Jane's Prayer as a Widow

Jane's Prayer as a Widow

Jane de Chantal was thirty-two when Francis met her for the first time in Dijon.  What  kind of a person was she? According to her biographers, the young widow, Madame de Chantal was an attractive, friendly, good-hearted, woman with a charming smile. But her kind eyes that used to sparkle with wit and humor were now somewhat dulled with grief for the loss of her beloved husband, Christophe. At the same time the yearning in her heart to belong wholly to God seemed to be an impossible dream. For Jane knew that the loving care and welfare of her children held the highest priority for her. Given the magnitude of her temptations against the faith, her tendencies to scrupulosity, and her excessive penances so unwisely encouraged by her first director, Jane must have been an austere, composed, if not actually rigid, person at this time. 

How gently Francis interacted with her throughout most of that Lent! Both Jane and Francis had experienced visions about the future. Jane recognized in Francis the spiritual director God had destined for her and Francis saw in Jane the widow who was to be the "foundation stone" of the religious community he himself was to inspire. But their conversations together were limited to social chit chat until Holy Week when the violence of Jane's temptations forced her to consult Francis since her own director was unavailable. That was just the beginning. On April 26, 1604; Francis wrote , 

" It seems to me that God has given me to you, and I feel more certain of it with each passing hour, but that is all I can say for now. Do commend me to your Guardian Angel."

This note gave Jane an overwhelming feeling of peace and a desire to abandon herself totally to God.  Less than a month after they had met and even before he became her director, Francis wrote to Jane in May suggesting a specific method of prayer. However he left her free to choose her own means of attaining perfection.  He wrote: 

"Use some devout meditation similar to the one here enclosed which has been helpful to other persons in my care. But do not tie yourself down to this particular meditation., It is only a sample. If this particular set of words appeals to you, it will not be completely useless. But note that I say: use it only if you really prefer it. I want you above all to have a holy liberty of spirit in the means you take to attain perfection. Keep the twin pillars of your tabernacle (that is, your longings for holiness and your loving acceptance of your situation as a widow) in good condition. Beware of scruples. Keep yourself constantly in the presence of God. Avoid anxiety and worries, for nothing so impedes our progress toward perfection. Place your heart in Our Lord's wounds gently, and not by force; have great confidence that in his mercy and goodness he will not forsake you, yet, for all that, do not relax your hold on His holy cross."

Notice how sensitive Francis was to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in Jane; she was to use his material only if its wording were helpful to her. Francis would never infringe on Jane's liberty of spirit, See how he introduced her to the will of God's good pleasure when he indicated that her loving acceptance of being a widow was just as vital to her growth as were her longings for holiness. The NOW moments of her life contained the will of God for her just as ours do for us. She was a widow with small children; what she might become later was of no importance at the moment. Neither was Jane to worry or become scrupulous; such faults are stumbling blocks on the way to holiness.

A month later Francis wrote again, first suggesting "little chats with our Lord," that is, those conversations we carry on with God as we live through our day. If you have never chatted with God, try it out while driving your car to work. How? If you notice something beautiful in nature along the highway, thank God for the beauty of creation. If you are caught in a traffic jam, pray for the people affected by the delay. If you foresee a problem during the day, ask God for wisdom and guidance in resolving it. Such behavior will help you to remain relaxed and at peace, eventually deepening your relationship with God. Such prayers used to be called 'ejaculations,' from the Latin word, 'ejaculari,' which means 'to throw out' to God a loving thought. Next. Francis remarks, 

"I think these words will comfort you too if you ponder them and repeat them often, 'It is Jesus whom we must form and bring to birth in ourselves.' Have courage. Guard against anxiety, depression, and scruples. You would never in the world want to offend God; that is reason enough to live joyously."

Notice how Francis was already introducing Jane to living Jesus. At the same time he warns her again to guard against worry, anxiety and scruples. Nothing is so devastating to the life of the spirit as the imprisoning effects of worry about the past, anxiety about the future, and scruples about our actions in the present. He also warned her against depression; evidently that modern malady was prevalent way back in the seventeenth century.  Here is a story that may help anyone afflicted at times with depression. 

"I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, he said to me, 'Don't change. I love you just as you are.' These words were music to my ears: 'Don't change. Don't change. Don't change ... I love you as you are,' I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed! Now I know that I couldn't really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not. -- Is this how you love me, God? After all, You are my best friend."

What joy fills our hearts when we attain enlightenment, when our hearts as well as our intellects know that God loves us just as we are. Jane was to experience this when she saw Francis at the Shrine of St. Claude in August 1604. She told him everything that had happened in her soul. In response, Francis assured Jane that God's will truly was that he should take charge of her spiritual direction and that she should follow his advice. He then added that her vows to the first director had accomplished nothing but the destruction of her soul's peace and therefore were null and void. Referring to this later, Jane confided, 

"O Lord, how happy that day was for me! I could feel my soul turn completely around and step right out of its inward imprisonment, where the orders of my first director had kept me shut up until then."

Mother de Chaugy adds, "From that day on she began to enter into true peace, that spacious interior freedom only the children of God know: she found herself attracted to a more heartfelt intimate kind of prayer." Freedom, simplicity, closeness to God: henceforth these would be the mottoes, or better put, the convictions Jane firmly would hold, even through her most dreadful testing times. Her soul really had 'turned around', and the bonds of her 'captivity' were burst asunder."

Francis' letter of October 1604 is the meaty one that became the foundation of Jane's spiritual life. Let us concentrate on its references to prayer. Francis says, 

"If you really like the prayers you are used to saying, please don't drop them....The general rule of obedience is: Do all through love, nothing through constraint. I want you to have the spirit of liberty that excludes constraint, scruples, and anxiety. Get a French translation of all the prayers you are or will be saying for I want you to understand them better. But do all this without anxiety and in a spirit of gentleness and love."

What may we say about the prayer of Jane at this beginning of her spiritual journey under Francis' direction? She evidently said many rote prayers common to the era in which she lived.. Francis accepted this, merely asking her to get French translations of them so that she would know what she was praying. Francis then turns to mental prayer. He says, 

"Your meditations will focus on the life and death of our Lord such as found in the Exercises of Tauler or the Meditations of Bonaventure. But you must simplify these in the manner I have written out for you. Meditations on the four Last Ends, that is death, judgment, heaven, and hell, will be good for you, provided you end your prayer with an act of confidence in God. Never think about death and hell on the one hand, without picturing the Cross on the other, so that having been moved to fear by the first consideration, you will turn to the next with confidence. Your period of meditation should not exceed three quarters of an hour. I like spiritual canticles if sung with feeling. A person who has true freedom will leave her prayer, unruffled and gracious toward the person who has unexpectedly disturbed her. To her it's immaterial whether she serves God by meditating or by responding to her neighbor in need. Both are the will of God, but helping the neighbor may have priority at times."

These guidelines are clear and leave no room for ambiguity; only Francis' insistence on her doing All through love, nothing from constraint allows Jane the liberty of spirit he so highly prized. Francis was wise; he knew emergencies happen. Jane was expected to use common sense and to interrupt her prayer to assist her neighbor in need. This is good advice for us also. There are times when we must leave God to find God; that is, there are times when responding to the needs of  family or friends may glorify God more than do our prayers. The catch is to recognize God's call in each situation.

In November 1604, Francis asked Jane to pray for the conversion of Geneva. Such intercessory prayer or prayer of petition is the primary ministry of some of our sisters who spend their days praying for others. All of us pray in this fashion whenever we respond to requests for prayers from friends, families, acquaintances, or strangers. For many people, intercessory prayer is their only way of praying; they act as channels of God's graces to everyone. For them, God is a rock of refuge and their delight. There are many different ways of praying. May God lead you into the one or ones to which He is calling you!

Then in February 1605, Francis tried to counsel Jane as she wrestled with temptations. He led her to Calvary when he wrote, 

"If it does not please our Heavenly Father to console you when you ask Him, stop thinking about it. Instead, summon your courage and work out your salvation on the cross, as if you were never to be taken down from it, and as if you were never again to see the sky of your life bright and serene. You must resign yourself to seeing God and speaking to him amid the thunder and the whirling winds. You must see him in the bush with its fire and thorns, and taking off your shoes, you must altogether deny your self-will and desires."

Did you notice the word pictures of merely a sentence or two that Francis has painted here for Jane? She is to be like Jesus fastened to the cross ready to stay there as long as God wills, or like Elijah attentively listening for the sound of God's voice in the winds, or like Moses awestruck at the presence of God in the burning bush. Did you notice the heights (or depths) of selflessness and self-denial Francis was demanding of Jane? This denial of her own will and desires eventually made her indifferent to everything except God's will. Complying with these gentle words of Francis demanded strength and perseverance from Jane.

Francis had been tireless in calming Jane's fears and tendencies to scrupulosity. But in August of 1606, he decided to mince matters no longer; his words at this time achieved a breakthrough for Jane. Francis wrote, 

"Your spiritual helplessness is doing you a lot of harm, you say, because it prevents you from getting close to God. You are quite wrong. God wants your poverty and helplessness to be the throne of his mercy. No, this helplessness does not prevent your getting close to God, but it certainly kills your self-complacency. We are always wanting this or that. One thing alone is necessary -- to remain near our Lord. St. Peter said, "It is good to be here," during the transfiguration. But you do not find Mary on Tabor. She is on Calvary amidst death, nails, thorns, helplessness, extraordinary darkness, and utter desolation. I have said more than I intended on this subject which has come up so often, my daughter, but never again, I entreat you. Love God crucified in the darkness; stay near Him and say: 'It is good to be here.'"

That is strong medicine, wouldn't you say?  But never again does Francis allude to Jane's temptations, worries, or anxieties. It seems that when he ordered her to drop her anxieties, she did so. What a giant leap of trust in God for Jane! Francis challenges us also to remain in prayer at the foot of the cross with Mary whenever we are suffering whatever it may be. In time, if we are patient, our problem will become a non-problem because we will have entrusted it to our Lord.

Francis had been guiding Jane in what we today call discursive meditation. Here, our intellects are very active and we, as pray-ers, imagine ourselves present in the Scripture scene, even as one of its main actors. Our purpose in doing this is to arouse our affections to greater love for God and commitment to His service. But we remain in charge; for we can control, so to speak, the direction of our prayer. We speak to God, but do we really ever listen? About this time, Jane evidently was being drawn to a more passive and contemplative kind of prayer where the one who prays lets God take the initiative in guiding the prayer. Francis seems to have distrusted this type of prayer and was unwilling to allow her to leave the tested and safe valleys of discursive meditation. What had Jane written that provoked the following response from Francis in April 1606?  He wrote, 

"It is impossible not to use imagination and understanding in prayer. The point is that we only use the imagination in order to move the will. Then we rely more on the will than on imagination and understanding. Mother Marie de la Trinite, OCD says that one does not need to use the imagination to picture the sacred humanity of our Savior. That may be true for the person who has already gone a long way up the mountain of perfection. But for the rest of us, I think it is expedient that we use all our resources including the imagination. Although we may long to reach the peaks, we are still in the valleys, I noted for you somewhere that the use of the imagination should be very simple, and as it were, a needle into which we thread the affections and resolutions of our souls. This is the great highway, my dear daughter, which we must not leave for yet awhile, until the light grows a little stronger and we can see the path more clearly. Of course, these inner pictures of the imagination should be simple and not complicated or detailed. Let us stay in these lowly valleys, my dear daughter, and go on kissing our Savior's feet for a while longer. When He thinks fit, He will call us to kiss His holy mouth. So do not depart from our method until we see one another again."

Francis is firm in his response to whatever Jane had written. In two sentences he outlined the discursive meditation process when he says, "The point is that we use the imagination in order to move the will. Then we rely more on the will than on imagination and understanding." Francis gently tells Jane that what might well be a proper prayer style for Mother Marie de la Trinite is not so for her at this time. Later? Perhaps. But until they speak face to face, Jane is to stay with the discursive method of prayer that he had taught her. Jane undoubtedly obeyed Francis, but she must have raised additional objections or perhaps was asking for help in resolving the contradictions between the advice she was receiving from her mentors in Dijon and that which Francis, her director, was giving. This time Francis grasped the reasons for her disturbance and wrote in June 1606: 

"I've been thinking about what you wrote me concerning the advice about not using your imagination in prayer. If your imagination is very vivid and you spend a lot of time this way, you undoubtedly needed this correction. But if you use your imagination briefly and simply, just to keep your mind attentive to the subject of your meditation, I don't think there is any need to give up all use of it. You must neither linger over your images, nor totally disregard them. Neither should you imagine all the details, for example, the color of our Lady's hair, the shape of her face, and details of that sort. Rather, simply and in a general way imagine Mary longing for her Son, or the like, and only briefly. I say the same about using the understanding. If your will moves directly to affections, you may omit the considerations. But that doesn't ordinarily happen to people like us who are less than perfect . We may have to make use of considerations for quite a while yet."

Francis then summarizes all the advice he has given Jane regarding what we today call discursive prayer. In short, he said:

	1) Make a daily meditation lasting between thirty and forty-five minutes.
	2) Picture in your imagination an incident from Scripture to help you become recollected.
	3) Use your understanding to awaken affections that will move you to resolutions.
	4) Carry out your resolutions by actions that accomplish God's will.
	5) Trust God to transform your being in His own time.

Did you notice that steps 4 and 5 really are directives for actions after the prayer period? If we were to follow those steps, we soon would notice a change in our lives; we would be praying even as we went about our daily tasks.  About two years later Francis wrote, 

"Whatever time you decide to give God in prayer, reserve it for Him alone and come before Him with your thoughts free and disentangled from everything else. This time no longer belongs to you. Even if you should spend the time acutely aware of your insufficiency and weakness, do not let that upset you. Rather rejoice in being a very good object for God's mercy. Often ask yourself whether you can really say in all truth: ' My beloved is mine and I am His.' If you notice something in your being that does not belong wholly to God, take it, and offer it back to Him. You are all his! But do not dwell on your progress or lack of it. Our Lord wants you to receive and use faithfully the occasions of serving Him and of practicing virtue. Do not reflect either on the past or on the future. Each moment has its own task. You need only turn towards God and totally abandon yourself to His Providence. Ask Him to destroy everything in you that opposes His plans. "Regarding ecstasies and other extraordinary phenomena, leave all that to exceptional souls who are far advanced and worthy of it. Look instead at Mary. In an act of loving courtesy she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. She looks for Our Lord not only in joy but also in sorrow. She has compassion on the poverty and confusion of those at the wedding feast. She remains at the foot of the cross. her heart lovingly united with that of her Son.  "May you constantly lift up your own heart towards Our Lord. Be like the valiant woman of whom the Wise Man says: 'She hath put out her hand to strong things: and her fingers have taken hold of the spindle. Meditate, lift up your mind and let it rise up to God, that is to say, draw God into your mind: those are the strong things. But with all that, do not forget your distaff and your spindle: spin the thread of little virtues, do humble works of charity. Do this, and you will please God."

By this time prayer must have become the warp in Jane's fabric of life; but the thread of the little virtues permeating her actions of loving service to others is to be its woof transforming the fabric of her life into a beautiful tapestry. Her actions were to be simple deeds such as rejoicing in being the object of God's mercy, and living in the present moment while faithfully doing whatever task was at hand. She is to abandon all care for progress in holiness into God's hands, merely asking Him to purify her being according to His will. She is to beware of extraordinary spiritual phenonema, content to imitate the loving service of Mary towards her cousin Elizabeth or her compassion for the newly weds in Cana. How encouraging for us to realize that Francis recognized the possibilities for holiness in the ordinary! Notice too, how Francis is leading Jane into a more contemplative form of prayer when he mentions that Mary at the foot of the cross was united heart to heart with her Divine Son. Jane too is to lift her heart towards Our Lord whether she is at prayer or is doing humble works of mercy for love of Him.

Another two years pass, then in January 1610, Francis writes Jane a letter which indicates that her discursive prayer shifts into contemplation at times. He says, 

"Your way of praying is good; just be very faithful about staying near to God in this gentle attentiveness of the heart, sleeping in the arms of His providence, and peacefully accepting his holy will. For all this pleases Him. Be careful not to analyze your prayer; introspection can be harmful, especially at prayer. Let your affections dwell as simply and as gently as possible on God, your heart's desire. Naturally, every now and then, you may begin to daydream. Don't waste time trying to guard against this, for that would only be a distraction. When you become aware that your mind has wandered, be content simply to return to acts of the will. Stay in God's presence. Indeed, for my part, I think we remain in God's presence even while we are asleep. We fall asleep in His sight. When we wake up, we find Him still there, close by. He has not moved, nor have we. Evidently, we have stayed in His presence even when our eyes were closed in sleep."

Francis here describes another way to pray; he says, 

"Stay near to God in gentle attentiveness of the heart, peacefully accepting His holy will. Let your affections dwell as simply and as gently as possible on God, your heart's desire. When you become aware that your mind has wandered, be content simply to return to acts of the will."

This seems quite similar to the Centering prayer method advocated today by Fr. Basil Pennington and other Trappists. When Francis adds that we remain in God's presence even during our sleep, I think he is calling us to live in an attitude of praying always. Remember, Jane was still in the midst of her family when she received this letter. Francis must have felt that the attentiveness of heart fostered during the time of prayer would help a person to develop the tendency to turn towards God whenever not occupied by the busyness of everyday living. You may have experienced this when you have a break in your busyness, e.g., while driving, or between floors in an elevator.

Scarcely two months later in March 1610, Francis admitted that once, after having placed himself in the presence of God with no other preparation or forethought, he still had experienced a very simple and almost imperceptible continual movement of love that was very sweet. He then adds,

"All the same I have never dared to leave the high road and to make a practice of this. I love the common way of the saints and of the simple souls who have gone before us. However, if we have made our preparation and are drawn to remain quietly before the Lord during our prayer, that is a different story. Still, I would find it repugnant always to begin prayer without advance preparation and to end it without any sort of thanksgiving, offering, or set prayer to God. Nevertheless I do not consider myself such an expert that I would not be very happy to give up my own feelings in this matter and to follow the opinion of those who know more than I do. So please find out what the Mother Prioress thinks about such prayer and all her reasons; I honor her with all my heart."

Francis' humility and openness to the opinion of others is  admirable in the above excerpt.  But he sounds like a real Missourian as he says, "Show me the reasons, the advantages of coming before God to pray without lengthy advance preparation." Francis is beginning to yield, albeit unwillingly. He distrusts the "letting go" that is demanded by contemplative prayer. He is more comfortable with an intellectually grounded prayer in which the pray-er takes the initiative. Jane, on the other hand, seems ready to surrender herself into God's hands whenever she withdraws to pray. Her mentors in Dijon definitely are urging her to follow this inclination to a more contemplative kind of prayer, one in which the affections are dominant, one in which the initiative is God's!

This was the last letter in which Francis touched on prayer before Jane came to Annecy in late May 1610 to prepare to begin the foundation of the Visitation on June 6, 1610. If we look at her prayer development under his tutelage, we see that she has moved from a purely discursive prayer in which her intellect and imagination were very active to a more contemplative resting in the arms of God. As we will learn when we look at Jane's thoughts about prayer, she believed that this is the path by which each one of us is called to union with God. What seems so remarkable about Jane's prayer journey is that all this happened while she still was very much a woman of the world, busy with the tasks of running an estate as well as a household and of nurturing a family of four small children. Jane proves the adage, Nothing is impossible for God! - if we cooperate with grace as she did.