St. Francis de Sales - Consoling thoughts of "O holy, fortunate, and happy crowd of sinners and publicans, who approach to our Lord! They are not like those invited to the great feast, who excused themselves: they come, and are welcome. O my Savior, how have these sinners drawn nigh to Thee since Thou art just? For David says absolutely of the just man that evil must not approach to him: "Depart from me, ye wicked." Since it is thus, O Savior, O Redeemer, O good God, I can say to the multitude on Thy Part: "Approach to God, and you will be enlightened, and your faces will not be confounded; for he receives sinners"
Download PDFSt Francis de Sales - Introduction to Devout Life "Almost all those who have written concerning the devout life have had chiefly in view persons who have altogether quitted the world; or at any rate they have taught a manner of devotion which would lead to such total retirement. But my object is to teach those who are living in towns, at court, in their own households, and whose calling obliges them to a social life, so far as externals are concerned. Such persons are apt to reject all attempt to lead a devout life under the plea of impossibility; imagining that like as no animal presumes to eat of the plant commonly called Palma Christi, so no one who is immersed in the tide of temporal affairs ought to presume to seek the palm of Christian piety.
And so I have shown them that, like as the mother-of-pearl lives in the sea without ever absorbing one drop of salt water; and as near the Chelidonian Isles springs of sweet water start forth in the midst of the ocean and as the firemoth hovers in the flames without burning her
wings; even so a true stedfast soul may live in the world untainted by worldly breath, finding a well-spring of holy piety amid the bitter waves of society, and hovering amid the flames of earthly lusts without singeing the wings of its devout life. Of a truth this is not easy,"
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