Francis de Sales, Bishop, and Jane de Chantal, Vowed Religious

Today the Church commemorates Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal, friends in Christ who taught that the love of God could take flesh in every Christian vocation.

Francis was born in Savoy in 1567 and was educated for the public life his father expected him to lead. He studied rhetoric, philosophy, theology, and law, and earned a doctorate at Padua. Yet while studying in Paris, he passed through a severe religious crisis. Convinced that he had been predestined to damnation, he became ill with despair. In prayer, the certainty he could not obtain by examining himself gave way to trust in the love and mercy of God. That deliverance marked the spiritual counsel he would later give to others.

Against his father’s plans for his career and marriage, Francis sought ordination and became a priest in 1593. The following year he entered the Chablais, a region under the duke of Savoy where Calvinism had become established. He preached patiently, visited households, and circulated written explanations of Catholic teaching. His gentleness and endurance won many hearers.

His mission also relied upon the power of the Catholic prince. Francis presented proposals to the duke of Savoy that supported restrictions on Protestant worship and books and the exclusion of Reformed Christians from public office. He promised mercy from ecclesiastical penalties to those who returned to the Catholic Church. Francis, who preached patience, also supported the duke’s use of law against those who would not return.

Francis became bishop of Geneva in 1602, although Calvinist control of the city required him to govern from Annecy. He visited parishes, catechized children, reformed the clergy, preached, and gave spiritual direction. His Introduction to the Devout Life addressed people living in households, professions, and public responsibilities. Holiness, he taught, did not belong only to the cloister. Each person should practice devotion according to the duties through which God had called that person to love.

Jane was born at Dijon in 1572. She married Christophe de Rabutin, Baron de Chantal, and governed a large household and estate. Three of their children died in infancy; four survived. In 1601, her husband died after a hunting accident, leaving Jane a widow with children to raise and property to manage. Grief did not release her from those duties. She gave herself to her family and also increased her care for people who were poor or sick.

Jane met Francis in 1604 and asked him to guide her spiritual life. Their surviving letters reveal a friendship of unusual depth and freedom. Francis did not tell her that devotion required escape from motherhood or household responsibility. He first directed her toward the people and obligations already entrusted to her.

In time, Jane discerned a call to religious life. Before leaving for Annecy, she arranged for her children’s care, leaving her young son with relatives. In 1610, she and Francis founded the Congregation of the Visitation at Annecy. They intended a community whose gentler rule could receive women excluded from other orders by age or fragile health. The sisters also hoped to visit and serve poor and sick people outside their house. Church authorities required the congregation to accept enclosure, but its welcome remained broad. When others questioned admitting women in poor health, Jane answered that she was on the side of sick people.

Francis wrote his Treatise on the Love of God for the Visitation and continued guiding the community until his death in 1622. Jane carried the work forward. During an outbreak of plague in 1628, she devoted the Annecy convent to the care of the sick and pressed local rulers to provide for afflicted and bereaved families. She traveled among the congregation’s houses, advised women and men through letters, and held together an order that spread rapidly across France and beyond. By her death in 1641, the Visitation had grown from one small house to scores of communities.

Francis and Jane did not offer one pattern for every life. They sought the love of Christ within priesthood and widowhood, episcopal office and motherhood, friendship and religious community. Yet the spiritual path they shared kept returning to the mercy of God and to the neighbor given to be loved.

May Christ teach us devotion fitted to our own calling, deepen holy friendship among us, and make his love visible in the duties already placed in our hands.