A reading of the holy gospel according to Mark. Jesus withdrew toward the lake with his disciples. The And And neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon, the that's way to the west on the on the Mediterranean Sea, because they had heard what he had done, his actions. Now in view of their numbers, Jesus told his disciples to have a fishing boat ready for him so that he could avoid the press of the crowd that was pressing against him on the shore. Because Jesus had cured so many people, all who had afflictions kept pushing towards Jesus to touch him.
Unclean spirits would catch sight of Jesus, fling themselves down at his feet and shout out, you are the son of god, while Jesus kept ordering them sternly not to reveal who he was. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Today, we are honoring Saint Francis de Sales.
Saint Francis de Sales died in 1622. Notice that date. And he lived and moved and had his being in the southern part of France, chiefly around Lyon, which is not far from the great city of Geneva. Now you know what was happening in Geneva at the turn of that of the sixteenth century. Here we had Calvin who was going all great guns, doing his part, not as a companion and not even as an associate of Luther because Calvin was on quite a different tack from Luther.
But equally, Calvin had broken from the traditional faith and was extremely active and persuasive and successful working out of Geneva and then spreading into Southern France. And what Calvin and his followers were championing championing and dealing with the people and winning them by the thousands, Saint Francis de Sales, who became a bishop, was doing his best and with considerable success to meet this flood of onrushing Calvinism. We shouldn't really call it Protestantism. So that Saint Francis de Sales found himself in the thick of a bitter conflict because it had all kinds of ramifications, most of these things do. Think of just think of the turmoil in Northern Ireland and how it's so absurd to think of it merely in terms of religion because there are so many other issues involved.
And so it was in Southern France, in that area from Lyon into Geneva, when Saint Francis de Sales was extremely active. In my past, such as it has been, three books have been with me almost from the beginning, and that is the New Testament, the following of Christ, and the introduction to a devout life by Saint Francis de If I they they constitute the tripod of my eminent edifice of spirituality or whatever it is. And so I feel a very close kinship with this man, Francis de Sales. After all, when you've been reading excerpts from a man's book for twenty five or thirty years, he gets pretty close to you. And of all of course today the book is hardly known.
And yet think of this, Saint Francis de Sales introduction to a devout life is considered by the church, the Roman Catholic church, as one of the basic foundations of spirituality. You see, and the reason his writings are not popular today is that so many have drifted away from what he held to be important, and that is man's personal relationship with God almighty. And there is no substitute for it. That is where everything has to converge. Religion is not a collective thing.
It's a personal thing. God created me as an individual. He redeemed me as Joe McAllister, and that's the way I will move into eternity. And all the rest is there to help me achieve my goal. Because obviously, if all the rest is achieved and I miss my goal, I'm a dismal failure.
Now I sincerely recommend the introduction to a devout life to all of you. Now when I say when I mention those three books, the New Testament, The Imitation or the Following of Christ, whoever wrote it, and then the Saint Francis de Sales, I'm not at all saying that they represent the same idea of spirituality. Not at all. Not at all. I'm only saying that they are the three books that played an enormous role and still play an enormous role in my spiritual life, and they they are about it.
There have been other books, but nothing comparable to them that that you read day in and day out. Now Saint Francis is a lovable saint. In spite of the fact that he was a he had a war on his hands and a bitter war, and some of the some parts that he played in it have been severely criticized, nevertheless, he was a gentle man. That's his main characteristic. When he wrote the introduction to a devout life, he wrote it for a laywoman, not for a cloistered religious.
What he tried there was to give simple guidance for a man or a woman, it was specifically addressed to a lady, to guide her towards leading a spiritual life as a lady in her position in life. And this is the beginning of the seventeenth century, remember. And in doing so, he wrote a masterpiece. I recommend it highly. Now saint and as you know, Saint Francis de Chantal was his very close friend, and she founded a religious order, the visitation nuns.
Incidentally, it was quite contrary to what he wanted. He had an idea of a religious order that would disperse itself among the people and sort of being the East that would leaven the mass. And what he got was a cloistered group of nuns. I don't know how all that came about, but that's the way it happened. It wasn't his idea at all.
Now think of this. If you want an illustration of industry in the Lord's Vineyard, there are we have 21,000 letters that he wrote. 21,000 letters that he wrote and 4,000 sermons. That's a tribute. But no but what stands as a memorial more than anything else is, of course, the example of his life, well, how he lived his own life.
And then secondly, this little book called the introduction to a devout life. If you haven't read it, get a hold of it. It's still available. And it may help you because it's for us. It's not for for lit people who have a great supreme, the high ideals of the separation from the world and giving their whole life to god and all that.
And, of course, a lot of this stuff never gets into any action at all. You understand how that works. This is down to earth spirituality, bringing home that it is possible for the man or woman engaged in worldly activities and by necessity engaged in them, nevertheless achieving in that life a high level of spirituality. She he did at the turn of that century notice he dies in 1622. What he did was really try and achieve doing to a great extent what Opus Dei is trying to do today.
Precisely that, to to to bring home to the church. And remember the church isn't the hierarchy or the priest in the pulpit. The church is the people. That's the church, plus the hierarchy and all the rest. And what he what Francis de Sales was trying to do was to show every man and woman that he or she can be a saint.
Because if we don't achieve it, we've lost everything. In the name of the father and of the son and holy spirit. Amen.