She Listened to God Not Her Anxious Mind
Saint Jane Frances de Chantal is celebrated by the Church on her Memorial on August 12.
St. Jane Frances de Chantal was born in 1572 into a well to do French family. Her mother died when she was a toddler, so she was raised by her father, M. Benigne Fremoit – President of the Senate of Dijon. Jane was smart and kind, caring for her father and others as if she was serving God. She adored the Blessed Virgin Mary and found strength in her and her grace.
She was happily married at 21and had four children. However, seven years into her marriage, her husband was shot and killed in a hunting accident. Even though she was tormented with sadness, felt abandoned by God, and overwhelmed with living as a young widow, she was able to forgive the shooter, because God would want her to forgive.
Jane questioned if she ever would be happy again.
She was confused about what God really wanted from her life. She concentrated on listening to her heart and not her anxious mind. She prayed for spiritual guidance.
After hearing St. Francis de Sales speak, she found the beginnings of peace. He became her spiritual director. When her children were grown, she became a nun and later the Mother Superior for the Order of the Visitation, which she founded with St. Francis de Sales.
In a book of her writings – Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal –
she writes honestly her feelings of abandonment, confusion, joy, sorrow, and many other common feelings we all have, but fail to relate to a saint’s life.
“Though we should fall fifty times a day, let us rise again quite simply, without wasting thought in self-reflections on what we may have done or left undone. Such useless discouragements are often greater faults than the ones that so disturb us.”
Live, love, and pray – with the right attitude, “anyone who always maintains the right attitude is always ready for prayer, and indeed is always praying. Show God that you love Him to this degree, that you would be willing to love Him just as much for a small reward as for a great one.” (From Wings to the Lord – Thoughts on Prayer by St. Jane Frances de Chantal.)
St. Jane Frances, pray for us.
