us what we ask, it is to keep us near Him and give us reason to press Him by a loving violence, just as He showed well to those two pilgrims of Emmaus, with whom He only stopped at the end of the day and when they forced Him." — To tried souls, he inspired confidence thus: "Let the storm and the tempest come, you will not perish, you are with Jesus. If fear seizes you, cry out loud: O Savior, save me. He will reach out His hand to you, grasp it well and go joyfully, without philosophizing about your evil. As long as Saint Peter has confidence, the storm cannot make him sink; as soon as he fears, he sinks. Fear is a greater evil than the evil itself. You must not want any leaf of your tree to be shaken, but it must suffice for you that it remains deeply rooted. If you fall, prostrate yourself before God to say to Him in a spirit of confidence and humility: Mercy, Lord, for I am infirm. Then rise in peace and go forward, banishing all distrust by the thought that God is more merciful than we are miserable. Suffer without trouble the privation of sensible tastes, a single act done with dryness being worth more than several done with great tenderness, provided it is done with a stronger love, although less agreeable. Finally, make of all yourself a peaceful abandonment to Providence in the midst of the accidents of life and in the very presence of death. God has kept you until now; hold onto the hand of His providence, and He will assist you; and where you cannot walk, He will carry you. Do not think about what will happen to you tomorrow: for the eternal Father, who has taken care of you today, will take care of you tomorrow and always. Either He will not give you any evil, or, if He gives you some, He will give you an invincible courage to support it. If you are exposed to the assaults of temptations, do not desire to be freed from them. It is good that we experience them, in order to have the occasion to fight them and to win victories. This serves to practice the most excellent virtues and to establish them solidly in the soul."

Francis de Sales, in all his actions, acted by pure love of God. One of his maxims was that the true sign of divine love is to love God in all things. "If we loved only God," he said, "poverty and riches, health and sickness, life and death, all the vicissitudes of this world would be indifferent to us, because we would see them all in God, who orders or permits them with infinite wisdom." To know well the love with which he burned for God, one only has to read his *Treatise on the Love of God*, which is only the faithful history of his heart and his life.

The highest degree of perfection that a soul can reach is the perfect union of its will with that of God: such was the life of Saint Francis de Sales. "Do not look at all at the substance of the things you do," he said, "but at the honor they have, however meager they may be, of being willed by God, of being in the order of His providence and disposed by His wisdom. Purity of heart consists in estimating all things by the weight of the sanctuary, which is none other than the will of God; therefore, do not love anything too ardently, not even virtues, which one sometimes loses by passing the bounds of moderation." — Abandoning himself in everything and for everything to the divine good pleasure, he said: "Whatever may happen to me, nothing will make me depart from the firm resolution I have to acquiesce fully in everything that God will want to do with me and with everything that belongs to me. I want to merge my will into that of God, or rather I want to let Our Lord will in me and for me all His good pleasure, and I deposit all care of myself into His hands." — In his *Treatise on the Love of God*, Book IX, here is the description he gives of a soul perfectly united to this divine good pleasure: "O God, may Your will be done, not only in execution of Your commandments, counsels, and inspirations, to which we must obey, but also in the suffering of the afflictions that happen to us; may Your will do, through us, for us, in us, and of us, everything that it pleases... The truly loving heart loves the divine good pleasure not only in consolations, but also in afflictions; it loves it even more in crosses, pains, and labors, because the principal virtue of love is to make the lover suffer for the beloved object... And how could one not lovingly support adversities, since they proceed from the same hand of the Lord, equally lovable when it distributes afflictions as when it gives consolation?... Let us therefore open the arms of our will; let us embrace the cross most lovingly, acquiescing to the most holy will of God, and singing to Him the hymn of eternal acquiescence: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven... Undoubtedly, pains themselves cannot be loved; but, viewed in the divine will that orders them, they are infinitely lovable, they are all of gold and more precious than one could say... May our will therefore be indifferent to everything that God wills, and place itself between His hands like a ball of wax disposed to take all the impressions of His good pleasure, without choice, without preference for anything whatsoever, without any other love than that of the divine will, loving not the things that God wills, but the will of God that wills them, letting itself be led by this divine will as by a most lovable bond, to go happily everywhere the divine good pleasure wants, even to preferring, if the thing were possible, hell with the will of God, to paradise without this divine will... Indifference that must extend to everything: to natural things, like health or sickness, beauty or ugliness, strength or weakness; to things of civil life, like honors, ranks, riches; to things of spiritual life, like dryness or consolations, tastes or aridities; finally to all events, and to action as to suffering. Oh! How blessed are such souls, bold and strong to pursue the enterprises that God inspires in them, no less prompt to leave them when God wants it so, and always as sweet in reverses as in successes!"

Penetrated by a vivid sentiment of divine greatness, Saint Francis de Sales never pronounced the name of God or of Our Lord except with profound veneration. To excite the faithful to make the sign of the cross with profound respect, he had imagined the most graceful comparisons: "Look at your heart," he told them, "as a garden where you will plant the sacred tree of the cross; or, if you prefer, consider it as a fortress where you hoist the standard of the great king, which you must only surrender to Him to whom the standard belongs, or as a cabinet that you close with the key of the cross, and that you must only open to Him to whom the key belongs."

The love of the Savior of men had so taken hold of his heart that he often expressed it and on every occasion by these words: "Live Jesus whom I love!" Speaking of the holy name of Jesus: "How happy we would be," he said, "to have in the understanding only Jesus, in the memory only Jesus, in the will only Jesus, in the imagination only Jesus! May it please this divine Child to steep our hearts in His blood and perfume them with His holy name, so that the good desires we have conceived may be all purple and all fragrant! Let us kiss a thousand times the feet of this Savior and say to Him: My heart, O my God, calls You, my gaze desires You, I sigh after Your face." — The passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ excited in his soul such violent transports of love that he exclaimed: "O God! If this divine Savior did everything for us, what shall we not do for Him? If He gave His life for us, why would we not consume ours in His service and for His love? Oh! May the day of His most holy Passion be forever the cherished day of our heart! O love! How painful you are! O pain! How loving you are!" — The cross was, according to him, the true book of the Christian; also he recommended carrying it always on oneself, kissing it with love, saying to it: "O Jesus! The beloved of my soul, suffer that I clasp You to my breast like a bouquet of myrrh; I promise You that my mouth, which is happy to kiss Your holy cross, will henceforth abstain from detractions, murmurs, any word that could displease You; that my eyes, which see Your blood and Your tears flow for my sins, will no longer look at the vanities of the world, nor anything that exposes one to offending You; that my ears, which listen with such consolation to the seven words pronounced by You on the cross, will no longer take pleasure in vain praises, useless conversations, words that wound the neighbor; that my spirit, after having studied with such taste the mystery of the cross, will no longer open itself to vain or bad thoughts and imaginations; that my will, submitted to the laws of the cross and to the love of Jesus crucified, will have only charity for my brothers; that finally nothing will enter my heart or come out of it except with the permission of the holy cross, of which I will trace on myself, with veneration, the sacred sign at my lying down and at my rising, and among all the anguishes of life."

The holy prelate had a tender devotion toward the adorable sacrament of the Eucharist, and he ceaselessly recommended to the faithful frequent communion. "Communicate boldly in peace and in humility," he said, "to correspond to the desires of the divine Spouse, who, to unite Himself to us, annihilated and lowered Himself to the point of becoming our meat, the meat of us who are the meat of worms; do not leave communion for your distractions and coldness, for all that happens without your consent in the senses; and nothing will serene your spirit as much as its king, nothing would warm it as much as its sun, nothing will temper it so suavely as its balm... God! What happiness for us that our soul, while waiting for this union that we will have with Our Lord in heaven, unites itself to Him by this divine sacrament, in such a way that we eat, by real communion, Him whom the cherubim and seraphim adore and eat by real contemplation. Then Jesus Christ is in all parts of our being; there He straightens and purifies everything, He mortifies, vivifies, sanctifies everything; He loves in the heart, He understands from the brain, He animates in the chest, He sees with the eyes, He speaks in the tongue, does everything in us, and then we no longer live in ourselves, but Jesus Christ lives in us." — The love of the Mother being inseparable from the love of the Son, he had for Mary a very particular devotion that he sought to communicate to others, either by recommending the recitation of the rosary, or by establishing confraternities in her honor. It was to Mary that he dedicated his *Treatise on the Love of God*, and in his dedicatory epistle he shows us the holy ardors of his heart toward her: "Most holy Mother of God," he says, "the most lovable, the most loving, and the most loved of all creatures, prostrate on my face before your feet, I dedicate and consecrate to you this little work of love to the immense greatness of your dilection. O Jesus! To whom can I better dedicate the words of Your love, than to the most lovable heart of the beloved of Your soul?" Saint Francis de Sales also had a great devotion to Saint Joseph, to the guardian angels, and to all the Saints.

His charity toward the neighbor was so perfect that pains, labors, inconveniences, the greatest perils were nothing to him, provided he was useful and helpful to his brothers in Jesus Christ. "One must do everything for the neighbor, except damning oneself," he said. "I have given him all my person, my means, my affections, so that he may use them according to his needs... I do not know how my heart is made; but I have such pleasure, I feel a sweetness so delicious and so particular in loving even my enemies, that, if God had forbidden me to love them, I would have much trouble obeying Him. There is indeed some little combat, but finally one must come to this word of David: Be angry, but do not sin." — Did the neighbor have faults? "It is necessary," he said, "that men have patience with one another, and the bravest are those who best support the faults of others... It is a great part of our perfection to support one another in our imperfections, and the love of the neighbor cannot be better exercised than in this support. It is easy to love those who are of an agreeable and compliant character; but to love those who have quirks, a troublesome and peevish mood, that is the true touchstone of charity... One must have a good and sweet heart toward the neighbor, particularly when he is a burden and a disgust to you; for then we have nothing in him that makes us love him, except the respect for the Savior, who makes in this encounter the love more excellent and more worthy, because it is purer and cleaner of perishable conditions." — When he heard mockery or detraction, he was accustomed to say: "Amusing oneself by searching for the faults of others is a sign that one hardly occupies oneself with one's own"; and again: "If one removed detraction from the world, one would cut off the greatest part of sins." — The charity of the holy bishop extended even beyond the grave: "Alas!" he said, "we do not remember our dear departed enough; their memory seems to perish with the sound of the bells, and we forget that friendship, which can end, even by death, was never true; the Scripture itself teaching us that true love is stronger than death. Speaking ill of the dead is an inhumanity comparable to that of ferocious beasts that dig up bodies to devour them; speaking well of them to excite oneself to imitate them is a laudable thing; but relieving them is an even better thing, for that is visiting the sick, that is giving drink to those who thirst for the vision of God; that is feeding the hungry, that is redeeming prisoners, clothing those who are naked, and procuring hospitality in the heavenly Jerusalem; that is consoling the afflicted, enlightening the ignorant, finally doing all the works of mercy in one."

Gentleness was the distinctive character of Saint Francis de Sales: it is by it that he converted so many sinners and brought back so many heretics. "One must," he said, "act on souls as the angels do, by graceful movements and without violence; one must attract them, but in the manner of perfumes that have no other power to attract in their wake than their sweetness; and sweetness, how could it pull, if not suavely? One must finally imitate the example of Jesus Christ who, standing at the door of hearts, presses for the opening without ever forcing it." — He welcomed sinners with a maternal tenderness, saying to them: "Come, my dear children, come, let me embrace you and put you in my heart. God and I, we will assist you with confidence." — When he was reproached for his too great commiseration for the neighbor, he replied: "Ah! It is better to have to account for too much gentleness than for too much severity. Is God not all love? God the Father is the Father of mercies; God the Son calls Himself a lamb; God the Holy Spirit shows Himself in the form of a dove, which is gentleness itself. If there were something better than benignity, Jesus Christ would have told us, and yet He only gives us two lessons to learn from Him: meekness and humility of heart. Do you want to prevent me from learning the lesson that God gave me, and are you more learned than God?" Also he constantly recommended this virtue by these words: "The human spirit is made this way, it rears against rigor: everything by gentleness, nothing by force; rudeness loses everything, embitters hearts, engenders hatred; and the good it does, it does with such bad grace that one is not grateful for it. Gentleness, on the contrary, handles the heart of man at will and shapes it according to its designs... One makes penitents by gentleness and hypocrites by severity."

In the course of the Saint's life, we have sufficiently spoken of his zeal for the salvation of souls which made him endure everything and undertake everything to convert some or bring others back into the path of virtue; we shall therefore not dwell on it further.

The prudence of Saint Francis de Sales made all his works converge toward the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls, toward the exaltation of the faith and the good government of his diocese. This virtue shone with brilliance in the direction of souls, where he appropriated his advice and his language to all situations and all characters. His simplicity shines in the following words where he seems to have painted himself: "See a very small child, who still only knows his mother: he has only one love, which is for his mother; one single pretension, which is the breast of his mother; lying on this beloved breast, he wants nothing else. Thus the soul that has perfect simplicity has only one love, which is for God, one single pretension, which is to rest on the chest of the heavenly Father, and there, like a child of love, make its dwelling, leaving entirely all care of itself to its good father, without worrying about anything, except to hold itself in this holy confidence: the very desires of virtues and graces do not worry it, not that it neglects what it encounters on its path, but it applies itself to it without hurrying to search for other means of perfection than those it has at hand. It does not turn either to the right or to the left, to see what one says, what one thinks, or what one does; it simply follows its path, does what it judges it must do, and thinks no more of it; it holds itself tranquil in the confidence it has that God knows its desire, which is to please Him, and that suffices for it." — "Let us go in simplicity," he said again, "without stopping to consider our actions in detail. As soon as our conscience bears witness that we want to do nothing but for holy love, let us walk with confidence, humility, and simplicity. For me, I think that we hold ourselves in the presence of God, even while sleeping, when we fall asleep at His sight, at His pleasure, and by His will, and that He puts us on the bed like statues in their niche; and when we wake up, we find that He is there near us, that He has not moved, and that we have held ourselves in His presence, although with eyes closed and shut."

Saint Francis de Sales always attached great importance to modesty, which made the delights of his heart and seemed to resplend in his whole person: in effect, everything in him breathed this lovable virtue. — Humility, which consists in not esteeming oneself, but in having the lowest sentiments of oneself; in not searching for esteem and praise, but in loving obscurity, humiliations, contempt, summarizes in some way the whole life of the Saint. "I have all my life," he said one day, "desired the lowest place; and I apprehended so much being a bishop, because one would make account of me, that it was a pain for my heart to find myself in a company where there was no prelate to whom I could submit myself. Also, without the consideration of the will of God, I would have preferred to carry the holy water, a simple ecclesiastic, to attend more conveniently to the salvation of the poor people, than to carry the crosier in my hand and the miter on my head." Here are the terms in which he speaks of this virtue that he regards as absolutely necessary for salvation: "He who makes provision of virtue without humility is like one who carries powder in his hands in the wind... Moral humility stops at the knowledge of one's misery and poverty; Christian humility goes as far as the love of this poor and meager condition, as far as the contentment of being nothing and being counted for nothing, out of respect for the truth and for the humiliations of the incarnate Word. The exterior acts of humility are not humility; but nevertheless they are very useful to it: they are the bark of the virtue, they preserve its fruit." — When the holy bishop was exposed to unjust blame, he was accustomed to say: "An ounce of virtue practiced among contradictions, censures, and reprimands is worth more than ten pounds of virtue practiced in the calm."

Francis de Sales expected and desired no other greatness and no other prosperity in this world than those that the Son of God had in the manger of Bethlehem, because, he said, "whoever has his heart in heaven does not worry about the things of the earth." This elevation of soul above the goods of this world made him say: "When one has little, one has less to give, less care to spend, less worry to preserve or distribute, less account to render to God. To be content with this little, one only has to consider those who are poorer than us: for we are only poor comparatively. If we only want what is necessary, we will almost never be poor; if we want everything that passion demands, we will never be rich: the secret to enrich ourselves in a short time and at little cost, therefore, is to moderate our desires, it is to imitate sculptors, who make their work by subtraction, and not painters, who make theirs by addition. For me, I hardly know poverty: God has been so good to me that He has given me what the Sage desired, a middle state between the needs of indigence and the abundance of riches; and, content with my lot, I consider myself rich." It was this spirit of evangelical poverty that inspired his immense alms, his indifference for temporal goods, and his resistance to the propositions of rich benefices that were made to him.

"One must live in this world," said Saint Francis de Sales, "as if we had the spirit in heaven and the body in the grave. Prayer without mortification is a soul without a body, just as mortification without prayer is a body without a soul." In accordance with this maxim, the Saint applied himself to practicing all sorts of mortifications, giving himself the discipline until blood; immolating in himself the whole man to God, that is to say mortifying his spirit, his judgment, his will, and his self-love; giving himself to a rigorous fast, from which however he abstained when he saw that his health could suffer from it: "For," he said, "it is in the order of God that we treat our bodies according to their infirmities, that we spare them like poor sick people, with charity and patience; and this exercise is not the least meritorious, because it mortifies the heart and the courage. If the accomplishment of our duties procures us some sickness or shortens our days, one must bless God for it and suffer it with good grace; but, apart from that, respect for Providence and charity for ourselves oblige us to abstain from penances that ruin health, because, as it is a delicacy that feels like a woman, to be too tender about one's health, it would also be a pride that would feel like barbarity to despise it altogether... As the spirit cannot support the body when it is too fat, the body cannot support the spirit when it is too thin: one must treat the body like one's child, correct it without killing it." — He avoided, in food, everything that felt like sensuality and seeking. One day when he had been served a dish of poached eggs swimming in water, he continued, after having eaten the eggs, to dip his bread in the dish where there was nothing left but water, and when it was remarked to him: "You have had great wrong," he replied, "to discover my error to me: for, thanks to my appetite, I have hardly eaten any sauce but this one; so true is the proverb: There is no sauce like appetite." Another day, he was served by mistake an egg all rotten that he ate without saying anything about it; and when he was shown the pain that one felt from this mistake: "We have so often eaten good ones," he replied gently; "why would we not eat bad ones, if God permits that they be presented to us? Not taking what one is served, and making a choice of dishes, is showing a spirit attentive to dishes and sauces; eating what is good without taking pleasure in it, what is bad without showing aversion to it, and showing oneself as indifferent in one as in the other, that is true mortification." It was thus that he practiced this word of Our Lord: "Eat what is served to you," and that he recommended it to others. M. de Belley recounts on this subject a charming trait of mortification of the Saint: "One day," he says, "that I had served him at my table a piece very delicate, I noticed that he put it adroitly in a corner of his plate, to eat a coarser one. — I surprise you in the act, I said to him. And where is the precept: Eat what will be served to you? — You do not know then, he replied to me, that I have a peasant's stomach that needs solid meats; your delicate dishes would not support it. — My father, I replied, those are your excuses, it is by such ruses that you hide your mortification. — Certainly, he exclaimed, I understand no finesse in it, and I speak to you in all sincerity. I agree that my appetite finds more taste in delicate dishes; but, as one is at the table to nourish oneself and not to satisfy gluttony; as one must only eat to live, I take what I know nourishes me better. It would be living to eat to choose one's food according to the taste of dishes and sauces. Nevertheless, to do honor to your good fare, if you have patience, I will give you contentment; and, after having laid the foundations of the meal by these more substantial foods, I will cover them by the delicacies that you have to serve me."

Another virtue of the holy prelate was a patience mingled with so much love and gentleness that one never heard him form the slightest desire that was not in conformity with the will of God. "Condescension to the moods of others, the sweet, but just support of the neighbor, that is," he said, "my cherished virtues: oh! How much sooner it is done to accommodate oneself to others than to want to bend others to our moods and our opinions!" He regarded persecution as the sovereign happiness of the present life, because, he said, "those who are unjustly persecuted better bear the resemblance of the Savior, and lead a life hidden with Jesus Christ in God: they appear wicked and they are good, dead and they are living, poor and they are rich, foolish and they are wise, detested before men, but in blessing before God." — To this virtue, Francis de Sales joined a perfect equality of soul that took its source in humility and mortification. "When the universe," he said, "would be turned upside down, one should not be troubled, because the universe is not worth the peace of the soul." And it is this that made him say to Saint Chantal: "Does some pain happen to us? One must receive it with a calm submission to the good pleasure of God. Does some subject of joy happen to us? One must receive it peacefully and moderately, without for that shuddering. Must one flee evil? It must be peacefully and without troubling ourselves; otherwise, in fleeing, we could fall and give the enemy the leisure to kill us. Must one do good? One must do it peacefully; otherwise, we would make many faults by hurrying. Is one struck by the number of one's imperfections? One must not be troubled by it; for there is nothing that preserves them more than the anxiety and the eagerness to remove them. Finally, is one exposed to the assaults of temptations? One must for that neither worry nor change posture: it is the devil who goes everywhere around our spirit, ferreting to see if he could find some door open." Holding invariably to the practice of this virtue, one saw in him, everywhere and always, the same modesty and the same gentleness, the same affability, the same equality of soul and of bearing, the same attention to please God and to make virtue lovable to others.

One represents Saint Francis de Sales: 1st holding in one hand a banner where one reads these words: Live Jesus (it was the header of almost all his letters); and in the other a heart inflamed, by allusion to his great charity, to his *Treatise on the Love of God*, and to the coat of arms that he chose for his dear daughters of the Visitation; 2nd appearing to Saint Vincent de Paul in the form of a luminous globe to which comes to join another smaller globe (Saint Chantal), to go both to lose themselves in an immense sphere of fire (God Himself) that attracts them from above.

He is the patron of Annecy, of Chambéry, and of the Visitandines.

## CULT AND RELICS.

As soon as the news of the holy bishop's death spread through the city of Lyon, a unanimous and spontaneous cry proclaimed his sanctity: the faithful came in crowds to honor his body and have him touch their rosaries and other objects of devotion. The intendant of justice having ordered him to be opened and embalmed, all the blood that flowed from this operation was collected in linens and handkerchiefs by the piety of the faithful as precious relics. They even went so far as to scrape the table and the floor where a few drops had fallen, and religiously gathered everything that had been used for the holy sick man. Funeral rites were performed for him in the church of the Visitation on December 30. The holy remains left Lyon on January 18, 1623, and upon their arrival in Annecy, magnificent funerals were held, after which the body was placed in the church of the Visitation, in a modest mausoleum that had been dedicated to his memory. This place soon became a destination for pilgrimage where the crowd flocked from all sides to venerate the remains of the holy bishop. His letters, his books, his clothes, everything that had been in his use, were piously collected as so many relics. In the midst of this universal veneration, France did not lag behind; the piety of its faithful invoked him as a Saint, and its bishops, in the assembly of the clergy of 1625, addressed a collective letter to Pope Urban VIII to request the beatification of the servant of God. The clergy of France did not stop at this first request, and reiterated their solicitations on August 11, 1659, January 12, 1656, September 2, 1660, and June 15, 1661, so much did they have at heart the glorification of the holy bishop.

Vies de Chantal, witness to the countless miracles that occurred every day at the tomb of the servant of God, had legal inquiries initiated regarding his life and miracles. An official investigation, ordered by the Holy See, began in Annecy in 1627, and on August 6, 1632, the opening of the tomb was carried out: the body was found without lesion or alteration. The documents of the trial having been brought to Rome in 1634, were deposited in the Vatican archives. Thanks to the intrigues of the Jansenists to hinder the beatification, the cause remained there until 1655. Under the pontificate of Alexander VII, in 1656, the pursuit of the trial was resumed, and the decree of beatification was rendered on December 28, 1661. Finally, after new investigations and new discussions, the blessed Francis de Sales was solemnly canonized on April 19, 1665. The name of the Saint was from then on on every lip as in every heart, and numerous miracles, striking conversions, were the reward of such a fervent religious cult.

At the time of the Revolution, the body of the Saint was deposited in a secret place to hide it from the sacrilegious hands of the revolutionaries. After the reign of Terror, when it was permitted to reopen the temples, the daughters of the Visitation of Annecy built themselves a new monastery and a new church: the body of the holy bishop was placed in a magnificent shrine and transported with great pomp to the church of the Visitation. The shrine is placed above the altar, against the back wall of the sanctuary, and numerous pilgrims come there every day to venerate the precious relics enclosed within.

The heart of Saint Francis de Sales was deposited in the church of the Visitation of Bellecour, in Lyon; but before enclosing it in the lead box that was to contain it, it was placed in the hands of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal who was then in that city, and when they wanted to place it in the box, a particle of this precious heart detached itself and remained in the hands of the Saint. The monastery of the Visitation of Nevers possesses this venerated particle. As for the heart deposited in the church of the Visitation of Bellecour, it was later placed in a silver reliquary, then in a magnificent gold reliquary, a gift from Louis XIII. When the nuns of Bellecour abandoned their monastery, following the persecutions of the revolutionaries, they took refuge in Venice and carried this precious deposit with them.

Besides the particle of the heart of the holy bishop of Geneva, of which we have spoken, and several particles of his flesh, the Visitandines of Nevers also possess: 1° his mitre, woven and made by Saint Chantal; it was the one he used most ordinarily: it was sent by M. Jean-François de Sales, brother of the Saint, to Mme de Montmorency; 2° the chasuble that the Saint used to say the holy mass when he came to Moulins; 3° the small Collection of Constitutions that he habitually carried on him; 4° several of his autograph letters; 5° his portrait, in miniature, which Saint Chantal possessed, and which she parted with in favor of Mme de Montmorency.

We have analyzed, for this biography, the Life of Saint Francis de Sales, by M. Hamon, parish priest of Saint-Sulpice; and we have completed it with the Nivernais Hagiography, by Mgr Crosnier; and the Characteristics of the Salesians, by the R. P. Cahier. — See the Supplement, for his writings.

--SAINT ANTHONY, MONK OF LÉRINS (circa 525).

Saint Anthony, born in Pannonia, was t he son of Secundinus, whom his SAINT ANTOINE, MOINE DE LÉRINS Monk of Lérins mentioned at the end of the text (separate biography). birth made recommendable according to the world. He was only eight years old when he lost his father. Saint Severinus, apostle of Austria and Bavaria, had the occasion to know him; he was so struck by the blessings with which heaven had anticipated him, that he announced that he would one day be a great servant of God. Around the year 482, Anthony retired to the bishop of Constance, his paternal uncle, and later moved to Italy. Having heard of a holy priest named Marius, who lived in the Valtellina, he placed himself under his guidance and made great progress in virtue. But as they wanted to raise him to holy orders, he fled into the Alps, towards the Milanese, and stopped near the tomb of Saint Fidelis, on a deserted mountain. He found there two hermits who admired him in their company, but whom death took away successively. He resolved to remain alone in this place. His prayer was continual, and his fasts rigorous. He only took rest when exhausted nature forced him to. A man dressed as a hermit came one day to ask him for hospitality: he thought it was a solitary who led the same kind of life as him; but God made him know that it was a villain who, under the cover of this disguise, wanted to escape the pursuits of justice: he forced him to withdraw. The visits that his reputation began to attract to him soon became unbearable. He went deep into the desert and lived for several years unknown under a rock. In the end, he was discovered there, and people flocked from all sides to his cave. He left it and came to shut himself up in the monastery of Lérins. The monks who inhabited it found in him a model of perfection such as they had never seen among them. But they would not possess him for long: he had only been at Lérins for two years when he died. His death is placed around the year 525. His name, which various miracles made famous, is read on this day in the Roman martyrology.

Godescard. — See his life written by Saint Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, a contemporary author. It is found among the works of this holy bishop, of which Fr. Sirmond gave a good edition, as well as in the Collection of Surius, and in the Chronicle of Lérins, by Baraïl.