Today’s insights from St. Francis de Sales’ “The Art of Loving God: Simple Virtues for the Christian Life” are below.

This book is drawn for a series of Conferences [talks] that de Sales gave to the Visitation Nuns in the early 1600’s. 

I recommend you read and reflect on Luke 8: 9-15 to start this section: http://www.usccb.org/bible/luke/8

Today’s selections come from Chapters 5 thru 8, they appear below:

[Chapter Five – Be Patient as You Seek Perfection] “Give your self up, then, wholly and completely to His guidance, without any reserve or exception ….”  [p.50]

[Chapter Six – Be Modest in Your Bearing] “A modest demeanor is a salient sermon …. We must take into consideration place, persons … and most especially the condition of the person.”  [pp. 56, 57]

[Chapter Seven – Practice Interior Modesty] “To achieve peace of mind, focus on God [and] Follow your God-given path to perfection.”  [pp 62-64]

[Chapter Eight – Learn Modesty in Speech] “A third kind of modesty concerns our words and our conversation.  There are words that would be unsuitable at any other time than recreation, in which it is just and reasonable to relax our minds a little.”  [p.69]

Attaining perfection is our goal, we should pursue it with our entire being, realizing that we cannot attain it here on earth.

Today close your reflection on this thought from Ecclesiastes, “There is a time to laugh and a time to weep, a time to speak, and time to keep silence.”

May God Be Praised!