It isn't true that religion is a deliberate turning away from life, she wrote. Though maybe it seemed morbid in that it led you to struggle with dark questions of doubt and with the shadow of death. But there is greater struggle in turning away from God, of succumbing to a life of just getting by, just doing enough. And she couldn't do without the sacraments and the guidance of St. Teresa, who understood the weariness of the soul, of St. Francis de Sales, who said be gentle with ourselves, of Jean-Pierre de Caussade, who advised abandonment to divine providence, and of Father Considine, who spoke of a God so kind and loving that he would give us everything. - Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty
Thank you. It warms my heart to have another poet answer my little poem with a treasured quotation. The passage, the book, and even Dorothy Day herself are all unfamiliar, but many of the goods these other men and women taught of and loved, and (as a non-Catholic Christian) the shared goods underneath those goods, are precious to me also.
I recently discovered this high praise of de Sales in particular, and I mean to to try to get to some of his writings eventually:
“I am v. glad you have discovered François de Sales. I would regard his prose and Geo. Herbert’s verse as the sweetest of religious writings.”
— C. S. Lewis to ‘Mrs Arnold,’ December 26, 1951.
(It’s only in the shorter Letters of C. S. Lewis, not in the Collected Letters.)
It isn't true that religion is a deliberate turning away from life, she wrote. Though maybe it seemed morbid in that it led you to struggle with dark questions of doubt and with the shadow of death. But there is greater struggle in turning away from God, of succumbing to a life of just getting by, just doing enough. And she couldn't do without the sacraments and the guidance of St. Teresa, who understood the weariness of the soul, of St. Francis de Sales, who said be gentle with ourselves, of Jean-Pierre de Caussade, who advised abandonment to divine providence, and of Father Considine, who spoke of a God so kind and loving that he would give us everything. - Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty
Thank you. It warms my heart to have another poet answer my little poem with a treasured quotation. The passage, the book, and even Dorothy Day herself are all unfamiliar, but many of the goods these other men and women taught of and loved, and (as a non-Catholic Christian) the shared goods underneath those goods, are precious to me also.
I recently discovered this high praise of de Sales in particular, and I mean to to try to get to some of his writings eventually:
“I am v. glad you have discovered François de Sales. I would regard his prose and Geo. Herbert’s verse as the sweetest of religious writings.”
— C. S. Lewis to ‘Mrs Arnold,’ December 26, 1951.
(It’s only in the shorter Letters of C. S. Lewis, not in the Collected Letters.)
Thank you. I haven’t read much de Sales. This is a nudge to investigate further.