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75 pages

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In Consoling Thoughts on God and Providence, St. Francis de Sales, beloved Doctor of the Church, speaks of how God wants only good for us, and why we should have great confidence in His merciful love. This treasure of spirituality beautifully explains God's love for the sinner, how great His joy is upon the return of just one lost sheep, and how God's mercy extends even towards the damned. St. Francis encourages us to conform ourselves to God's will, and teaches us to abandon ourselves to the Lord who so desires our hearts. Readers of Consoling Thoughts on God and Providence will experience firsthand why St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) is known to history as the Gentle Saint. St. Francis was Bishop of Geneva and a tireless preacher, who yet made time to correspond with numerous souls who wrote him for his insight and guidance. His Consoling Thoughts are compiled from these letters as well as from his other spiritual works.

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Christianity

Catholic Church

Christian theology

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	24 janvier 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781618901415
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © 2013 TAN Books, an Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC.
Published by Fr. Pustet & Co., New York & Cincinnati, Printer to the Holy See and the S. Congregation of Rites, in 1912, under the title The Consoling Thoughts of St. Francis de Sales. A French edition of this work, apparently an earlier edition, was published in Paris in 1857 as Pensees consolantes de Saint Francois de Sales …. The compiler’s surname is sometimes spelled Hoguet; his first name was given as Paul in the French edition. Retypeset in 2013 by TAN Books.
Cover design by Caroline Kiser.
Cover image: The Creation of the World (oil on canvas), Le Sueur, Eustache (1617–55) / Musee des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library
ISBN: 978-0-89555-211-2
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
TAN Books An Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC Charlotte, North Carolina 2013
S T . F RANCIS DE S ALES ’ L OVING H EART
“Through a great part of my soul I am poor and weak, but I have a boundless and almost immutable affection for those who favor me with their friendship. Whoever challenges me in the contest of friendship must be very determined, for I spare no effort. There is no person in the world who has a heart more tender and affectionate towards his friends than I, or one who feels a separation more acutely.” —St. Francis de Sales.
“It has pleased God to make my heart thus. I wish to love this dear neighbor ever so much—ever so much I wish to love him! Oh! When shall we be all melted away in meekness and charity towards our neighbor! I have given him my whole person, my means, my affections, that they may serve him in all his wants.”—St. Francis de Sales.
CONTENTS
Publisher’s Preface
Preface to the Sixth French Edition, by Père Huguet
Introduction, by Père Huguet
CHAPTER ONE
The Inclination God Has to Do Us Good
CHAPTER TWO
The Eternal Love of God for Us
CHAPTER THREE
Confidence in God Founded on the Consideration Of Our Own Misery
CHAPTER FOUR
God Has Given Us Everything with His Divine Son
CHAPTER FIVE
The Love of Jesus in His Incarnation
CHAPTER SIX
The Love of Jesus in His Passion
CHAPTER SEVEN
Abundance of Our Redemption
CHAPTER EIGHT
Our Lord Practiced All the Most Excellent Kinds of Love
CHAPTER NINE
God Looks upon Us Lovingly, notwithstanding Our Weakness
CHAPTER TEN
How Much Our Sweet Saviour Loved Every One Of Us Personally
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Love of Jesus for Sinners
CHAPTER TWELVE
How Much the Mercy of God Appears in the Conversions of St. Paul and David
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
How Great Is the Mercy of God on the Return Of the Sinner
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
How Full of Mercy God Is, even towards The Damned
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Excellence of Abandonment to God
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Conformity to the Will of God
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Practice of Conformity to the Will of God
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
God Is Our Father
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We Should Serve God Our Father for Love
CHAPTER TWENTY
How Jealous God Is of Our Heart
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
An Admirable Model of Perfect Abandonment
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It Is Good to Abandon Oneself to Providence
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fear and Hope
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Will Perfectly Resigned
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Love of Submission, by which Our Will Is United to the Good Pleasure of God
Adieu of St. Francis de Sales to the Pious Reader
SUPPLEMENT
1. We Should Not Despair of the Salvation of Any Sinner
2. Sentiments of St. Francis de Sales on the Number of the Elect
3. The Souls in Purgatory
4. Motives on account of which Imperfect Christians Ought Not to Fear Their Passage to Eternity, And May Even Desire It
P UBLISHER ’ S P REFACE
S T. FRANCIS de Sales was a man of great passion. Reading his thought is to know his heart. Has Holy Mother Church ever reared a child so willing and able to express his longing for perfect union with God? Has a man so learned ever presented Truth and Beauty so simply?
Words cannot fully express the Publisher’s appreciation for this Gentle Saint, the Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church. Saint Francis was a lawyer, a theologian, and a missionary. As a young priest, he volunteered to re-evangelize the Calvinist of Chablais, France. He preached not only with conviction, but also with unparalleled gentleness and grace. He worked tirelessly, even under the cover of night, slipping his apologetic writings beneath the doors of anti-Catholics. The Lord rewarded him with one of the most remarkable and well-documented events in Catholic history when nearly the entire population of 72,000 Calvinists returned to the Faith.
This volume, Consoling Thoughts , is representative of why St. Francis was so well-received in Chablais, and indeed, throughout history. Perhaps more than any other saint, St. Francis preached truth with love. His teachings, his works, and his very presence were consoling to those 72,000 lost souls of Chablais and to millions of more over the centuries. Now, then, it is our hope that they will offer consolation to a new generation of Catholics.
It is for this reason that TAN Books is proud to bring this compilation of St. Francis’ writings back to print. Initially published in a single volume, we now present this work in a four volume series, carefully arranged by topic to give solace in times of darkness, or, simply in times of deep meditation.
It is the Publisher’s sincere hope that Consoling Thoughts finds a permanent home in your library and among our long list of Saint Francis de Sales classics, including Introduction to the Devout Life , Treatise on the Love of God , Catholic Controversies , and Sermons of St. Francis de Sales (in four volumes).
Saint Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, Pray For Us.
R OBERT M. G ALLAGHER , P UBLISHER
November 19, 2012
P REFACE TO THE S IXTH F RENCH E DITION
By Père Huguet
S IX editions of this little work, published in a short time, tell better than any words of ours the popularity which St. Francis de Sales enjoys amongst us. Many sick and wounded souls have found in these sweet and affecting pages a heavenly consolation.
Encouraged by this success, the honor of which belongs to God and His blessed servant, we have again with pen in hand run through the works of the Bishop of Geneva, to glean carefully whatever had escaped us on our former tour. Nor has our labor been in vain; we have gathered new flowers, whose beauty and perfume yield in no respect to the first. 1 To introduce them in this edition, we have been obliged to lop off a good many of the old chapters which were so well suited to the object of the book. We have acted thus with the less regret as we have published the omitted portions, complete, in two other volumes: the Consoling Piety of St. Francis de Sales, and the Month of Immaculate Mary, by St. Francis de Sales. These two works form a complete course of consolation for all the trials of life.
We may be permitted to give a short extract from a late number of the Catholic Bibliography, which contained an article on Consoling Thoughts. The idea of publishing the article was most remote from our mind, on account of the many marks of very great kindness towards us which it bears; but remembering that the merit of this work belongs entirely to St. Francis de Sales, we have felt impelled to give at least an extract, as a new and encouraging proof of the opportuneness of our little book.
“The very title of the book,” it says “pleases, and should secure a large number of readers. How many souls are there today who stand in need of being encouraged and consoled? Want of confidence is the great obstacle in the work of the Christian apostleship. Discouragement is the evil of our period, because in general the Christian life, or S ANCTITY , appears like a sharp mountain, which only few persons can ascend; in despair of arriving at its summit the majority of men remain below on the plains. The mere word ‘sanctity’ frightens. The Lives of the Saints, which ought to encourage, often discourage, by their list of heroic virtues; we gladly conclude that such a state of perfection is suited only to a very small number, and we remain out of the ways of sanctity for fear of not being able to walk in them.
“Blessed then be the pious author who has received the happy inspiration of assembling together the Consoling Thoughts of St. Francis de Sales, the sweetest and most amiable of the saints, and one of the greatest masters of the spiritual life!
“It is especially by his admirable union of firmness and mildness that St. Francis de Sales shines in the first rank of ascetic writers. Who else ever painted virtue under lovelier colors, or made it easier or more practicable? Whoever knew better how to enlighten and bring back souls that had withdrawn from God, or that wearied themselves in His service by an unreasonable fear?
“Happy then and useful inspiration [it was], to gather from his works the thoughts most fitted to enlighten pious and timorous souls, to console them, and to dilate their hearts dried up by fear! Father Huguet has given us, in this little work, the quintessence of everything that our amiable saint wrote most sweet and consoling, especially in his letters, in which that heart so good and tender, which God had formed to comfort the afflicted, is entirely revealed. The book is of the greatest assistance to the simple faithful, and to directors and confessors charged with comforting discouraged and troubled souls.
“A word now as to the method adopted. The author read, he tells us, with pen in hand, the works of the holy Bishop of Geneva; and, after noting the different passages which referred to the same subject, he arranged them in such order as to form a single chapter. A page is thus sometimes collected from seven or eight places in the saint’s writings. Yet such is the connection of ideas that we scarcely perceive the labor, and everything seems to flow as