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 29th  (page 29)

 
     To ensure that the saints pray and intercede for us, we must invoke them and ask their help. The best way to celebrate their feasts is to realize the power they have with God for obtaining the graces of which we stand in need.  Our Lord is so pleased when we profit from the intercession of the saints that, wishing to bestow on us some favor, He often inspires us to seek their meditation and invites us to ask them to pray for us.  With full confidence we should seek their help and turn to them, especially on their feast days, without doubting for a moment that they will listen to us and will obtain for us what we are asking.
 

(Sermons 51, O. X, pp. 136-137)

 

 
     Once, on January 29th, Saint Francis de Sales, accompanied by Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, appeared to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and said, “The Lord has commanded me to visit all the convents of my order, assuring me that all those religious whom I recognize as true daughters will be received by Him as His spouses.  To carry out this command I have done nothing else except visit the hearts of the superiors, within which all these Daughters of the Visitation should be found.  No matter who they are, the superiors represent the sacred person of Jesus Christ, and every religious who is separated from her superior will also be rejected by me!”
 

(A.S. I, p. 690)

 

 

 

True love of God permits no rivals; He wants to reign as sovereign.  When He cannot reign absolutely, He no longer abides in us.