The Spirit of St. Francis de SalesCamus, Jean-Pierre
Religion
The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales
Camus, Jean-Pierre
Christian life -- Catholic authors; Devotional literature
To show you that it was not only to me that our Blessed Father expressed
his opinion on this point, this is how he wrote about it to a Superior of
the Visitation.
"We ought not to be so fickle as to wish without any substantial reason to
change our Confessor, but, on the other hand, we should not be immovable
and persistent when legitimate causes make such a change desirable, and
Bishops should not so tie their own hands as to be unable to effect the
change when expedient, and especially when either the Sisters or the
Spiritual Father desire it."
[Footnote 1: St. Teresa was not then canonised. [Ed.]]
UPON DIFFERENT METHODS OF DIRECTION.
In the year 1619 our Blessed Father went to Paris where he remained for
eight or nine months. I was there at the same time, having been summoned
for the Advent and Lent sermons.
Many pious persons came to consult him on their spiritual concerns, and
thus gave him the opportunity of observing the variety of methods employed
by God to draw souls to Himself, and also the different ways in which His
Priests guide and direct these same souls.
Among others, he told me of two priests celebrated for their preaching, and
who also applied themselves most zealously to the administration of the
Sacrament of Penance. Both were faithful servants of God and exemplary in
the discharge of their functions, but yet so different in their methods of
direction, that they almost seemed to oppose one another, though both had
the one single aim in view, namely, to promote the service and the glory of
God, "One of them," said the Saint, "is severe and almost terrible in his
preaching. He proclaims the judgments of God like the very trump of doom.
In his special devotions, too, he speaks of nothing but mortifications,
austerities, constant self-examination and such like exercises. Thus,
by the wholesome fears with which he fills the minds of his penitents,
he leads them to an exact observance of God's law, and to an anxious
solicitude for their own salvation. He does not harass them with scruples,
and yet keeps them in a marvellous state of subjection.
"The effect of his direction is that God is greatly feared and dreaded by
them, that they fly from sin as from a serpent, and that they earnestly
practise virtue. This divine fear is coupled with a high esteem for their
Director, and a friendship for him, holy indeed, but so strong and vehement
that it seems to these souls as though, were they to lose their guide, they
must needs go astray.
"The other Director leads souls to God by quite a different path. His
sermons are always on the love of God. He inculcates the study of virtue
rather than the hatred of vice. He makes his penitents love virtue more
because it pleases God, than because it is itself worthy of love, and he
makes them hate vice more because it displeases God than because of the
sufferings which it brings upon those who are slaves to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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