02-02-2021, 12:44 PM
Every Day with Saint Francis de Sales
Teachings and Examples from the Life of the Saint by Salesiana Publishers
February 2nd (page 33)
What greater or more profound humility can be imagined than that practiced by the Lord and His holy mother, one coming to the temple to be offered like all the sons of sinful men and other to purify herself like all other women? It is certainly no heroic effort on our part to abase ourselves or humiliate ourselves, since abasement and humiliation is often our due. Yet no sooner do little humiliations come our way than we immediately feel resentment, and, turning our backs on such a beautiful virtue, we wish to be esteemed as somebody!
(Sermons 28; O. IX, pp. 251-252)
Today Francis de Sales presents himself to us a young man of twenty-five. Having completed his studies, instead of formulating, ambitious and purelyhuman plans, as the majority of young men of his age and position would have done, he prudently traveled in France and Italy, and with deep piety made pilgrimages to Rome and Loreto. He received the title of doctor but refused the purple robes of a senator and the offer of a very suitable marriage.At the age of twenty-six he received the cassock, at twenty-seven he said his first Mass, and at twenty-eight he took over the mission of Chablais. There, carrying out the duties of the apostolate, he brought about an extraordinary number of conversions – over 72,000! From then on, as a faithful evangelical worker, he put his hand to the plough and never once turned back. He traveled to Rome, Turin and Paris to consolidate the state of the churches; he reconciled parishes and returned them to the fold of the churches; he reconciled parishes and returned them to the fold of the Catholic Church, recovering ecclesiastical goods usurped by Protestant ministers and laymen. This cost him no less difficulty, no less effort than did the conversion of souls. Graciously he remarked that “having brought the sheep back to the fold, it was necessary to provide pasture and support for the pastors who would be the shepherds of the flock.”
(A.S. II, p. 27)
A really humble person never thinks anyone has done him or her wrong.
Teachings and Examples from the Life of the Saint by Salesiana Publishers
February 2nd (page 33)
What greater or more profound humility can be imagined than that practiced by the Lord and His holy mother, one coming to the temple to be offered like all the sons of sinful men and other to purify herself like all other women? It is certainly no heroic effort on our part to abase ourselves or humiliate ourselves, since abasement and humiliation is often our due. Yet no sooner do little humiliations come our way than we immediately feel resentment, and, turning our backs on such a beautiful virtue, we wish to be esteemed as somebody!
(Sermons 28; O. IX, pp. 251-252)
Today Francis de Sales presents himself to us a young man of twenty-five. Having completed his studies, instead of formulating, ambitious and purelyhuman plans, as the majority of young men of his age and position would have done, he prudently traveled in France and Italy, and with deep piety made pilgrimages to Rome and Loreto. He received the title of doctor but refused the purple robes of a senator and the offer of a very suitable marriage.At the age of twenty-six he received the cassock, at twenty-seven he said his first Mass, and at twenty-eight he took over the mission of Chablais. There, carrying out the duties of the apostolate, he brought about an extraordinary number of conversions – over 72,000! From then on, as a faithful evangelical worker, he put his hand to the plough and never once turned back. He traveled to Rome, Turin and Paris to consolidate the state of the churches; he reconciled parishes and returned them to the fold of the churches; he reconciled parishes and returned them to the fold of the Catholic Church, recovering ecclesiastical goods usurped by Protestant ministers and laymen. This cost him no less difficulty, no less effort than did the conversion of souls. Graciously he remarked that “having brought the sheep back to the fold, it was necessary to provide pasture and support for the pastors who would be the shepherds of the flock.”
(A.S. II, p. 27)
A really humble person never thinks anyone has done him or her wrong.