St. Francis de Sales - Introduction to the Devout Life

Saint Francis de Sales

Ignatius PressAugustine
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Copyright 2015, Ignatius PressAugustine Institute.
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ISBN 978-1-62164-056-1 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-68149-722-8 (EB)

This edition of Introduction to the Devout Life is adapted from the English translation published in England in 1876 and available from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library Website, http://www.ccel.org. The language has been modernized, Scripture has been updated to the RSV-2CE translation, and a foreword has been added.

Foreword by Christopher Blum, PhD

Production Editor: Jeffrey Cole
Associate Production Editor, Layout and Design: Denise Fath
Cover Design: Christopher Murphy and Bryan Johnson

Cover Art: Pentecost by Tiziano Vecellio (14881576)
Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, Italy

Back Cover: Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, March 2, 2001

The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Revised Standard Version Bible, Ignatius Edition, Copyright 2006, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission of Ignatius PressLighthouse Catholic Media.

Printed in the United States of America

Counsels and Exercises for the Guidance of the
Soul from Its First Desire After a Devout Life unto
a Full Resolution of Pursuing the Same

Counsels as to Uplifting the Soul to God in
Prayer and the Use of the Sacraments

Counsels Concerning the Practice of Virtue

Counsels Concerning Some
Ordinary Temptations

Counsels and Practices for Renewing
and Confirming the Soul in Devotion

A gift for friendship was perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), whose holiness was nowhere more apparent than in his generosity as a spiritual director by correspondence. Amidst his many duties, he made the time to write his letters by hand, as many as twenty a day. From that patient labor, God brought forth great fruit. To one of his regular correspondents, he sent a collection of spiritual exercises; when she showed it to her local pastor, the result was the bold request that it be published for the good of souls. And so the Introduction to the Devout Life came to light in 1608, quickly to become the most popular and beloved guide to the path to sanctity for men and women living in the world.

This remarkable volume is both compellingly clear and eminently practical. St. Francis de Sales had an extraordinary focus on the endthe love of Godand also an uncanny ability to mark out the steps leading to that end. His spiritual counsel is approachable and supple. It may not be much easier to be good for having been taught by himthe essential work must still be done by our own willsbut it is easier to know how to be good. There have been many valuable works of spiritual theology written since, but it is safe to say that for anyone who desires to live in the friendship of Christ, the Introduction to the Devout Life remains an ideal guide and a most fitting companion to the Gospels.

Today, as we attempt to put the Second Vatican Councils universal call to holiness into daily practice, we stand to gain from de Sales counsel that we make a careful choice of which virtues to exercise. To love God fittingly and well we must have all of the virtues, at least to a degree, for otherwise, we will be endlessly encountering obstacles to the love of God. Yet it is one thing to have the firm dispositions that are the virtues and another to put each of them to work. For, as he explained, it is not often that we have the chance to practice fortitude, magnanimity, and great generosity, whereas meekness, temperance, integrity, and humility... must mark all our actions in life. At stake is not merely circumstance, but also our own choice. In practicing the virtues, he taught, we should prefer the one most conformable to our duties rather than one more agreeable to our tastes.

To walk in friendship with God is not the work of a single day, which is why we should be mindful of de Sales saying that there is no better path to success in the spiritual life than always to begin again and never to think that you have done enough. Our own weakness can cause us to lose heart. Yet the Christian life requires that we have a certain disregard for our shortcomings because of our confidence in the Lord: God will hold you in his hand, de Sales once said, and if he lets you stumble, it will be only so that you realize that you would collapse entirely if he did not hold you, and so that you will tighten your grip upon his hand. It is advice such as thiswarm, direct, and memorablethat makes St. Francis de Sales a most valuable spiritual guide and, indeed, a treasured friend.

Christopher O. Blum
Augustine Institute
Denver, Colorado

Dear reader, I request you to read this Preface for your own satisfaction as well as mine.

The flower-girl Glycera was so skilled in varying the arrangement and combination of her flowers, that out of the same kinds she produced a great variety of bouquets; so that the painter Pausias, who sought to rival the diversity of her art, was brought to a standstill, for he could not vary his painting so endlessly as Glycera varied her bouquets. Even so the Holy Spirit of God disposes and arranges the devout teaching that he imparts through the lips and pen of his servants with such endless variety, that, although the doctrine is ever one and the same, their treatment of it is different, according to the varying minds whence that treatment flows. Assuredly I neither desire, nor ought to write in this book anything but what has been already said by others before me. I offer you the same flowers, dear reader, but the bouquet will be somewhat different from theirs, because it is differently made up.

Almost all those who have written concerning the devout life have had chiefly in view persons who have altogether left the world; or at any rate they have taught a manner of devotion that would lead to such total retirement. But my object is to teach those who are living in towns, at court, in their own households, and whose calling obliges them to a social life, so far as externals are concerned. Such persons are apt to reject all attempt to lead a devout life under the plea of impossibility; imagining that like as no animal presumes to eat of the plant commonly called palma Christi , so no one who is immersed in the tide of temporal affairs ought to presume to seek the palm of Christian piety.

And so I have shown them that, like as the mother-of-pearl lives in the sea without ever absorbing one drop of salt water; and as near the Chelidonian Isles springs of sweet water start forth in the midst of the ocean and as the firemoth hovers in the flames without burning her wings; even so a true steadfast soul may live in the world untainted by worldly breath, finding a wellspring of holy piety amid the bitter waves of society, and hovering amid the flames of earthly lusts without singeing the wings of its devout life. Of a truth this is not easy, and for that very reason I would have Christians bestow more care and energy than heretofore on the attempt, and thus it is that, while conscious of my own weakness, I endeavor by this book to afford some help to those who are undertaking this noble work with a generous heart.