DESCRIPTION: TNS 18, 3 - St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) on 17 March 2026

Our Guest in this Part III of The Night School, Series 18, is one of the giants in the art of Spiritual Direction. He sought to heal the Church’s obvious ills in an Age when it was tearing itself apart, from within. 

Unlike those reformers who moved to attack vigorously the words and works of the Church’s (internal) “enemies”, St. Francis de Sales followed another Path. His way earned him the highest designation the Church can bestow on any  person - being proclaimed a “Doctor of the Church” in 1877 (only 38 of them exist in the whole history of the Church). 

St. Francis was convinced that the source of the Church’s difficulties came from the “learned” Church (of which he was one), who having never fully understood the love of God, and as a result had never paid the price of becoming as loving as God is towards others, distorted the teaching of God, fomenting division and enmity within the Church.

The internal battles became about “taking sides”, about despising one’s intellectual enemies, and even becoming murderous when dealing with them. And these distortions in the intellect quickly became calamity in the social dimensions of the Church.

St. Francis, who interestingly had to suffer a fierce temper for much of his life, is remembered for the kindness and gentleness that “breathes” through all he spoke and wrote. He was beloved and a source of unity and patience and forbearance - a credible, costly example of divine love, demonstrating what that looks like in a person and to what effects. He wrote: “True devotion does better still. It not only does no injury to one’s vocation [by which he means primarily the “lay” vocation], but on the contrary adorns and beautifies it.” And, “In short, devotion is simply that spiritual agility and vivacity by which charity [divine love active in a cooperating human being] works in us or by aid of which we do good works quickly and lovingly.”

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