Francis de Sales: Treatise on the Love of God

This "view" of life, this continual gazing at the beloved Master for whom we work, this regarding the acts of life as a mere series of acts or offerings of love, is the very central point of the ascetic teaching of S. Francis. It not only gives the nobleness, the intensity, the meritoriousness of charity to every act, but it gives also at the same time a great simplicity and largeness, preserving the soul from formality and from getting lost or wearied in the multitudinous details and minute practices of the spiritual life; it creates a loving detachment and liberty of spirit, with a readiness to follow every slightest indication of God's will. Finally, it gives order to our various duties. For instance, it puts in their proper place, in serene majesty above the cavils of worldlings, the works of religion and "piety." These are the immediate services of the beloved, the first effects of charity, and therefore charity itself teaches that: "Amongst all virtuous actions we should carefully practise those of religion and reverence to divine things, those of faith, hope and the most holy fear of God;--often talking of heavenly things, thinking of and aspiring after eternity, frequenting churches and holy services, reading spiritual books, observing the ceremonies of the Christian religion; for holy love feeds at will amid these exercises, and spreads its graces and properties more abundantly over them than over the simply human virtues" (xi. 3). Yet there is no fanaticism. The human virtues find their proper place at the proper time, and, inferior in themselves, are raised by love, that is, by the fact that for the time they are the will of God, to the highest rank in the eyes of the loving soul,--"For in little and low exercises, charity is practised not only more frequently, but also as a rule more humbly, and therefore more profitably and more holily" (xii. 6). He has two glorious chapters on the truth that legitimate occupations, be they even in court or camp, hinder not the practice of divine love. "Curiosity, ambition, disquiet, together with inadvertence to, or not considering, the end for which we are in this world, are the causes why we have a hundred times more hindrances than affairs; and it is these embarrassments, that is, the silly, vain, superfluous undertakings with which we charge ourselves that turn us from the love of God, and not the true and lawful exercise of our vocations" (xii. 4.). In the one great principle of doing all for love we have signalized two conditions or negative aspects of the same. 1°. The intellect must be kept "very attentive." As the Saint says in the "Introduction to a Devout Life" (v. 17), so here, consideration "is supposed throughout the entire work," the whole edifice is built on it, and therefore the want of it, "inconsidération," is the ruin of the whole spiritual life (xi. 7.) This "consideration" need not be called by the alarming name of mental prayer, but whatever it is called it consists in a most serious attention to spiritual truths according to the capacity of the individual: there must be one great esteem, and therefore the energy of the intellect cannot be given primarily to anything else. So (2°) in the will, there must be but one great affection, one aim, one desire--"One to one." "The desire of exalting God separates from inferior pleasures" (v. 7); and: "to have the desire of sacred love we must cut off other desires" (xii. 3). "Those souls who ever abound in desires, designs and projects never desire holy celestial love as they ought:" "He who aspires to heavenly love must carefully reserve for it his leisure, his spirit, and his affections:"--words which should be written in letters of flame for the guidance of such as seek the right way to perfection.