Salesian Spirituality for Lent: Perseverance, by Derek Rotty

St. Francis de Sales, a Doctor of the Church, lived and ministered as a priest and bishop in a region of France very close to Geneva, Switzerland. During his life, in the last half of the sixteenth century, the region had been overrun by Calvinism, and his monumental task was building trust and providing good catechesis to the local Catholic population. This he did often through clandestine written correspondence, eventually repositioning the region as a Catholic stronghold.

How the Introduction Came to Be

Introduction to the Devout Life developed out of that correspondence. He wrote letters of encouragement to a particular lay woman, which he called “merely a collection of bits of good advice stated in plain, intelligible words.” After some encouragement from the woman, and from a local Jesuit, the first edition was published in 1609. For the sake of the text being more broadly applicable, De Sales addressed it to Philothea, a fictional personality who “signifies a soul loving, or in love with, God” (Preface). .

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