Who was St. Francis de Sales?
He was born on August 21, 1567, at the Château de Sales near Thorens, in Savoy, the son of the Lord of Boisy, of an old noble family of Savoy. He studied theology in Paris and law in Padua, where he took his doctorate in canon and civil law, because his father meant him to be a senator of Savoy. As a student in Paris he went through what Benedict XVI calls a spiritual crisis: for a few weeks he was so tormented by doubt that he could barely eat or sleep. At about twenty he found peace, the Pope says, in "the radical and liberating love of God," loving God without asking anything in return.
He told his parents he wanted to be a priest. His father opposed it and was won over, Franciscan Media says, by patient persuasion. Ordained on December 18, 1593, he volunteered the next year for the Chablais, a district that had gone over to Calvinism, and spent years there preaching and writing pamphlets that explained Catholic doctrine. In 1602 he was consecrated bishop of Geneva, a see held by the Calvinists; he lived, Benedict XVI says, "in exile" at Annecy. The Catholic Encyclopedia says his "goodness, patience and mildness became proverbial."
Two books made him a teacher for everyone. The Introduction to the Devout Life, which Benedict XVI dates to 1607, was written for a laywoman he calls Philothea, and its preface says plainly whom it is for: "those who are living in towns, in the conjugal state, at court." The Treatise on the Love of God, in twelve books, opens with the line Pope Francis took for the title of his 2022 letter on the saint: in Holy Church, "everything pertains to love." With St. Jane Frances de Chantal he founded the Visitation; the Catholic Encyclopedia dates the foundation to 1607 and Pope Francis to 1610.
He died at Lyon on December 28, 1622, on a diplomatic journey, aged fifty-five. He was beatified in 1661 and canonized by Alexander VII in 1665. Pius IX made him a Doctor of the Church by the brief Dives in misericordia of November 16, 1877, as the Catholic Encyclopedia records; the English text of Benedict XVI's 2011 audience names Leo XIII instead. Pius XI, in the encyclical Rerum omnium perturbationem of January 26, 1923, declared him heavenly patron of all writers.
Why Catholics pray to St. Francis de Sales for anxiety, for faith and for work
He is the saint of anxiety because he wrote the best short treatment of it in the Catholic tradition, and because he had earned the right to. Franciscan Media records that he said it took him twenty years to conquer his quick temper, and that almost no one suspected he had one. Pius XI says the same: meekness was "his most characteristic trait," and it was not natural to him.
The chapter is Part IV, chapter 11 of the Introduction, "Anxiety of Mind." It begins: "Anxiety of mind is not so much an abstract temptation, as the source whence various temptations arise." If self-love drives the search for relief, a person "will grow hot and eager in seeking relief, as though all depended more upon himself than upon God," and when relief does not come at once "he becomes exceedingly impatient and troubled, which does not mend matters, but on the contrary makes them worse." Then: "This unresting anxiety is the greatest evil which can happen to the soul, sin only excepted." His image is a bird in a net, caught "because they flutter and struggle so much." His counsel is practical. "Strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit." Examine yourself night and morning to see whether your soul is still "in your hand." "When you are conscious that you are growing anxious, commend yourself to God, and resolve stedfastly not to take any steps whatever to obtain the result you desire, until your disturbed state of mind is altogether quieted." And: "If you can lay your anxiety before your spiritual guide, or at least before some trusty and devout friend, you may be sure that you will find great solace."
The companion chapter, on gentleness toward ourselves, is for the scrupulous. "Many people fall into the error of being angry because they have been angry," he writes, and he would rather we speak to our own heart as a parent does: "Poor heart! so soon fallen again into the snare! Well now, rise up again bravely and fall no more." In a letter to Jane de Chantal in 1604, quoted by Benedict XVI, he left her "that liberty that excludes violence, anxiety and scruples."
Faith and work follow. He spent his life persuading people, Calvinists in the Chablais and Christians who thought holiness was for monks, and of the latter the Introduction says: "It is an error, nay more, a very heresy, to seek to banish the devout life from the soldier's guardroom, the mechanic's workshop, the prince's court, or the domestic hearth." Pius XI made that the theme of his encyclical, "the law of holiness embraces all men and admits of no exception," and made the man who wrote pamphlets by hand the declared patron of writers, commending him in particular to Catholic journalists.
How to pray to St. Francis de Sales
His memorial is January 24; the Catholic Encyclopedia's breviary citation shows the older date, January 29, and the anniversary of his death is December 28. The nine days before January 24 are the natural time for a novena.
Say the prayer below and then take his advice literally: do nothing in a hurry until the storm inside has passed, and tell one trusted person. For scruples a regular confessor is the remedy he prescribes. Anxiety that will not lift, that stops sleep or eating as his own once did, is also a medical matter; see a doctor, and let the saint pray for the treatment. He thought the devout life belonged in the workshop and the kitchen, and the doctor's office is one more room in that house.