Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales
Section IV, Chapter I
That we must pay no heed to what the children of the world say
As soon as worldlings perceive that you wish to follow the devout life, they will let fly at you a thousand shafts of their gossip and slander: the more malicious will falsely attribute your change to hypocrisy, bigotry and pretence; they will say that the world has frowned upon you, and that for this reason you turn to God; your friends will hasten to pour out upon you a flood of remonstrances, which in their opinion are very prudent and charitable; you will fall, they will tell you, into a state of melancholy, you will lose credit with the world, you will make yourself unbearable, you will grow old before your time, your domestic affairs will suffer thereby; when one is in the world one must live the life of a person in the world; salvation may be attained without so many mysteries; and a thousand such-like foolish things.
My Pnilothea, all this is but foolish and vain babble; such persons have no care for your health or for your affairs. If you were of the world, says the Saviour, (John xv,19) the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you. We have seen gentlemen and ladies spend the whole night, and even many nights consecutively, in playing at chess and at cards. Can there be any attention more dull, more melancholy and more dismal than that? And yet worldlings say not a word, friends are not in the least disturbed thereat; but if we make an hour’s meditation, or if we are seen to rise a little earlier than usual in the morning, in order to prepare for Communion, everyone runs off to the doctor that he may cure us of melancholy and jaundice. People spend thirty nights in dancing, and not one of them complains of any ill effects; but if they spend one Christmas night in watching, everyone coughs and complains of being ill next day. Who cannot see that the world is an unjust judge; gracious and favourable towards its own children, but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God?
We cannot stand well with the world unless we become one with it. It is impossible for us to satisfy it, for it is too capricious: John came, says the Saviour, (Matt. xi 18, 19) neither eating nor drinking, and you say that he hath a devil; the Son of man came eating and drinking and you say that he is a Samaritan. It is true, Philothea; if from a spirit of condescension we allow ourselves to laugh, play, dance with the world, it will be scandalized; if we do not do so, it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy; if we dress well, it will attribute some wrong motive to us; if we dress plainly, it will attribute it to meanness of heart; our mirth will be called dissipation by the world, and our mortification sadness; and since it ever looks upon us with a jaundiced eye, we can never satisfy it. It exaggerates our imperfections, and says that they are sins; it makes out that our venial sins are mortal, and changes our sins of frailty into sins of malice.
And whereas charity, as St Paul says, is kind (1 Corinthians xiii 4, 5), the world, on the contrary, is spiteful; whereas charity thinketh no evil, the world, on the contrary, always thinks evil, and when it cannot find fault with our actions, it finds fault with our intentions. Whether the sheep have horns or not, whether they be black or white, the wolf will not fail to devour them if he can. Whatever we may do, the world will ever wage war against us: if we are a long time in the confessional, it will express astonishment that we have so much to say; if we are there but a short time, it will say that we have not confessed everything. It will watch our behaviour, and, if we utter one little word of anger, it will declare that we are insupportable; our care in managing our affairs will be regarded as avarice, and our gentleness as foolishness; but as for the children of the world, their anger is generosity, their avarice is economy, their familiarities are honourable conversations; spiders always spoil the work of the bees.
Let us pay no attention to this blind world, Philothea: let it cry out as much as it will, like an owl, to disturb the birds of the day. Let us be firm in our designs, unswerving in our resolutions; perseverance will make it clear whether it be in good earnest that we have sacrificed ourselves to God, and undertaken the devout life. Comets shine with a brightness that is almost equal to that of planets; but comets disappear in a very short time, since they are only transitory fires, whereas planets have a lasting brightness: even so hypocrisy and true virtue are very like one another externally; but they may easily be distinguished from one another, because hypocrisy does not last long, and vanishes like rising smoke, but true virtue is always firm and constant. It is no small help to the consolidation of our devotion in the beginning, if we meet with blame and with calumny on this account; for by this means we avoid the danger of vanity and pride, which are like the midwives of Egypt, to whom Pharaoh gave orders that they should kill all the male children of Israel on the very day of their birth. We are crucified to the world, and the world ought to be crucified (Galatians vi, 14) to us; it holds us to be fools, let us hold it to be mad.
Topic: Spirit of the World (Read 89 times)