Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

Fifth Sunday of Lent (March 17, 2002)

Suggested Emphasis from the Prophet Ezekiel/Letter to the Romans
"I will put my spirit in you that you may live."
"You are in the spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you."

Salesian Perspective

Rather than talk about what Francis de Sales has to say about living in the Spirit of God, we shall allow him to speak - or, in this case - to write for himself.

"To live according to the spirit means to think, speak and act according to the virtues which reside in the spirit and not according to the senses and feelings which reside in the flesh. We must use and master the latter and not live according to them; but the spiritual virtues must be nurtured and all the rest made subject to them."

"What are the virtues of the spirit? There is faith, which shows us the truths that are not accessible to the senses; hope, which makes us strive for things unseen; charity, which makes us love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves, not with a sensual, natural or selfish love but with a love that is pure, firm and changeless, being grounded in God."

"The spirit, which relies on faith, grows in courage when it is hemmed in by difficulties, for it knows well that God loves, supports and helps those who are needy, provided they fix their hope in God. Human reason, by contrast, wants to know everything that is going on because it imagines that nothing in which it cannot have its say is any good; the spirit, on the other hand, cleaves to God and often says that whatever is not of God does not really matter..."

"Living according to the spirit means doing the actions which the spirit of God asks of us, saying the words and thinking the thoughts that God wants. And when I say saying the words and thinking the thoughts that God wants, I am referring to your willed thoughts. I am miserable and so I don't feel like talking: parrots do as much. I feel miserable, but since charity demands that I should talk I will do it. That is what people who live in the spirit do. I have been slighted so I grow cross: peacocks and monkeys do as much. I have been slighted and rejoice: that what the apostles did. So to live according to the spirit is to do what faith, hope and charity teach us to do, whether in things temporal or things spiritual."

"Live wholly to the Spirit; live gently and in peace. Be quite confident that God will help you, and in all that happens rest in the arms of God's mercy and goodness. May God be your all forever."

(These quotes are taken entirely from a letter written in April or May 1616, to Sister Marie-Aimee de Bloney, Mistress of Novices at the Visitation at Lyons, France. It is found in Selected Letters of St. Francis de Sales. Translated with an Introduction by Elisabeth Stopp. Published in 1960 by Harper & Brothers)

Rev. Michael S. Murray, OSFS is Executive Director
of the De Sales Spirituality Center in Washington, DC.