Introduction to the Devout Life: A Thirty-Day Salesian Retreat

The Church's most beloved guide to holiness in ordinary life, arranged as a thirty-day retreat.

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About this edition

"It is an error, nay rather a heresy," wrote Saint François de Sales, "to seek to banish the devout life from the regiment of soldiers, the shop of the mechanic, the court of princes, the household of married folk." In 1609 the gentle Bishop of Geneva gathered his letters of direction to a laywoman he called Philothea, the soul in love with God, into a single book, and gave the Church her most beloved guide to holiness in the midst of ordinary life.

Introduction to the Devout Life is that classic, arranged for our own day as a thirty-day retreat. It is not a public-domain reprint. Each day sets Saint Francis's own teaching within a Salesian pattern of prayer, a Preparatory Prayer, a Composition of Place, a Petition, Meditation Points drawn from the Introduction, and a Colloquy, so that the reader does not merely read de Sales but prays with him, one day at a time, from the first desire for devotion to its flowering in the love of God.

The book gathers, too, the Universal and Salesian prayers, selected letters of spiritual direction, and de Sales's own five-part structure for those who would keep his original order.

Vive Jésus! Live, Jesus, was the saint's own watchword. This book is an invitation to live it, thirty days at a time.

Inside

• The Introduction to the Devout Life, in the Mackey translation of 1876, lightly modernized
• A thirty-day retreat: each day a Composition of Place, Petition, Meditation, and Colloquy
• The Universal prayers and the Salesian prayers, in Latin and French with English
• Selected letters of spiritual direction
• Saint Francis's own five-part structure, for an alternate pacing
• A free companion app, Philothea, with the same daily retreat

All doctrinal content follows the constant teaching of the Church.

Details

• Saint François de Sales, edited by Jessica Huber
• Translated by Henry Benedict Mackey, OSB (Rivingtons, London, 1876)
• Sanctified Souls, The Devotional Series
• Paperback and hardcover, 6 × 9, 192 pages, printed in full color

Orders are placed and shipped through IngramSpark. This page is a catalogue listing.