Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

2ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (January 20, 2008)

Suggested Emphasis

“You have been consecrated in Christ Jesus and called to be a holy people.”

Salesian Perspective

St. Francis de Sales believed that all people are called to be saints. All people are called to be holy. We have read or heard it many times before, but some things - most especially, important things - bear repeating: “When he created things God commanded plants to bring forth their fruits, each one according to its kind. In like manner, God commands Christians, the living plants of the Church, to bring forth the fruits of holiness, each according to one’s position and vocation.” (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part I, Chapter 2)

Striving for perfection - growing in holiness - “living Jesus” - is a formidable challenge. Embracing a life of virtue requires strength and courage. Renouncing sin requires strength and courage. Turning a deaf ear to temptation requires strength and courage. On any given day, our progress in devotion is marked by both success and setback.

However, this striving to be holy is made even more difficult when we attempt to be holy in a way that doesn’t fit our state or stage of life: a way of living that doesn’t fit who we are. While we are all indeed called to be holy, we are not called to be holy in the in exactly the same way as others. Francis reminds us: “Devotion (holiness) must be exercised in different ways by the gentleman, the worker, the servant, the prince the widow the young girl and the married woman. I ask you, is it fitting for a bishop to want to live a solitary life like a monk? Or for a married man to want to own no more property than a monk, for a skilled workman to spend his whole day in a church, for a religious to be constantly subject to every sort of call in service to one’s neighbor, which is more suited to the bishop? Would not such holiness be laughable, confused and impossible to live?” (Ibid)

Francis de Sales put it another way in a Conference (On the Virtues of St. Joseph) to the early Visitation community: “Some of the saints excelled in one virtue, some in another, and although all have saved their souls, they have done so in very different ways, there being as many different kinds of sanctity as there are saints.” (Conference XIX, p. 365)

A more contemporary reflection on this issue comes from Nobel prize-winning author and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: “There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his or her own gate. We make a mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate other than our own.” (Night, Page 3)

To be sure, if there is indeed one model of Christian holiness, we find it in Jesus Christ, the one in whom all of us are consecrated. But to be holy - like Jesus is holy - is not about trying to be like someone else. Rather, being holy is about having the strength and courage to be who and how God wants us to be, precisely in the places, circumstances and relationships in which we find ourselves each day.

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