St. Jane de Chantal and the Spiritual Life - The St. Francis de Sales Association

The principal foundation of the spiritual life is love and its most important fruit is union with God and neighbor. Hearts in conflict are closed to heavenly graces, but hearts united in love are open to receive all of God’s gifts. ~ St. Jane Frances de Chantal

The life of a Daughter of St. Francis de Sales is not only blessed as she draws closer to the Gentle Saint, but also as she cultivates a friendship with St. Jane Frances de Chantal – a wife, mother, and later, a nun and foundress of a religious order – who was inspired by her spiritual director St. Francis’s teachings, as well as their deep and abiding friendship. In her 1990 Vincentian Heritage Journal article “Hearts Have a Secret Language: ‘The Spiritual Language of Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal,’” Wendy M. Wright explains, “This love of friendship was not ( . . . ) an end in itself or simply a matrix for achieving individual salvation. ( . . . ) They saw their friendship and all friendships as the means by which a community of ‘devout souls’ was to be raised up within the church. These souls would form the nucleus of a world recreated in the image of the loving God (47).”

Please enjoy perusing some of the St. Jane Frances de Chantal-specific resources included below. St. Jane was, as we each strive daily to be, lovingly faithful to the rule of life given to her by St. Francis.

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