Sent Forth by the Love of Christ: Reflection from St. Francis De Sales

The following is a reflection from St. Francis De Sales. St. Francis De Sales feast day is celebrated by the Catholic Church on January 24th. He was a great preacher and the most sought after spiritual director. He is a Doctor of the Church and is known for hios spiritual writing of Introduction to the Devout Life. 

Saint Francis, sending his children out on their travels into desolate places, gave them this advice instead of money and provisions: Cast your care upon the Lord, and he shall sustain you (Ps 55:23). I say the same to you: cast your hearts, aspirations, anxieties, and affections upon the paternal bosom of God, and he will guide you. He will carry you wherever his love would have you go.

Let us hear and follow the voice of the divine Savior, who, like the most excellent psalmist, sings the sovereign features of his love from the tree of the cross. He concludes them as follows: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. After that has been said, what is left but to breathe forth our last breath and die of love, living no longer ourselves, but Jesus Christ living in us? Then the anxieties of our heart will cease—anxieties proceeding from desires suggested by self-love and tenderness for ourselves, which make us secretly so eager
in the pursuit of our own satisfaction and perfection. Embarked, then, in the exercises of our vocation, carried along by the wind of this simple and loving confidence…we shall make the very greatest progress….Every possible event and variety of accident that may happen will be received calmly and peacefully. For what is there that can disturb or move those who are in the hands of God and rest upon his bosom, those who have abandoned themselves to his love and have resigned themselves to his good pleasure?

Whatever may happen…they utter from their heart the holy acquiescence of our Savior: Yes, Father, for so it has seemed good in your sight (Mt 11:26). Then we shall be all steeped, as it were, in sweetness and gentleness toward all our neighbors, for we shall look upon these souls as resting in our Savior’s Heart. Alas! They who regard their neighbor in any other way run the risk of not loving him with purity, constancy, and impartiality. But be holding him in that divine resting place, who would not love him, bear with him, and be patient with his imperfections?… Your neighbor is there, in the Heart of the Savior, there as so beloved and so lovable that the divine Lover dies of love for him!