Heb 8, 6-13; Ps 84; Mk 3, 13-19.
This giant of modern spirituality was born in Savoy in the Castle of Sales on 21 August 1567 into a noble family. He was destined for the judiciary but then, docile to the call of God, he received a refined cultural education, first in Annecy, then in Paris and finally in Padua, where he graduated in civil and ecclesiastical law in 1591. After having refused the position of senator of Chambéry, he was ordained a priest and accepted from his bishop the difficult and dangerous mission of re-evangelizing the Chablais (the northernmost part of Savoy), which had passed to Calvinism. His persuasive preaching and tireless zeal, supported by courage in facing hardships and dangers to his life, brought him several conversions to Catholicism. The notes of that period (1595-1598), gathered in Book of controversiesconstitute a document of Catholic apologetics worthy of the great Fathers of the Church. At 32 he was designated coadjutor bishop of Annecy and three years later titular bishop of Geneva, with residence in Annecy. In addition to working as a zealous pastor and director of souls, he founded with Saint Frances Frémyot de Chantal the Order of the Visitation, which he had imagined so as to allow the nuns to go to the homes of the poor and the sick to serve them, but which was then, against his will, imposed seclusion. He died in Lyon on 28 December 1622. His most famous work, in addition to Theotimus, Treatise on the Love of God in which he summarizes all his mystical doctrine, is the Filotea or Introduction to the devout life. This bestseller of the 17th century became like a kind of spiritual breviary for the laity, an ascetic book within everyone’s reach, which offers willing Christians a “safe, easy and sweet” path, as the Brief states for his proclamation as Doctor of the Church in 1887. He was canonized in 1665 and in 1923 Pius XI designated him the patron saint of journalists (and therefore also of those who speak to you) and Catholic writers.
