"If you can share your anxiety with your spiritual director or some trusted friend, calm will be restored more quickly." - St. Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life) Thank you, dear trusted friends, for letting me share my sadness in the previous post. It was a passing sadness, no doubt thanks to your kind listening and your prayers and Our Lady's too. I was sad because, having experienced one of the most beautiful graces of my life, and knowing it was also one of the most beautiful graces of my husband's and son's and new daughter's lives too- namely the marriage of said son and daughter - I knew, too, that I wouldn't be able to remember it all. Some have written asking me if this failure in my memory is perhaps brain fog due to the chemo I've undergone. Would that it were so easily pegged! In fact, I have always been blessed with a bad memory, and this has come in handy on many occasions, but sometimes I like to complain. It's one thing to be grateful to forget an ugly image that was accidentally seen, and it's quite another kettle of fish to appreciate that this life is made of a series of fleeting images, so many of them beautiful almost beyond bearing, and yet the very nature of their fleeting means they won't last unless we remember them. Yet who but God (and perhaps the angels) can remember everything? And so, once again we are forced to rest on Him in complete abandonment and depend on Him to supply all we lack. It's a good problem to have! I have gotten over my sorrow, so let me reassure you that the sun is back in the sky (just rising as I write!) and the clouds have been dispersed. Thank you! Thanks to God, and thanks to you who have been praying for me. Your prayers are so powerful! I recently read this line from a friend (written to a wonderful group of unschooling Catholics I am in online), and I'm so glad for the chance to immortalize it here (haha, to remember later by re-reading it!). She wrote: "I have this bad habit of wanting to wait until I have more time to sit down in a quiet space and compose thoughtful, meaningful individual responses to people . . . Ah, but life continues at its crazy pace and the time never comes, and thank yous quickly become long overdue . . . I apologize!" Me too! I apologize for not thanking you enough - and again, what a good problem to have! I am (and I suspect we all are) inundated with love and kindness, and life keeps spinning forward with more love and kindness showered on me each day, so that there never seems to come a time when I can just stop it all (and who wants to stop love and kindness?) in order to say a long-winded thank you! So here is my thank you for today . . . in the form of some wonderful words from one of my favorite saints. He is also today's saint, so that works well for today's thank you . . . and, too, he is not only one of our sister St. Therese's favorites, but he is one of her patron saints. For so long I thought that St. Therese was named "Marie-Francoise Therese" in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. He is the Francis we usually think of first, and for good reason. Just like Therese herself, but centuries before, St. Francis of Assisi captured the love and hearts of the whole world - and this love continues through the ages and across cultures. If you could discover the most popular name chosen for confirmation, the most popular saint chosen as patron when a young person (or adult convert) gets to choose - I bet you the name would be Francis and the saint would be St. Francis of Assisi. In my own experience, I have had the honor to be confirmation sponsor for several dear Catholics, and it seems like half of them chose St. Francis for their saint! And I can see why, because not only did he appreciate the beauty of creation we've been talking about (and he wept over it too), but he also loved Our Lord SO MUCH - seemingly more than your other run-of-the-mill head-over-heels-in-love-with-Jesus saints! Ah, but those other saints named Francis were no slouches either! I think of our dear St. Francis Xavier. What a great missionary! And then St. Francis de Sales, the French Francis who has given the Church and the world such an example of gentleness. He is the one for whom Therese was named, and he has a special altar in the crypt of her Basilica in Lisieux (where her favorites each get their own altar!) . . . and he has words for us today, so let's get to them! First I will add this wonderful fact: St. Francis de Sales was NOT gentle by nature. He had a temper he needed to learn to control (like his little sister Therese did later), and it was precisely because God gave him the grace to become what he was not in himself that we know him as the saint of gentleness par excellence. St. John Bosco named his religious order of educators "Salesians" after Francis de Sales because he wanted his teachers to have the same gentleness to the boys they helped as was lived and advocated by Francis de Sales. Hooray for gentleness! I want to add also something I read recently (and I think I posted the quote here on my musings sometime in the past few months) in a book on St. Vincent de Paul. It turns out these two giants - Vincent and Francis - met in Paris and became fast friends as they sought to love God and draw others to love Him. Vincent was very impressed with Francis - loved him so much! - and told about how St. Francis related weeping over his own (Francis' own) writings because he couldn't believe God had let him write what clearly came so directly from Him (God)!!! This is a lot of fun to read as a writer, and no wonder, then, St. Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers. Reminds me of a favorite Snoopy quote . . . But let's get to those inspired words of St. Francis for us. He's helped me tremendously with his encouragement NOT to worry and his singular understanding that even our efforts to follow Jesus more closely are often fraught with anxiety that is not only upsetting to us, but upsetting to Jesus! Or perhaps a better way to say it (besides the many ways St. Francis himself does, which we'll get to pronto) is simply that we don't need to worry about becoming saints. This is Jesus' work in us, and our job is to let Him take care of everything. We can see this Francis is not only one of St. Therese's patron saints, but one of her favorites. Their messages have a lot in common. They both repeated frequently that surrendering ourselves into the arms of God is the easiest and most effective way to be close to Him, which is all that being a saint really is.
Here are the words Francis de Sales used to convey that good news: "Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry." "Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: 'The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him, and I am helped. He is not only with me but in me and I in Him.'" "We shall steer safely through every storm, so long as our heart is right, our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God. If at times we are somewhat stunned by the tempest, never fear. Let us take a breath and go on afresh." "Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you. Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs." "Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed." And finally, his good friend and spiritual daughter St. Jane Frances de Chantal tells us that St. Francis once said to her: "I have been feeling most strongly how great a blessing it is to be a child, though an unworthy one, of this glorious Mother. Let us undertake great things under Mary's patronage, for she will never leave us destitute of what we are struggling to attain.” * * * St. Francis de Sales, pray for us! St. Jane de Chantal, help us, too, to become spiritual children of your spiritual father! St. Therese, pray for us and obtain for us many roses of heavenly graces through the teachings and love of your patron and big brother St. Francis! Draw me, we will run! P.S. That wonderful painting of the Good Shepherd is by Sybil Parker who painted it in 1895, the same year St. Therese made her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, which you can find on this page (below some other prayers and pictures we love). Comments are closed.
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Miss MarcelI've written books and articles and even a novel. Now it's time to try a blog! For more about me personally, go to the home page and you'll get the whole scoop! If you want to send me an email, feel free to click "Contact Me" below. To receive new posts, enter your email and click "Subscribe" below. More MarcelArchives
December 2024
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