Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 30, 2002)

Suggested Emphasis from the book of the Gospel of Matthew
"God fashioned all things that they might have life; the creatures of the world are wholesome...and God formed us to be imperishable; in the image of the divine nature God made us."

Salesian Perspective
St. Francis de Sales is often called a Christian Humanist. Among other things, this means that St. Francis de Sales emphasizes the goodness of the human family and all of creation as expressions of God's eternal love for us. While it is true that we do not always live our lives in ways that give powerful witness to our "imperishable" nature, we - and all of creation - are good. Francis de Sales acknowledges the reality of sin, but he draws even greater attention to the beauty of creation and of God's eternal desire that we might not only flourish on earth but also know eternal fulfillment in heaven.

Listen to Francis de Sales' wonderful description of God's creative power. "I ask you to imagine, on the one hand, an artist engaged in painting a picture of our Savior's birth. No doubt he will give the picture thousands of touches with his brush, and take not only days but weeks and months to complete it with various persons and other objects that he wishes to portray in it. On the other hand, let us look at a print maker. After he has placed a sheet of paper on the plate with the same mystery of the Nativity engraved upon it, he gives it only a single stroke of the press. By this one stroke the printer will complete his entire task; in an instant he will draw off a picture representing in a beautiful engraving all that had been imagined as described in sacred history. Although he made but one single movement, the work contains a great many persons and various other objects...In the same way, nature like a painter multiplies and diversifies its acts according as it has various works in hand: it takes a long time to complete its great effects. But God, like the printer, has given existence to all the different creatures which have been, are, or shall be, by one single stroke from his all-powerful will. From his idea, as from a well-cut plate, God draws this marvelous distinction of persons and other things that succeed one another in seasons, ages, and times, each one in order as they were destined to be." (Treatise, Book II, Chapter 2)

Life is a gift. All that has life is a gift. We are a gift from God and to God. We are called to be gift to one another. We give thanks and praise to God for the goodness of creation by doing our level best to call fort that goodness from ourselves and from one another.

This divine gift of creation from God is a once-and-for-all expression of God's eternal love for and generosity to us. Still, the working out of creation continues. Francis wrote: "Even to this day we see a perpetual revolution and succession of times and seasons which shall continue to the end of the world...Nothing has being except by God's most unique, most simple and most eternal divine act, to which be honor and glory. Amen." (Ibid)

How can we give thanks for so marvelous a gift today?

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