Every Day with Saint Francis de Sales - January

[Hildegard of Bingen]

Every Day with Saint Francis de Sales

Teachings and Examples from the Life of the Saint by Salesiana Publishers

 

January 23rd (page 23)

 
     Receive Holy Communion with courage, peace and humility, in response to the Divine Spouse, Who, in order to unite Himself to us, humbled Himself and so wonderfully abased Himself as to become our very food – we who will soon become a meal for worms . . . He who receives Communion according to the spirit of the Divine Spouse humbles himself and says to the Lord, “Masticate me, digest me, annihilate me, but convert me totally into Thee!”
 

(Letters 1529; O. XVIII, p. 400)

 
 
     On January 23rd, 1572, the holy mother Chantal was born at Dibon.  In 1617, Francis de Sales wrote to her on this day:  “It gave me great pleasure, my dearest daughter, that you reminded me that today is your birthday, for I had forgotten it.  Job expressed as a wish that it would have been better for him to have died on the day of his birth, but my wish is that your birthday, my dearest mother, be among the most blessed for ever and ever.  Yet on these anniversary days of our birth we must humble ourselves, thinking of the nothingness from which we came; at the same time, they should be occasions of encouragement, realizing the goal for which God has given us life.
 

(A.S. I, p. 575)

 
 
     On the same day in 1618, Francis de Sales assisted at the death of Father Philip of Quoex, his confessor, canon at Saint Peter’s in Geneva and prior of Saint Catherine, a man of God comforted by a visit from his guardian angel. Just before breathing his last, this holy man asked his holy penitent to leave the room, and said to those around his bed, “I would be doing wrong if I did not tell you that our bishop resembles Saint John the Baptist for the purity of his life, while he is another Charles [Borromeo] for his humility, poverty and apostolic zeal.”
 

(A.S. I, p. 576)

 

 

Get going! Resolve to die a thousand times rather than love anyone else more than you love God.