The Spiritual Maxims of St. Francis de Sales

[Denise]

The very solicitude we have not to be distracted causes oftentimes a very great distraction.

Accustom yourself to know how to pass from prayer to all sorts of actions which your vocation justly and lawfully requires of you.

It is quite certain that our prayer will be none the less pleasing to God, nor less useful to ourselves for having been made with difficulty.

[Denise]

When your heart is wondering and quite distracted, bring it back gently and quietly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master's side.

We must be resolutely determined never to give up prayer for any difficulty that we may encounter in it.

If you did nothing the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near your Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well employed.

[Denise]

On Spiritual Dryness

There is a difference between possessing the presence of God and having the feeling of His presence.

If God has stripped you of the sense of His presence, it is in order that even His presence may no longer occupy your heart, but Himself.

One single act done with dryness of spirit is worth more than many done with sensible devotion.

[Denise]

He is always the same God, as worthy to be served in dryness as in consolation.

There is a great difference between being occupied with God who gives us the contentment, and being busied with the contentment which God gives us.

It is the supreme point of holy religion to be content with naked, dry, insensible acts, exercised by the superior will alone.

[Denise]

Look at the bees upon the thyme; they find there a very bitter juice, but in sucking it, they convert it into honey.

What does it matter whether God speaks to us amid thorns or amid flowers?

How long must we be like adolescents who like candy and cakes better than real nourishing food?

[Denise]

It is far better to eat bread without sugar than sugar without bread.

Of all the efforts of perfect love, that which is made by acquiescence of spirit in spiritual dryness is the purest and noblest.

The love that desires to walk to God's will through consolations walks ever in fear of taking the wrong path; but the love that strikes straight through dryness toward the Will of God walks in assurance.

[Denise]

God's shadow is more healthful than His sun.

I do not say that we may not entertain wishes for deliverance from spiritual dryness, but I do say that we must not set our hearts upon it.

God only abases us to lift us up.

[Denise]

When all fails us, when our spiritual pains have come to their extremity, this word, this disposition---O Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit---can never fail us.

Do you think our Lady was less the mother of our Lord when, overwhelmed with affliction, she breathed out that word, Yes my Son, because so it has pleased Thee---than when with exalted voice she sang her Magnificat?

You must choose: is it better that there should be thorns in your garden in order to have roses, or that there should be no roses in order to have no thorns?

[Denise]

Do not leave out your prayer unless for causes which it is impossible to control.

There is nothing which so purges our understanding of its ignorance and our will of its depraved inclinations as prayer.

We have never done; we must always begin again and again with a good heart.

[Denise]

All your happiness depends on perseverance.

That mortal who does not desire to love the divine Goodness more loves Him not enough; sufficiency in this divine exercise is not sufficient.

Perseverance is the most desirable gift we can hope for in this life.

[Denise]

Though perseverance does not come from our power, yet it comes within our power.

To remain at a standstill is impossible; he that gains not, loses; he that ascends not, descends.

Do you not know that you are upon the way, and the way is not made to sit down but to go in.

[Denise]

If one does not ascend the ladder he must descend; if one does not conquer he will be conquered.

Let us a thousand times a day turn our eyes upon this loving will of God and make ours melt into it.

All our childishness proceeds from no fault but this, that we forget that every day we should consider we begin our course of perfection.

[Denise]

Throughout the day say plenty of ejaculatory prayers, and especially those of the hours when they strike.

We dare not assure ourselves when we have done a good action that we have done it perfectly.

The three best and most assured marks of lawful inspirations are perseverance, against inconstancy and levity; peace and gentleness of heart, against disquietude and solicitude; humble obedience, against obstinacy and extravagance.

[Denise]

Our little fits of anger, of sadness, these little shiverings of the heart, are remains of our maladies, which the sovereign Physician leaves in us in order that we may fear to relapse.

He greatly deceives himself who thinks that prayer perfects one without perseverance and obedience.

Hear Mass in your hearts when you cannot hear it elsewhere.

[Denise]

Enlarge your heart by a frequent protestation that you will never give in.

Holy love may be lost in a moment.