Salesian Spirituality

The following is the text of a presentation by Rev. Thomas F. Dailey, O.S.F.S., given at the Courage & EnCourage Conference July 12-15, 2018,
at which attendees celebrated the centennial year of Fr. Harvey’s birth. Click here to view a video of this presentation.
At the end of the text of this presentation is a free online flip book version of St. Francis de Sales’ Spiritual Directory,
followed by a list of additional resources on Salesian Spirituality.

Salesian Spirituality: A Path to Perfection for All
in tribute to Rev. John F. Harvey, O.S.F.S. 
by
Rev. Thomas F. Dailey, O.S.F.S.

 The John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics & Social Communications
@ Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary
(Archdiocese of Philadelphia) 

INTRODUCTION

I am grateful to Fr. Bochanski for the gracious invitation to join you at your annual conference.  When he asked me to give this presentation, he explained that it would be nice to have a little "primer" in Salesian Spirituality, particularly as this year's conference would be celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of Fr. John Harvey, my confrere in the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.  At the mention of that name, how could I not accept the invitation?!

But soon after, I realized there are two big problems to what I just agreed to do, one greater than the other.  The first challenge comes with trying to condense into a single talk the rich, 400-year-old tradition of spiritual wisdom associated with an eminent Doctor of the Church.  But I've been writing and speaking about St. Francis de Sales for decades now, so I think I can pull that off.

The greater challenge, however, is having to limit myself in the telling of Fr. Harvey stories, since there are so, so many from which to choose!  

·      I'm one of the few Oblates of St. Francis de Sales who was not taught by Fr. Harvey.  

·      But in my first year in the congregation, I was given the job of helping him to change residences.  That sounds simple, given his frugality, but he had a roomful of books ... and the process took forever because he regaled me with a story about each one of them as I put them in boxes.

·      I also translated for him during a whirlwind tour of offices in the Vatican.  I think it was on that trip that he wandered into St. Peter's to celebrate Mass just in time to process in, without any credentials, and sit innocently among the Cardinals and Bishops.  

·      Later, I was his department chairman at DeSales University, where I had the unwelcome task of getting Fr. Harvey to give up teaching undergraduates ... not because he wasn't good at it, but because the schedule he was keeping worried us.  Even at eighty years old, he was teaching Monday through Wednesday; then he traveled to New York to be in the office Thursdays through Saturday; Saturday afternoons he went to a Philadelphia parish for confessions and Masses on Sunday morning, only to return to Allentown on Sunday evening to start all over!  

·      But most of all, I was his neighbor in our religious community for more than twenty years; each day, whether in a hallway or common area or dining room, I had a front row seat to witness the life and times of this remarkable priest.

So, in tribute to my confrere, my plan this evening is to examine a few key insights of Salesian Christian Humanism.  To help you follow along, I've organized the four major points around a memorable little ditty penned by St. Francis de Sales, himself.  And to help make these ideas come to life, I'll share with you what I hope are some endearing memories of Fr. John Harvey that show how Salesian Spirituality formed and informed his life and work.  Hopefully, the good Father will look upon this presentation with that Irish smile of his that we all knew so well.

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ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

Let me begin, though, with a handful of things (five of them) that might be helpful to know about St. Francis de Sales, if you're not already familiar with his biography.

(1)  Francis de Sales was a brilliant young man.  Born in 1567 to an aristocratic family in Savoy (an historic duchy that encompassed parts of what is now southern France, northern Italy and western Switzerland), he was educated at the universities of Paris and Padua.  Upon completion of his law school examinations, the renowned professor, Guido Pancirolo praised Francis for being so "humane, charitable, (and) compassionate" but also noted that "those who judged him more devout than learned were astonished that he was as learned as he was devout" (Ravier).  And with that, a dual doctorate in civil and canon law was bestowed upon him ... at age twenty-four! 

(2)  Francis de Sales was a courageous missionary.  After having entered the priestly life, to the chagrin of his father, Francis volunteered for the arduous task of trying to re-convert the villages in the Chablais region, around the southern side of the Lake of Geneva, whose entire populations had gone over to the then-dominant Calvinism in the region.  Not deterred by laws that were enacted against listening to a Catholic preacher, Francis communicated with the people by writing down a defense of the faith, which he then posted in public places or distributed as leaflets to the residents.  It worked. Town leaders abjured the Protestant faith and scores of people returned to Catholicism.  For his ingenious pamphleteering, Francis would later be named the patron saint of journalists.

(3)  Francis de Sales was a reforming bishop.  Consecrated as Bishop of Geneva in 1602, he had to reside in the nearby town of Annecy (France), where the diocesan see had been exiled.  There his episcopal ministry carried out the reforms of the celebrated Council of Trent (which had concluded a few decades earlier, in 1563).  He initiated the practice of parish visitations.  He formed what we know now as CCD, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and personally taught the catechism to young people.  He started a local academy of scholars; the school only lasted three years, but the son of the co-administrator grew up to become one of the founders of the world-famous French Academy.  And the saintly bishop guided countless souls with his spiritual direction, in person and through thousands of letters that he wrote.

(4)  Francis de Sales was the founder of a religious order. Together with St. Jane de Chantal, he initiated a new form of consecrated life known as the Visitation of Holy Mary.  That order distinguished itself by accepting widows and older women who would not otherwise be able to sustain the life of rigorous mortification then in vogue in monasteries.  Instead, they would have "no bond, but the bond of love" (Spiritual Directory).  Their lives would be given over completely to a simple holiness that the bishop taught them.  And their holiness, while hidden from public view, would also be shared through their occasional visits to people in town who were in need of charity.  Dozens of religious congregations and apostolic societies today have descended from this new paradigm of the consecrated life.

(5)  And Francis de Sales is a Doctor of the Church, one of only thirty-four saints in the history of the Church designated for the holy renown of writings that provide a sure and certain guide to understanding our faith.  Most famous among twenty-seven volumes of his works are the Introduction to the Devout Life, in which he champions the practice of holiness for all according to their particular state-in-life, and the Treatise on the Love of God, which explores in more mystical depth what union with God means in this life and beyond.

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SALESIAN CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

There's much more, of course, to that saintly life, which ended in this world in 1622.  But now, let's turn to the little ditty that captures the essence of Salesian Spirituality, inasmuch as this spiritual tradition leads us to understand what our human life and our relationship with God is all about.  It's a four-line image penned by St. Francis de Sales at the outset of book X of his Treatise on the Love of God.  There he writes:

Man is the perfection of the universe;
            Mind is the perfection of man;
                        Love is the perfection of the mind;
                                    and Charity is the perfection of love.

(1)  Man is the perfection of the universe

Man – that is, every human being – is, for Francis de Sales, a microcosm, a being whose existence reveals and reflects the providential creation of the entire world.

The created order of the world is a starting point for Salesian reflection.  But its ordered reality is not the primary focus (as it is in a scientific view).  For Francis de Sales, the ordered beauty of creation, the rich unity in the diversity of all created things, points undoubtedly to the God who brought about this creation.  Not having been done by necessity, creation speaks of the love of God, an ecstatic love of Father, Son, and Spirit that breathed life into everything around us, as God still does today.

I suspect that one reason, at least, why Francis de Sales founds his theological vision on the beauty of creation is because of where he lived.  The entire region of Savoy, situated at the foot of the Swiss Alps, and in particular the town of Annecy, which is known as the Venice of France – these are places of such exquisite beauty as to be popular tourist destinations today.  But Francis saw there much more than just natural charm and wonder.  

He saw images of God.  Looking at what he called "the general commerce and traffic which creatures have with one another in perfect correspondence," and recognizing the fortuitous grace at work in his own life, the saint came to the conviction that divine Providence governs all things.  From this derives his teaching that the Incarnation of Jesus is the forever-intended apex of creation itself.  As he writes:

“From among all the creatures that God's supreme omnipotence could bring into being, he thought it good to choose that humanity which later was actually united to the person of God the Son.  For it he destined the incomparable dignity of personal union with his divine majesty, so that it might eternally and pre-eminently enjoy the treasures of his infinite glory.”

And to this perfect creation would be joined all other humans, so as to share in the beauty of God. “After choosing for this happy state the sacred humanity of our Savior," he writes,

“supreme providence then decreed that he would not restrict his bounty solely to the person of his beloved Son, but for that Son's sake he would diffuse it among many other creatures. Out of the sum of the countless number of beings (God) could produce he chose to create men and angels to have company with his Son, to participate in his grace and glory, and to adore and praise him forevermore.” (Treatise on the Love of God, II:4)

Thus, in Salesian Christian Humanism, people are the real beauty of creation, now in who they are and eternally in the glory for which they were made.  Distinguished from all other beings by having been formed in the image and likeness of God, man is, in this way, the perfection, the high point, the centerpiece of all that God has created.  Through the Incarnation, when God became man, that creation is truly perfected.  Through the Redemption wrought by the Son of Man, that perfection is made possible for us.

For Francis de Sales, contemplation of creation's beauty and awareness of the divine providence at work in it, leads us to an appreciation of God.  For Fr. John Harvey, that journey began on a different route.

While most of you are not native to this area, you can imagine that no one would mistake the ambience of North Philadelphia for the charm of southern France!  There was no natural beauty for Fr. Harvey to contemplate growing up in St. Columba's parish, in a neighborhood once known as "Swampoodle" (a telling image!) and now called "Strawberry Mansion" (though it is a far more dangerous area of the city than it is sweet or stately). 

But providence was still at work, since the famed ballfield known as Shibe Park was constructed just a couple of city blocks away from his parish.  With a Renaissance tower and cupola marking the entryway of the first-ever steel and concrete park, even the baseball players said it "looked almost like a church."  Never mind that the young John Harvey used to enter there without a ticket by sneaking through a hole in the fence!  From his youth he came to a deep appreciation of the beauty of the game and of the "green cathedral" in which the Philadelphia Phillies played.  His love for both baseball and church would be life-long.  

(2)  Mind is the perfection of man

In this second stanza, Francis de Sales names the defining dimension of all human life.  But in using the word "mind" as the name for it, he is not referring to our brains, nor is he suggesting we are defined by a certain level of intelligence.  The word translated as "mind" – raison, in the saint's language – signified a "blending of consciousness with feeling, with taste and with sensibility ... something like the rational soul, the source of all that is reasonable in man, to a moral conscience and to an aesthetic sense."  In Salesian Christian Humanism, "mind" is "the principle of human life and activity" (Pocetto).  

In his appreciation of the human person, Francis de Sales recognized that it is in our innermost being – in our heart or soul or "mind" – that we most resemble the God in whose image we have been created.  Not present in lesser created beings, that interior faculty reflects the divine knowledge and will at work in all of creation.  Through the inter-relatedness of our knowledge and our free will, when they are rightly ordered to what is truly good, we become who we are called to be (Pocetto).  

Francis de Sales valued knowledge greatly. Beyond his own first-rate education, he sought to learn continually be reading both the ancient Fathers and the leading thinkers of his time.  He is said to have studied the entire library of John Calvin's works so as to be able to understand the arguments of his ecclesial interlocutors (for which he needed special permission since those works were deemed heretical).  Even a quick perusal of the many sources he uses in his writings shows the breadth of the saint's erudition.

This knowledge, at once discursive, affective, and appreciative, helps to perfect man in two ways:  by enabling us to think critically about the world around us, and by guiding us to understand ourselves more fully.  About the former, Francis de Sales once likened knowledge to an "eighth sacrament" for the hierarchy of the Church, exhorting his fellow clergy to know the faith better so that they could instruct the faithful properly.  About the latter, he routinely taught that the first elements of the knowledge of God are to be found in self-knowledge (Oeuvres VII, 79-81); in this respect, he transformed the motto of the Classical humanists – "Know Thyself" – into the guiding principle that we know ourselves best when we use our "minds" to grasp what God reveals to us, in us, about us.

Nevertheless, knowledge provides only an intellectual understanding of ourselves or of God.  In Salesian Christian Humanism, true wisdom comes with practice, in the doing of God's will for us by living each day well.  Francis de Sales emphasizes the place of free will in human life; he championed a liberty of spirit given us by God and fulfilled in communion with God.  As he writes in a letter to St. Jane de Chantal,

We pray to God above all, that His name may be hallowed, that His kingdom come, that His will be done on earth as it is heaven.  All this is nothing other than the spirit of freedom; for, provided that the name of God is hallowed, that His kingdom is coming in us, that His will is being done, a free spirit has no other concern (Letters of Spiritual Direction, p. 138).

In the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, putting the Our Father into practice means using our freedom to live, as he says, between the two wills of God.  On the one hand, we choose to conform our lives to God's "signified will" – the divine plan made known to us in Sacred Scripture, the teachings of the Church, and even the natural law.  On the other hand, we use our free will to accept the will of God's "good pleasure" – the divine plan that is manifest in those things of this world that are beyond our control; for whether they are comforting or afflicting, pleasurable or painful, he says, the daily events of life "show us, by their very happening, that God has willed and intended them" for our benefit in His eternal Providence (Treatise on the Love of God, IX:1).

Understanding the world and ourselves is our task; living according to God's manifest will is our challenge.  And here, in the knowledge and freedom that express the human "mind," Fr. John Harvey excelled.  He was the most well-read person I know.  He couldn't remember where he parked his car (!), but he did recall all that he read.  He was able to analyze conflicting arguments and was not afraid to correct errors, even it if meant critiquing a church document (as he did with "Always My Children").  

As you may know, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the moral theology of St. Augustine's Confessions.  What you may not know is that he really wanted to write about the morality of professional boxing, but his professors thought that topic to be too controversial!  We soon figured out that what he called "research" was just an excuse to watch the Friday night fights! 

But Fr. Harvey's more serious research contributed to the three major books he wrote:  The Homosexual Person (1987), The Truth about Homosexuality (1996), and Homosexuality and the Catholic Church (2008).  

There, Fr. Harvey's keen mind is on display.  As Fr. Paul Scalia notes in his review of those books (Humanum, Fall 2012), Fr. Harvey "not only presents the Church's teaching clearly but also examines the opposition with notable accuracy and fairness."  In addition, "he never falls into the trap of thinking that (this topic) can be flattened out and made a one-dimensional issue."  To the contrary, "Father Harvey shows a remarkable ability to integrate what many others consider opposed:  solid theology and genuine pastoral charity, sound spirituality and good psychology, fatherly love for those with homosexual tendencies and a strong (and just as fatherly) opposition to those who would lead souls astray."  In sum, Fr. Harvey's writing demonstrates a truly Catholic integration of "both objective truth and the complexity of the human heart" ... or, as St. Francis de Sales might say, a thoroughly Catholic understanding of knowledge and free will befitting the "mind" of man at work.

(3)  Love is the perfection of the mind

Man is the perfection of the universe, mind the perfection of man.  But a knowing and willing mind comes to perfection only when man loves.

For St. Francis de Sales, love is a multi-faceted and progressive reality that discloses the essential truth about being human, about being created by love and inclined to love (Treatise on the Love of God, book I). He speaks about love first as an experience of "complacence," in which we see the good in others and take delight in that beauty.  This contentment grows with love as "benevolence," when we choose and act to make that goodness in others grow, for their sake.  That, in turn, leads to further complacence, which inspires additional benevolence, and so in, in a continuing cycle (or circle).  In this sense, true love is never-ending.

When that benevolent love is mutually shared and reciprocally practiced, love becomes true "friendship."  Francis de Sales actually conceives of marriage as the highest form of friendship, owing to the totality of love shared by spouses.  But this reciprocal benevolence also informs true spiritual friends, as is evident in his special bond of friendship with St. Jane de Chantal.  In either case, the love of friends reveals man's most precious power, for it reflects and brings to life the divine image of benevolence by and for which we were created.  As the saint writes in his Introduction to the Devout Life (III:19), authentic friendship

will be excellent, because it comes from God; excellent, because it tends to God; excellent, because its very root is God; excellent, because it shall last eternally in God.  Oh, how good it is to love on earth as they love in heaven – to learn to cherish each other in this world as we shall do eternally in the next!

In practical terms, love as our highest human good is realized in this world through a life of virtue.  For St. Francis de Sales, however, being virtuous does not require doing extraordinary deeds; instead, it entails doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.   As he also writes in the Introduction to the Devout Life (III:1), "Occasions do not often present themselves for the exercise of fortitude, magnanimity, and great generosity, but meekness, temperance, integrity, and humility are virtues that must mark all our actions in life."  This is why he says, "We must always have on hand a good supply of these general virtues since we must use them almost constantly."  

Advocating the practice of what he calls the "little" virtues, St. Francis de Sales recommends in particular that we cultivate humility and gentleness.  These are little ways by which we can do whatever we have to do each day virtuously.  Humility and gentleness may appear insignificant in terms of what the world thinks; after all, practicing them is not something by which people become famous.  But these virtues are not at all little in terms of being easy to do; nor are they small in the value they hold for those who practice them.  In Salesian Christian Humanism, when humility and gentleness infuse all that we do, our deeds are more fruitful, our actions more loving; with these little virtues, we can transform not only our own lives, but also the lives of those with whom we interact on a daily basis.

For St. Francis de Sales, humility is not humiliation; rather, it is the honest appraisal of all that we are, good and not so good.  It sees our talents and abilities as gifts, things that we may have developed but that did not originate within us.   It also sees our foibles and faults for what they are, failings on our part as imperfect persons.  Put simply, humility embraces the truth that life is what it is, and we are what we are, even as we continue to try to improve.  Whether acknowledging the good or the not so good, humility engenders in us a spirit of thankfulness.  As the saint says, "nothing can so effectively humble us before God's mercy as the multitude of his benefits, and nothing can so deeply humble us before his justice as our countless offenses against him" (Introduction to the Devout Life, III:5). 

Gentleness, or meekness, is the flip-side of humility, inviting us, in turn, also to be honest about, and accepting of, other people.  After all, the more we lovingly embrace the truth that we are not perfect, the less we will expect or demand that others be perfect toward us.  Put simply, gentleness entails being nice, not in a soft sense, but in the determined approach to treat others with kindness, in the recognition that they are as we all are – imperfect yet worthy people, having personal flaws yet also possessing human dignity.  In the saint's famous maxim, "nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."  And practically speaking, being nice usually accomplishes more good; to use one of the saint's more poplar sayings, "it takes more oil than vinegar and salt to make a good salad" (from Camus, The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales).

When it comes to perfecting the mind through love, Fr. John Harvey embodied what his patron saint taught.  With a love of complacence, he always saw good in others, even taking contentment in his beloved Phillies despite how badly they often played.  With a love of benevolence, he always sought the best for others, especially his students; in fact, they affectionately referred to him as "A/B Harvey" because even when they disagreed with him on a written exam, he wanted good for them, so the dissenters would receive a "B" as their grade.  More seriously, the benevolent love of which St. Francis de Sales speaks is what inspired and informed all that Fr. Harvey did in his work with Courage, where his guiding principle was first and foremost to love the person, made in the image of God, and then, based on that love, to seek to re-order one's affections and inclinations rightly in light of God's love for us.  And, of course, the good Father experienced first-hand the strong bonds of spiritual friendship, not only in the religious community he so cherished, but also with folks like Fr. Benedict Groeschel, Dr. William May, others in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and so many of you here tonight.  

I think all his friends would readily agree that Fr. Harvey exemplified the virtues of humility and gentleness.  Always willing to speak with anyone, his intellectual clarity in teaching morality to students of theology and his serene candor in refuting opponents to Church teaching were matched, even surpassed, by a boundless compassion toward all those seeking his help.  Sometimes, though, his humility wasn't so gentle.  I will always remember the time several of us tried to teach him the new phone system in our house, and in particular how to set up his voicemail.  The resultant message that a caller received when he did not answer was this: "Hi, this is Fr. John Harvey."  Then, after a brief pause, he said softly, "How does this damned thing work?" It was so priceless, I couldn't bring myself to delete that message from the system. I figured that anyone who had his phone number knew him well enough and they would get a big smile from it.  

(4) Charity is the perfection of love

If love is the perfection of the mind, then charity is the perfection of love.  In this final stanza, we reach the summit of the trajectory of our lives as espoused in Salesian Christian Humanism, where the highest form of love is "charity" – the benevolent and preferential love which we show to God.

For St. Francis de Sales, this love of God is our natural and cultivated response to the love that God shows to us.  The starting point of that divine love is the act of Creation, but its summit is the sacrifice on Mount Calvary.  In the final chapter of his masterful Treatise on the Love of God (XII:13), the saint writes:

And now at last as our conclusion, the death and passion of our Lord is the sweetest and the most compelling motive that can animate our hearts in this mortal life. ... Mount Calvary is the mount of lovers.  All love that does not take its origin from the Savior's passion is foolish and perilous.  Unhappy is death without the Savior's love; unhappy is love without the Savior's death.  Love and death are so mingled in the Savior's passion that we cannot have the one in our hearts without the other.  Upon Calvary we cannot have life without love, or love without the Redeemer's death.

St. Francis de Sales teaches us to ascend this sacred summit by prayer, which "exposes our will to the warmth of heavenly love" and, in particular, that meditative prayer that "shapes itself around the life and passion of Our Lord." He reminds us that we cannot go to God the Father except through the gate that is his Son, for

Just as the glass of a mirror cannot give out reflection if it were not for the tin or lead behind it, so also the Godhead could not be contemplated by us in this lowly world if it were not joined with the sacred humanity of Christ, whose life and death are the most appropriate, agreeable, pleasant, and helpful objects that we can choose for our regular meditation" (Introduction to the Devout Life, II:1).  

Through regular prayer – whether in the formal act of meditation or in holy thoughts and aspirations we can express throughout the day – we are reminded of God's loving presence in our lives and we are moved with affection toward Him who is so eternally good to us.  So moved, we endeavor always and everywhere to "Live Jesus."

That loving affection found in prayer draws us toward the perfection of our lives, which is our union with God in eternal life.  Here in this life, we live our love for God each day in and through the virtues by which we love our neighbor.  But the perfection of that love of God which is charity is found in what St. Francis de Sales calls "holy indifference."  He explains what this means, and how it is the crowning achievement of the spiritual life, during his final address to the Visitation Nuns.  As their time in the garden with him drew to an end, the nuns asked their founding bishop to leave them with a final word, to tell them the one thing he wanted them always to remember.  He said in reply, "we must neither ask anything nor refuse anything, but leave ourselves absolutely in the arms of divine Providence, without busying ourselves with any desires, except to will what God wills of us" (Spiritual Conferences).  This is the high point of charity, the perfection of love – when we care so much about the God whom we love, that our desires become secondary and it does not matter to us what God wills for us. 

This parting word from St. Francis de Sales to the Visitation Sisters leads to a final word from me to you about Fr. John Harvey.  Two precious anecdotes suggest the impact of this Salesian understanding of charity in Fr. Harvey's life.

First, as we saw each day in our religious community, Fr. Harvey was truly a man of prayer.  And one clear benefit of his fidelity to prayer was the fact – yes, I think it's a fact – that he had an entire squadron of guardian angels who helped him find his way!  Once, for example, on one of his regular trips to New York City, he unknowingly lost his wallet while getting out of a cab.  But even there, in the world's most teeming metropolis, angels came to his aid.  As Providence would have it, the next person to get in that cab was a young lady who found the wallet and recognized the address she saw on his driver's license because her father worked at the university.  Fr. Harvey got his wallet back the next day ... and uttered yet another prayer of "thanks be to God."

And as evidence of his holy indifference, let me tell you what may be my favorite Fr. Harvey story. Driving home from the parish one Sunday afternoon, he tuned into the Philadelphia Eagles football game. When he got home, he informed me that there was something wrong with his car's radio. Apparently, the reception kept going in and out; he said he could hear the game for a few moments, but then he would lose the station for several minutes at a time. It took me a little while, but I finally figured it out:  he had listened to the entire third quarter of a football game using the "scan" feature which switches stations every five seconds!  His audio experience of the game may have been faulty, but Fr. Harvey's charity in accepting and doing God's will was always clear. 

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CONCLUSION

The stories about Fr. John Harvey abound, and I hope you enjoy sharing your own tales while you are together this weekend.  So, too, there are many more facets to the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales that Fr. Harvey embraced.  For now, though, let me recap how Salesian Spirituality provides a path to perfection for all of us:

·      We start on that path by seeing that man is the perfection of the universe – recognizing divine Providence at work in the beauty of Creation, and especially in the dignity of each and every human being, created as we all are in the image and likeness of God.

·      We make progress on that path when we develop the mind that is the perfection of man – integrating our reason, our affection, and our freedom to live according to the two wills of God as these are manifest in our particular state-in-life.

·      We advance along that path when we share the love that is the perfection of the mind – in the complacence and benevolence befitting true friends and through the little virtues of humility and gentleness beneficial for all people.

·      And we complete our journey on that path when we practice that charity which is the perfection of love – uniting ourselves with our Redeemer through prayer and in a life of holy indifference by which we entrust all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do into the loving hands of God's divine Providence.

Ultimately for St. Francis de Sales, as he writes in his Treatise (X:1),

the love of God is the end, the perfection and the excellence of the universe. ... All is done for this heavenly love, and all has reference to it.  From the sacred tree of this commandment (to love God) grow all the counsels, exhortations, inspirations, and the other commandments, as its flowers, and eternal life as its fruit; and all that does not tend to eternal love tends to eternal death.  Grand Commandment, the perfect fulfillment of which lasts through eternal life, yea, is no other thing but eternal life!

Fr. John Harvey, we pray, now enjoys the fullness of that eternal life, where I imagine he may have spent these past eight years trying to explain baseball to St. Francis de Sales!  In any case, I thank you, again, for the opportunity to remember my beloved confrere.  And I hope that the Courage and Encourage apostolates, so near and dear to him, continue to bear much good fruit in your lives and in the life of the Church.

+  May God Be Blessed  +

Spiritual Directory of St. Francis de Sales

"Look upon God’s heart which is so good and loving towards us, even on the Cross. 
May the crucified heart of our Saviour lead us to eternal life.” 

St. Francis De Sales

Fr. Harvey was an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales and, like St. Francis de Sales, was deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Father spoke often of “chastity of the heart” and emphasized the importance of developing a life of interior chastity in union with Christ. By this, Father Harvey meant that the more we unite our own heart to the Heart of Christ, the more we will find ourselves truly desiring purity and holiness in the depths of our being. Our very souls are purified as we allow our will and affections to be infused by the presence of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who animates the beating heart of Jesus. As we enter more deeply into the infinitely merciful heart of Christ with humility, reverence, and gratitude, we can’t help but grow in holiness, purity, and joy. 

A great aid to cultivating chastity of the heart and developing an interior life in union with Christ is a daily spiritual plan. Such a plan must be built on the foundation of humility for true personal growth and transformation to occur. In A Call to Courage, Fr. Harvey wrote the following:

“As St. Francis de Sales lay on his deathbed, speechless from a stroke, the Visitation nuns asked him to write down the three most important virtues in their way of life. He wrote: “humility, humility, humility.” Humility, the loving acceptance of one’s limitations, joined to a trust that God gives us strength to carry out his will, is central to the Salesian way of life.

“In the Salesian view, what you do is not as important as how you do it—the spirit with which you act. That is why St. Francis de Sales gave the Visitation Order and the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales a Spiritual Directory to guide one’s prayer through the hours of the day and night, from morning prayer to night prayer. In part three of his Directory, St. Francis de Sales recommends that one direct the principal actions of the day to God, while accepting all the difficulties which one may encounter. Truly living the Spiritual Directory is more difficult than the performance of many external acts of penance. But once you begin this Directory life of prayer, you will want to hold on to it. As Oblates, we endeavor to use these interior acts of prayer in our daily ministry of Catholic education on every level, from grade school to university. The same spirit is found in parishes and missions where Oblates work. This spirit relies on a sense of humility.”

Below is a contemporary presentation of St. Francis De Sales’ Spiritual Directory, originally from the website of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales (North American Provinces). It is presented here with the permission of Fr. Michael Murray, OSFS, for your own daily use. Click the enlarge brackets to read the Directory as a full-screen flip book, or visit this link to read the Directory as a pdf.

More Resources on Salesian Spirituality

Behold This Heart: St. Francis de Sales and Devotion to the Sacred Heart - Fr. Thomas F Dailey, OSFS

Live Today Well: St. Francis de Sales’ Simple Approach to Holiness - Fr. Thomas F Dailey, OSFS 

Roses Among Thorns: Simple Advice for Renewing Your Spiritual Journey - St. Francis de Sales (forward by Bishop James D. Conley, STL, translated and edited by
Christoper O. Blum)

Wisdom from the Lives and Letters of St Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal - Louise Perrotta

This page will be updated and expanded, as we continue to reflect on Fr. Harvey’s life and share him with others…