The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales Part 47

"What more have you to say, for I know you do not intend to spare me?"

"I love you too much," he replied, "either to spare or to flatter you, and had you loved our Sisters in the same way, you would not have wasted words in puffing them up in place of edifying them, and in praising their vocation, of which they have already quite a sufficiently high opinion.

"You would have dealt out to them more salutary doctrine, in proportion as it would have been more humiliating. Always remember that the whole object of preaching is to root out sin, and to plant justice in its stead."

On my replying to this that those whom I addressed were already delivered from the hands of their enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and were serving G.o.d securely in holiness and justice, "Then," he said, "since they are standing, you should teach them to take heed lest they fall, and to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

"It is right, indeed, for you to encourage them to persevere in their holy undertaking, but you must do so without exposing them to the danger of presumption and vanity. Enough said; I know that for the future you will be careful in this matter."

The next day he sent me to preach in a convent of Poor Clares, an Order renowned for the exemplary life of its members and for their extraordinary austerities. I took good care to avoid the rock on which I had struck the day before, and against which he had warned me. There was as large a congregation as before, but I confined myself to plain and simple language, without a thought of studied rhetoric.

I did not praise the austerities of the good nuns, nor did I labour to please any of my hearers, their edification was my sole object.

On our return to the house, our Blessed Father said, embracing me tenderly, that though most of those present were dissatisfied, and compared my sermon most unfavourably with that of the preceding day, yet, that he, on the contrary, who had then found fault with me, was now perfectly contented and pleased, and that he believed that G.o.d was pleased also. "As for your past faults," he continued, "I give you a plenary indulgence for them all.

"If you continue to preach as you have just done, whatever the world may say, you will be doing much service for the Master of the Vineyard, and will become a fitting servant of His Testament."

One day I was preaching before him at Annecy in the church which he used as his cathedral. He was surrounded by all his canons, who, with the whole Chapter, attended him to the bench where he was in the habit of sitting to hear sermons.

This particular one of mine pleased him as regarded its matter and delivery, but I suffered an allusion to escape me referring to his own name of Sales, and implying, or rather affirming, that he was the salt (_Sal es_) with which the whole ma.s.s of the people was seasoned.

This praise was so distasteful to him that, on our return from the church, he took me to task for it, in a tone and with a manner as severe as was possible to his gentle nature. "You were going on so well," he said. "What could have induced you to play these pranks? Do you know that you spoilt your sermon by them? Truly, I am a fine sort of salt, fit only to be thrown into the street and trampled under foot by the people. For certainly you must have said what you did say in order to put me to shame--you have found out the right way to do that--but, at least, spare your own friends."

I tried to excuse myself, alleging that what the Bishop of Saluces once said to him had suddenly come into my heads and that, quite without premeditation, the very same words escaped my lips, "But," he replied, "in the pulpit such things must not escape our lips. I am quite aware that this time they really did escape you, but you must not allow it to happen again."

I may here explain, for your benefit, what I meant by this reference to a saying of the Bishop of Saluces. That holy prelate, who died in the odour of sanct.i.ty, and who was a disciple of Sr. Philip Neri, was an intimate friend of our Blessed Father's.

On one occasion, when the latter was pa.s.sing through Saluces on his way to the shrine of Our Lady of Montdeay, the good Bishop received him with every mark of respect, and begged him to preach in his cathedral. After the sermon, he said to him, "My Lord, truly _tu Sal es; at ego, neque sal, neque lux_." That is to say, "You are a true salt (_Sal es_), and I am neither salt nor light," alluding to the word Saluces (_Sal lux_), his diocese.[1]

[Footnote 1: NOTE.--Another version says that it was St. Francis who answered: "On the contrary, _tu sal et lux_." See "Vies de S. F. de Sales."

by his nephew, Charles Auguste de Sales and Hamon. Also the life of Blessed Juvenal Ancina, the said Bishop of Saluces. [Ed.]]

UPON CONTROVERSY.

The gentleness of his disposition made Blessed Francis averse to disputing, either in private or public, in matters of religion. Rather, he loved to hold informal and kindly conferences with any who had wandered from the right way; and by this means he brought back countless souls into the Catholic Church. His usual method of proceeding was this. He first of all listened readily to all that his opponents had to say about their religion, not showing any sign of weariness or contempt, however tired he might be of the subject. By this means he sought to incline them to give him in his turn some little attention. When, if only out of mere civility, he was given in his turn an opportunity of speaking, he did not lose a moment of the precious time, but at once took up the subject treated by the heretic, or perhaps another which he considered more useful, and deduced from it briefly, clearly, and very simply the truth of the Catholic belief, and this without any air of contending, without a word which breathed of controversy, but neither more nor less than as if dealing in a catechetical instruction with an Article of the Faith.

If interrupted by outcries and contemptuous expressions, he bore the annoyance with incredible patience, and, without showing himself disturbed in the least, continued his discourse as soon as ever an opportunity was given to him.

"You would never believe," he said, "how beautiful the truths of our holy Faith appear to those who consider them calmly. We smother them when we try to dress them up, and we hide them when we aim at rendering them too conspicuous. Faith is an infused, not a natural, knowledge; it is not a human science, but a divine light, by means of which we see things which, in the natural order, art invisible to us. If we try to teach it as human sciences are taught, by ocular demonstrations and by natural evidence, we deceive ourselves; Faith is not to be found where human reason tries only to support itself by the experience of the senses.

"All the external proofs which can be brought to bear upon our opponents are weak, unless the Holy Spirit is at work in their soul's, teaching them to recognise the ways of G.o.d. All that has to be done is to propose to them simply the truths of our Faith. To propose these truths is to compel men to accept them, unless, indeed, they resist the Holy Spirit, either through dullness of understanding, or through uncirc.u.mcision of the heart.

The attaching over much importance to the light of natural reason is a quenching of the Spirit of G.o.d. Faith is not an acquired, but an infused virtue; it must be treated with accordingly, and in instructing heretics we must beware of taking to ourselves any part of the glory which belongs to G.o.d alone.

"One of the greatest misfortunes of heretics is that their ministers in their discourses travesty our Faith, representing it as something quite different from what it really is. For example, they pretend that we have no regard for Holy Scripture; that we worship the Pope as G.o.d; that we regard the Saints as divinities; that we hold the Blessed Virgin as being more than Jesus Christ; that we pay divine worship to images and pictures; that we believe souls in Purgatory to be suffering the selfsame agony and despair as those in h.e.l.l; that we deprive the laity of partic.i.p.ation in the Blood of Jesus Christ; that we adore bread in the Eucharist; that we despise the merits of Jesus Christ, attributing our salvation solely to the merit of our good works; that auricular confession is mental torture; and so on, endeavouring by calumnies of this sort to discredit our religion and to render the very thought of it odious to those who are so thoroughly misinformed as to its nature. When, on the contrary, they are made acquainted with our real belief on any of these points, the scales fall from their eyes, and they see that the fascination and cajolery of their preachers has hidden from them the truth as to G.o.d's goodness and the beauty of G.o.d's truth, and has put darkness before them in the place of light.

"It is true that at first they may shrug their shoulders, and laugh us to scorn; but when they have left us, and, being alone, reflect a little on what we have told them, you will see them flutter back like decoyed birds, saying to us, 'We should like to hear you speak again about those things which you brought before us the other day.' Then they fall, some on the right hand, others on the left, and Truth, victorious on all sides, brings them by different paths to know it as it really is."

He gave me many instances of conversions he had himself made in this manner during his five years' mission in the Chablais.

He gave them to show how useful this mode of proceeding was, and how far more helpful to souls than mere controversy can be.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Blessed Francis did not approve of controversial sermons,[1] "The Christian pulpit," he used to say, "is a place for improving of morals, not for wrangling about them, for instructing the faithful in the truth of their belief, rather than for convincing of their error those who have separated themselves from the Church. An experience of thirty years in the work of evangelising makes me speak thus. We made some trial of the controversial method, when G.o.d through us led back the Chablais to the Catholic Faith, but when I attempted to throw my treating of controversial subjects in the pulpit into the form of a discussion, it was never successful. In place of reclaiming our separated brethren, this method scares them away; when they see that we are of set purpose attacking them, they instantly put themselves on their guard; when we bring the lamp too close to their eyes, they start back from the light. Nor have I ever observed that any of my fellow labourers in this work of the Lord were more successful in following out this plan, of fencing, as I may more justly call it, even though they engaged in it with the utmost enthusiasm, and in a place where the congregation all sang hymns together, and each one in his turn acted the preacher, each saying exactly what he liked, and no one taking any kind of official lead among them.

"But, in truth, this fencing was what St. Paul calls beating the air.[2] I do not mean that we must not prove Catholic truths, and refute the contrary errors; for the weapons of the spiritual armoury and of the Word of G.o.d are powerful to destroy all false teaching which rears itself up against the truth, and to condemn disobedience to G.o.d; but we must not slash with our words as desperate fencers do, but rather manage them dexterously, as does a surgeon when using his lancet--he probes skilfully, so as to wound the patient as little as possible."

And, indeed, Blessed Francis' way of dealing with this branch of theology, bristling with thorns as it does at every point, was so sweet and pleasant as to make it, as it were, blossom into roses. I could relate many instances of the success of his preaching, without employing controversy, in bringing back wanderers from the fold, equally with other sinners, into the Church.

He accomplished this by simply stating great truths, and bringing them home to his hearers. One of the most remarkable instances, perhaps, is that of the Protestant lady, who hearing him preach on the Last Judgment at Paris in the year 1619, having been attracted more by curiosity than by any good motive to listen to the sermon, there received that first flash of light which afterwards guided her into the bosom of the true Church, into which later she was followed by all the members of her n.o.ble family, one that has since given us many celebrated divines and preachers. This incident, however, with many more of the same kind, is fully related in the life of our Blessed Father. So successful was he with Protestants that Cardinal du Perron used to say that if it were only a question of confounding the heretics, he thought he had found out the secret, but to convert them he felt obliged to send for the Bishop of Geneva.

[Footnote 1: Note.--It is more correct to say that St. Francis preferred moral sermons to controversy.]

[Footnote 2: 1 Cor. ix. 26.]

UPON REASON AND REASONING.

He used to say that reason never deceives, but reasoning often does. When a person went to him with some complaint, or about some troublesome business, he would always listen most patiently and attentively to any reasons which were put before him, and, being full of prudence and good judgment, he could always discern between what had any bearing on the matter and what was foreign to it. When, therefore, people began obstinately to defend their opinions by reasons, which, plausible though they might appear, really carried no weight sufficient to secure a judgment, he would sometimes say very gently, "Yes, I know quite well that these are your reasons, but do you know that all reasons are not reasonable?" Someone on one occasion having retorted that he might as well a.s.sert that heat was not warm, he replied seriously, "Reason and reasoning are two different things: reasoning is only the path leading to reason." Thus he would endeavour to bring the person who had strayed away from truth back to it. Truth and reason can never be separated, because they are one and the same thing.

UPON QUOTING HOLY SCRIPTURE.

St. Charles Borromeo never read the Scriptures except on his knees, just as if he were listening to G.o.d speaking on Mount Sinai in thunder and lightning.

Blessed Francis also would not allow the Bible to be treated with anything but the most extreme reverence, whether in public speaking, in writing, or in private reading.

He was especially averse to that habit which some preachers have of plunging into the mystical meaning of a pa.s.sage, whether allegorical or figurative, before they have explained its literal sense. "To do this," he said, "is to build the roof of a house before laying the foundation. Holy Scripture must be treated with more reverence and more consistency--it is not material to be cut according to our fancy, and made into ornamental garments such as fashion suggests."

UPON POLITICAL DIPLOMACY.

On one occasion I expressed my surprise to our Blessed Father that his Serene Highness Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, who was one of the most excellent Princes and foremost politicians of his age, should never have employed him in his affairs, especially in those which regarded France, where they did not prosper.

As may be supposed, I explained the reason of my surprise, insisting that his gentleness, patience, skill, and probity were certain to bring about the desired result.

He listened in silence, and then answered with a seriousness and earnestness which put me to shame, "You say too much, you exaggerate: you imagine that others esteem me as you do, you who are always looking at me through a magnifying gla.s.s. However, let us put that aside. As regards our Prince, my feeling is very different from yours, for in this very matter I consider that he shows the excellence of his judgment.

"I will tell you why I speak and think this. In the first place, I have not all that skill and prudence in the management of affairs with which you credit me. Is it likely I should have? The mere words, human prudence, business, politics, terrify me. That is not all. To speak frankly, I know nothing of the art of lying, dissimulating, or pretence, which latter is the chief instrument and the mainspring of political manoeuvring; the art of arts in all matters of human prudence and of civil administration.

"Not for all the provinces of Savoy, of France, nay, not for the whole empire, would I connive at deceit. I deal with others frankly, in good faith, and very simply; the words of my lips are the outcome of the thoughts of my heart. I cannot carry two faces under one hood; I hate duplicity with a mortal hatred, knowing that G.o.d holds the deceitful man in abomination. There are very few who, knowing me, do not at least discern this much of my character. They therefore judge very wisely that I am by no means fit for an office in which you have to speak peace to your neighbour whilst you are plotting mischief against him in your heart. Moreover, I have always followed, as a heavenly, supreme, and divine maxim, those great words of the Apostle: _No man being a soldier to G.o.d entangleth himself with secular business that he may please Him to whom he hath engaged himself._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Tim. ii, 4.]

UPON AMBITION.