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The Gentle Art of a Devout Life
“True devotion does not remove you from your calling — it sweetens the way you carry it out” — Francis de Sales' gentle classic for busy lives.
“Let your gentleness be evident to all.”
You ask how a person living in the world — with a household to keep, work to do, people to answer — can live a truly devout life. I answer: not by leaving that life, but by consecrating it. Devotion has been wrongly pictured as the property of cloisters. In truth it belongs wherever love does, and love belongs in your kitchen and your shop as surely as in any chapel.
Devotion must look different in everyone, and this is no defect. The devotion of a soldier cannot be that of a scholar; the devotion of a mother with young children cannot be that of a hermit. Any piety that asks you to abandon your actual duties is suspect. True devotion does not remove you from your calling — it sweetens the way you carry it out, as sugar sweetens whatever fruit it touches.
Begin, above all, with gentleness — and begin with yourself. When you stumble, do not be astonished or crushed, and do not scold yourself at length. Rise quietly, confess simply — I have fallen; help me up — and begin again. Long and bitter self-reproach is often pride in disguise: we are less grieved by the fault than by the damage to our own image.
A piety that makes you harder to live with has gone wrong somewhere.
Give a little time each day to recollection — a few minutes set apart to gather your heart into God's presence before the day's noise scatters it. Do not wait for a grand retreat; small, faithful moments do the deeper work. A short morning offering, a verse carried through the day, a brief lifting of the heart amid your tasks — this is the fabric of a devout life.
Guard against worry, which is the greatest enemy of the gentle soul. When a trouble appears, hand it over to God early, before it has time to ferment. And watch your speech: let it be kind always, and never say of the absent what you would not say to their face. Charity that has not reached the tongue has not reached the heart.
I will tell you something the severe teachers often miss: true devotion is cheerful. A piety that makes you cold, critical, or hard to live with has gone wrong somewhere — not in the faith, but in the method. Real devotion makes a person more gracious, more patient, easier to live with, and it should be evident in the face. So begin, dear reader — begin today, in the life you already have, and let your gentleness be evident to all.