On a Mission: Lessons from St. Francis de Sales

By Patrick Madrid

In this new book, Patrick Madrid uses the example of St. Francis de Sales to illustrate the zeal, spiritual principles, and attitude of one who sets out to live and share the faith. Christ sent his apostles into the whole world to make disciples of all nations, and by virtue of our baptism, we, too, are called to be apostles on this same mission. But how do we start? How can we accomplish in today's culture? In this book, Patrick shares his own time-tested methodology for teaching Catholics how to prepare themselves to:

- Explain their faith more intelligently
- Defend it more charitably
- Share it more effectively.

His methodology, derived from more than twenty-five years working in the field of apologetics, involves both practical techniques and theological truths revealed to us in Scripture and exemplified in the lives of the saints. It includes emulating the apologetics techniques of the original apostles, as well as the Fathers and Doctors of the Church in ensuing centuries. More importantly, it details the sanctifying process of cooperating with God's grace as he lovingly forms an apostolic heart for others within each of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781635823240

Book preview

Introduction

I WAS PLEASED TO DISCOVER that my surname, Madrid, means an irrigation ditch. The exact etymology is lost in the obscurities of old Spanish and Arabic, but the city of Madrid was known a thousand years ago as Magerit—a place of abundant waters. The Manzanares River, its tributaries, and the many irrigation ditches which flow from them, have wetted that arid land since ancient times.

God made me to be an irrigation ditch for his grace, and he made you for the same purpose. We are called to be conduits to all those around us of the life-giving waters that Christ spoke of when he said: Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

As the familiar prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi says, you and I must ask the Lord to make us his instruments.

Lord, make me an channel of your peace

Where there is hatred,

Let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, truth;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled

As to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

While St. Francis didn’t actually write this prayer, it embodies the spirit of his humility and poverty. I subscribe to its message because it clearly identifies what it means to be an apostle: to bring Christ to those around us—to bring his peace and love, his saving grace, the truth of his doctrines, and his message of salvation.

I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:9–11).

Just as an irrigation ditch carries water to crops in the field, an apostle carries Christ to everyone he meets. He becomes not just the sower of the seed, about whom the Lord spoke in Mark 4:1–20, but also the channel of his grace. Just as a field full of seed, if it has no water to irrigate it, can yield nothing, so too, the people in your life— family, friends, and even total strangers—need the vital, invigorating experience of knowing Christ, which you as an apostle can bring to them.

In this book, I will share with you the wisdom of a few famous men named Francis, most notably St. Francis de Sales. They have a great deal to teach us. But first, before we get to them, I wish to share with you as a kind of preamble some sage advice from the first of them, a man named Francis whose life’s work as a Catholic apologist had a profound impact in ways that continue to reverberate in my own life. His name was Francis Joseph Sheed (1897–1981), but everyone knew him as Frank Sheed.

His many accomplishments included being a master Latinist, a skilled translator, a respected theologian,² a widely read author of many books, a publisher of many others’ books, and a street-corner preacher with the Catholic Evidence Guild, explaining and defending the Faith under the open sky in places such as London’s Hyde Park and New York’s Central Park. That last bit might not sound very dignified, especially given the typical Look-at-me! Listen-to-me! argy-bargy common to practitioners of that peculiar craft. But Frank Sheed was not like them. As I wrote in my book Envoy for Christ:

He worked on hecklers and skeptics and scoffers the way a chiropractor works on a bad back—probing, searching for the tensed-up muscle, finding it, and going to work on it with precision. He massaged the minds of his audiences, breaking down hardened prejudices against Catholicism, kneading the God does not exist! arguments until they crumbled, and showing atheists the folly of their denials. He made countless converts on the stump.

Frank Sheed was one of the twentieth century’s greatest apologists. Some—especially those who knew him personally and saw him in action—say he was the greatest Catholic apologist of the last hundred years, maybe longer. One thing is certain: Few people of any era have been endowed with his unique, powerful combination of gifts—including a rare talent for expressing complex theological concepts, such as the Trinity or the Hypostatic Union, in words that were understandable and compelling to the average reader. His style was clear and luminous; it had the power to persuade as well as to inform….

Sheed could spot bogus arguments in a flash and squash them flat, but he never left his opponent himself feeling squashed.³

Frank Sheed personified many of the important qualities of an apostle that I’ll share with you in this book. He dedicated his life to being an irrigation ditch for the Lord, through his books, lectures, and public preaching. In the same way, but by other means, so did St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), St. Francis Xavier (1506–1552), St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622), our new Pope Francis (Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., 1936— ), and others whom you will meet later in this book, even if only briefly. Their advice comes from their own lived experience. They don’t suggest things that they themselves did not put into practice in their own lives—their own efforts to reach out to others with the love of Jesus.

What I have learned from these men, and from many other men and women like them, is that, first, you and I can effectively respond to God’s call to be a channel of his grace to those around us—we just have to be willing to say yes to his call and then cooperate with the many graces he wants to give us to accomplish his will. And second, I’ve learned that answering this divine call to become an apostle is not reserved for priests and religious—it’s for everyone, regardless of background, talents, temperament, and training (or lack of it). You might be shy or outgoing, young or old, busy or have plenty of free time. What matters is not what you have to offer God but how willing you are to receive from him those graces and lights he wants to give you to enable you to do great good for others.

My goal in this book, therefore, is to share with you what these great men and women of God have taught me about having the heart of an apostle and what it means to be on a mission. The first step is saying yes to God. The second step is saying yes to your neighbor. The third step, St. Philip Neri says, is to let a little love find entrance into their hearts, and the rest will follow. And finally, remembering that you are on a mission from God, let your motto be that of Blessed Junipero Serra: "Siempre Adelante! Always forward!"

Chapter One

WHAT AN APOSTLE LOOKS LIKE

THE WIND IS HOWLING AND the snow begins falling more heavily as nightfall gathers itself around the young priest. Though he has been riding since early afternoon, there are several miles yet to go before he would reach his destination. He keeps to the path as best he can, but the drifting snow makes it difficult for the horse to go much faster than a walk.

The temperature has dropped well below freezing, and after having ridden in the frigid open air for several hours, he is having trouble holding the reins. He grips them as well as he can hoping the thin wool gloves a Catholic couple had given him the previous winter will keep at bay the aching numbness in his hands long enough for him to revive them before the fire later that night. Shivering within his cloak, his teeth chattering, the priest continues reciting his evening prayers and plods on into the night, his head bowed slightly against the wind.

His name is Francis de Sales, a Catholic priest not yet thirty years old, who has volunteered for an arduous pastoral assignment in the Chablais region of southeastern France,⁴ an area that in recent decades has become mission territory. He is on his way to a modest farmhouse in an outlying town a few miles away, the home of a Catholic family who offers him hospitality whenever he is in the area. He knows he will be greeted with a hot meal and a fire in the hearth where he can warm himself and let his clothes dry out.

From this safe house, he has planned to spend the next week ministering to the few Catholics living in that town, preaching, celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing, and, if the non-Catholics in the area will listen, giving public talks on the Catholic faith. Most of the inhabitants of the region are Calvinists, so he knows he will face challenges and obstacles to his ministry.

This is nothing new to him. Riding alone through this cold night in January of 1596 is like many other such nights for the tired priest. For over a year he has often had to travel by night and in harsh weather to carry out his priestly ministry. Getting soaked and chilled, even chased, has become a way of life for him.

He even smiles at the memory of another winter night he spent in the limbs of a tree, safely out of reach above the snapping jaws and threatening growls of a pack of dogs that had been set on him by a farmer displeased to see a Catholic priest venturing into the area. The dogs eventually wandered away in search of more accessible prey, but, fearful that they might return, Francis used his belt to lash himself to a sturdy branch so he could avoid falling out of the tree once he had fallen asleep. It was one of many such adventures he had endured cheerfully and out of love for Christ as he carried out his spiritual search and rescue mission.

A Man on a Mission

Ordained to the priesthood in 1593, Francis de Sales spends the first year of his priestly ministry doing parish work among the Catholic population in Annecy, baptizing, preaching, celebrating Mass, and hearing confessions. This pastoral experience is an important, if short-lived, foundation for his later work among people who would prove very antagonistic toward Catholicism.

Anxious to carry the message of the true Faith into what was then hostile territory, Francis volunteers to evangelize the inhabitants of the Chablais region of France, an area that had been thoroughly Catholic for more than a thousand years but in recent decades has fallen into the heresy of Calvinism. As a result, much of the population is now steeped in antipathy toward the ancient Catholic faith.⁵

A lesser-known detail of this great disciple’s life is that, as a young man, Francis was greatly affected by the Catholic-Calvinist controversy over predestination. Having studied both sides of the issue carefully, he comes away deeply troubled, so much so that he suffers from insomnia and is often unable to eat because of the heavy temptations he experiences to despair of God’s mercy. This trial comes to an abrupt end, however, when he goes to pray for divine guidance in the parish church of St.-Étienne-des-Grès in Paris. While there, he also kneels before an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking for her intercession and consecrating himself to her. The fruits of this visit are profound: His depression vanishes for good, and Francis is never again troubled by doubts about God’s merciful love for him.⁶

As he now traverses the snowy Chablais landscape, the figure of this priest on horseback is hardly a welcome sight to the local inhabitants. Some sixty years earlier, the fiercely anti-Catholic Protestant scholar, John Calvin, had taken up residence in Geneva, less than thirty miles from where Francis