01-07-2021, 08:46 PM
Every Day with Saint Francis de Sales
Teachings and Examples from the Life of the Saint by Salesiana Publishers
January 7th (page 7)
On our journey through life we do not wish to meet any difficulties or contradictions. We want constant consolations, no periods of dryness, no unpleasant times; health without sickness, repose without work, and peace without disturbance! But can’t you see our folly when we want to have something we cannot have? Unallayed good is found only in paradise, as in hell is found nothing but evil. The great Chrysostom says: “O man, you who get all upset when things do not always go your way, are you not ashamed when you ponder that what you want was not to be found even in the family of Our Lord? . . . Consider, I beg you, the events, the contradictions, and all the things that happened. The angel of the Lord said in a dream to Saint Joseph, “And after they were departed, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt: and be there until I shall tell thee. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him.” [Mt 2:13] This, indeed, was a moment of great sorrow for the Virgin Mary and for good Saint Joseph.”
(Spiritual Discourses III; O, VI, pp. 32, 38)
Francis de Sales, then working on the Chablais mission, was greatly afflicted because, despite all his hard work, he had made so few conversions. The ministers and the Protestant authorities forbade the people to go to his talks, even threatening them with death. On January 7th, 1598, while he was celebrating Mass, he was inspired by God to compose and secretly distribute among the families some pamphlets containing teachings of our holy religion and a refutation of the principal errors of the Protestants. Thus “Catholic doctrine, which they could not receive through their ears, would enter the souls of these poor people through their eyes.” This literary campaign, a “last resort” of his untiring zeal, met with remarkable success.
(A.S. I, p. 146)
No one could have foreseen, in those far-off days, the splendid future of this first apostolate of the press!