Above all, be faithful to your duty of state. Your place is in the home. Do not make your home a chapel or a convent – You are not a Carmelite, as far as I know! – but make it what it ought to be: a true home. A place where people love one another, where they speak to one another, where they eat, drink, laugh, and sleep, together. This is your duty, first and foremost, and it is in this way that you will make the faith that dwells in you loved by others. I’m telling you: love the kitchen and prepare meals with joy. Love beautifully set tables, not only on feastdays, but each day, which you will treat like feastdays. Love the laughing youngsters and the disorder of little children. Bear with them – while smiling.

Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
Bishop of Geneva, Doctor of the Church

“He must have been eager to serve God, for he was born two months early. This event took place in his father’s castle, on August 2, 1567. Mr. de Sales had great expectations for his first born; he sent him first to Annecy, then to Paris, then to Padua. Francis studied law to please his father, and theology to please himself. Mr. de Sales was emphatic that he should be a lawyer of the Judiciary of Savoie, while Francis was sure that he was to be a priest of Jesus Christ. He was a man of great character with a quick wit and lively spirit, and when he spoke from the pulpit his popular and easily understood words retained a certain majesty. By nature, Francis de Sales was quick tempered, even prone to anger at times. But he knew how to keep quiet, smile, and stay on the right path. Francis’ particular ability to enlighten and convert others, for which he is so remembered, certainly springs from his gift for human tenderness. It was a tenderness for man who, however foolish he may be, can be united to the Divinity and can become a brother of Christ. Leaning on the great pagan tradition and pride, the Renaissance had naively and idealistically put too much trust in man. The Reformation, on the contrary, had thought man to be totally corrupt, and had despaired of his nature. St. Francis de Sales reopened the path of simple, real effort to his century, while retaining the gentleness that awaits all those who put their trust in God. His preaching, then his writings, were wildly successful. One might say that “trust,” is the keyword of the Gospels. God is the Father, and so we must “receive everything from Him with peace and calm,” and “whatever situation God puts us in ought to be all the same to us.”

Henri Pourrat (1887-1959)
Writer