August 21st – Feast of St. Chantal.

Adam Paige
Aug 20
4 min read

August 21st – Additional Meditation. Feast of St. Chantal.

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow on the virtues of St. Chantal, whose feast we are celebrating, and we shall see: 1st, how dead she was to herself; 2d, how she lived for God alone. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to break with every attachment which has no relation to God, especially attachment to self-love, to self-will, and to our own comfort; 2d, to desire and to will God alone. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Saint: “God alone is everything to my heart.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore the power of grace which caused all the vicious inclinations of our evil nature no longer to exist in St. Chantal, and in their stead made God and His pure love alone reign within her. Let us admire this marvellous transformation, and let us bless Our Lord, whose grace worked this miracle.

How St. Chantal was Dead to Herself.

The first step to make in Christian life is to die to one's self. “You are dead” wrote St. Paul to the faithful at Colossa (Coloss. iii. 3). “Mortify yourself in everything to the utmost” wrote St. Francis de Sales to St. Chantal, “and let all die within you, in order that God may live therein.” Docile to the advice of her saintly director, our saint became really dead to herself. Dead to her self-will, although she was still in the world, the whole of her life was subjected to a rule which left nothing to caprice; her rising as well as her lying down, her spiritual exercises as well as the care of her household, the employment of every moment as well as the way of doing each single thing, all was done regularly. From the earliest season of her widowhood, being more her own mis tress, she would not make any other use of her greater freedom than to bend it under obedience to a director whom she consulted about everything. Desire nothing, ask nothing, refuse nothing — such was henceforth the rule of her conduct. Dead to self-love, she knew nothing of self-esteem, despising herself profoundly, and looking on herself as the lowest of the daughters of the Visitation. Far from desiring the esteem of others, she had a supreme horror of it; contempt made her rejoice, humiliations were her happiness, susceptibility and pretentiousness were unknown to her. Dead to the love of riches and of earthly possessions, she delighted in poverty, not even keeping a watch for her own use, not even a relic; and old and patched habits were estimable in her eyes as being consecrated by holy poverty. Dead to the pleasures of the senses, and even to the sensible delights of piety, she joyfully embraced privations because they are disagreeable to the senses; suffering, because it crucifies them; sickness, because it afflicts them. She blessed God in interior abandonments as well as in consolations, in dark nesses as well as in light. She arrived at the point of being able to say that if the glory and felicity of Paradise had the power of separating her from God, she would not take a single step to obtain them; for, she added, “I desire nothing but God in this world and in the next” — a sublime and universal death to self, well suited to confound us and to make us feel the necessity of entering upon a new life.

How St. Chantal Lived for God Alone.

Entirely possessed by divine love, St. Chantal did nothing and said nothing except with a view to God and for God. In her it was a strong and vigorous love, which joyfully embraced all kinds of sacrifices, even to the point of passing, spite of the anguish of her most maternal heart, over the body of a son who offered an obstacle to her vocation; a hardy and invincible love, which entered upon the greatest enterprises for the glory of God and the salvation of souls; a love which could not be shaken by re verses, which was always abandoned to Providence, without any self-seeking; a love which was humble to the extent of a total annihilation of self, that God alone might be exalted; a love which was so joyous in anguish that it was a delight to it to feel bitterness and abandonment interiorly, and exteriorly contempt and contradiction; a love, lastly, which kept her in such a state of perfect abandonment to the guidance of God, that she was really like the child who, giving its hand to its mother, allows itself to be led everywhere by her and to do all that she wills. Hence the vow by which she engages to do what is most perfect in everything; hence her seeing God in her neighbor, whoever he might be: in the poor and the sick, even in people full of faults, who, on that very account, became the objects of her most tender sympathies, so that it was a joy to her to render good for evil, to bear anything, to forgive everything, and to love always, spite of everything. What an admirable model, and how far we are from it !

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

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