Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 27th June 2024
A Spiritual Classic from the Seventeenth Century
Yesterday, I introduced one of the great classics of Christian spirituality: Introduction to the Spiritual Life, written by St Francis de Sales, which was first published back in 1609. So who was St Francis de Sales?
Francis born in Savoy, in the Chateau de Sales, in 1567. He studied at the University of Paris and then went onto the University of Padua, which was a great centre for the study of law. His father was happy indeed - it looked like Francis was all set for a successful and lucrative career back home in Savoy. All that remained to be done was to find Francis a suitable wife, and then Francis’s father could relax. The future of the family was secure. Unfortunately, Francis had other plans. So had God.
Francis decided to reject the undoubted attractions of a lucrative secular career and a wife and family of his own. Instead, he wanted to become a priest. At this time, it was possible to pull some strings in the church, and find a clerical post which combined the secular with spiritual values – indeed, it was possible to have lots of wealth and power and even have children, despite being a member of a theoretically celibate priesthood. It was simply a matter of who you knew, and whether God had blessed you with a sufficiently elastic conscience. Through the influence of cousin, Francis was offered a “suitable” church job in Savoy: the role of Provost of Geneva. Doubtless many would have hoped that this would be a compromise solution, which would reconcile Francis’ father to the fact that his highly gifted son wasn’t going to have a worldly career after all.
Francis took the job. By now he was in his mid 20s. Francis decided to use the opportunity of his role in the church to provide people with a new model of Christian ministry: a model of ministry in which well-connected and highly gifted clergy, such as Francis, actually cared for the poor and went about preaching the gospel. People would probably have expected someone like Francis to go about feathering his own nest and promoting the worldly interests of his family. But Francis wanted to show a more Christ-like example. He also wanted to show the power of persistent, gentle and patient preaching – a ministry based on love, rather than pride and power. Francis’ missionary work was so effective and spiritually attractive that he was even able to persuade local Calvinists to join the Roman Catholic Church – no mean achievement in the context of the times.
In 1602, Francis was appointed Bishop of Geneva. As well doing the usual administrative work which comes with the episcopal office, Francis taught people about the Christian faith, preached and gave spiritual advice. Francis seems to have enjoyed writing, and as well as the Introduction to the Spiritual life, he wrote a well-known Treatise of the Love of God.
Francis died in 1622, and he was made a Saint of the Church in 1665. Interestingly, it took another two hundred years before the Church was fully happy with the theological orthodoxy of his writings: Francis was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1877. Indeed, before Francis was appointed a bishop, he had to attend a theological examination before no less a person than the Pope himself. Why was this? Perhaps because Francis’ love and missionary zeal provided too much of a challenge to those in the Church whose values and outlook were more worldly in nature. It might also reflect the fact that although Francis had studied theology while he had been at the University of Paris, he was not an academic theologian. Perhaps the academic theologians were feeling threatened by Francis’ evangelistic success, and felt that they needed to bring him down a peg or two.
Francis lived at a time when many were seeking to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within – to make it less worldly and more evangelistic. This movement was largely successful, not least because of men and women like St Francis of Sales. This reform movement is sometimes called the “Counter-Reformation” , because it is seen as the response of the Roman Catholic Church to the issues raised by the Protestant Reformation. There is some truth in this, but the reform movement in the Church had in fact begun well before 1517, the traditional date for the start of the Reformation.
So this a brief summary of Francis’ life. He was a man from a privileged background, who turned his back on worldly success, to focus his life on sharing the gospel and helping others to live out Christian values in all the challenges and complexities of everyday life.
What advice did he give? We will look at this in the days ahead.