The Nineteenth-Century Salesian Pentecost: The Salesian Family of Don Bosco, the Oblates and Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales, and the Fransalians by Joseph Boenzi, SDB et al. (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Nineteenth-Century Salesian Pentecost: The Salesian Family of Don Bosco, the Oblates and Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales, and the Fransalians by Joseph Boenzi, SDB et al. Mary Frohlich, RSCJ (bio) The Nineteenth-Century Salesian Pentecost: The Salesian Family of Don Bosco, the Oblates and Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales, and the Fransalians. Introduction, Editing, Translations and Commentaries by Joseph Boenzi, SDB, Joseph F. Chorpenning, OSFS, Suzanne C. Toczyski, and Wendy M. Wright. The Classics of Western Spirituality Series. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2022. $49.95 hdbk. This is one of those books that few will read from cover to cover, but many will be glad to have it available for consultation. The excellent historical introductions and selected texts bring to focus the central influence of Salesian spirituality in nineteenth-century spirituality, especially in France. Francis de Sales (1567–1622) was enormously popular in his time, but the only religious congregation that he successfully founded (in partnership with Jeanne de Chantal) was the Visitation. His desire to found a congregation of priests did not materialize in his lifetime. His writings, especially Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God, proved to have enduring value and quickly became regarded as classics, thus extending his influence. This volume demonstrates how that influence blossomed afresh in the nineteenth century, incarnating elements of his original vision in concrete and extraordinarily effective ways. De Sales was known for preaching and practicing a spirituality of simplicity, humility, and gentleness. He regarded human tenderness and affection as precious manifestations of the love of God, and on that basis he promoted kindness and friendship as essential ministerial virtues. By the nineteenth century, the Jansenistic stream that had also been born in seventeenth-century France had devolved into a rigid, scrupulous, fire-and-brimstone mentality that tended to predominate in the popular mind as well as in official Church teaching and preaching. In that context, each of the figures covered in this book felt a call to counter the harshness of the prevailing spirituality with Salesian gentleness and kindness. They also were inspired by de Sales's fervent desire to use means of preaching and pastoral care that would impact people on the affective level and lead to real conversion. The founders of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales of Annecy, for example, reclaimed the practice of the parish mission and developed it with impressive rituals and theatrical performances to create a highly immersive form of communal experience (42). Louis Brisson, one of the founders of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, wanted Oblates to be fervently apostolic rather than placing themselves apart from and above the people, as was the priestly style of the times. He instructed his priests to efface themselves so the Savior could act through them and to take care to preach more with their Christlike actions than with their words (161–62). Other core Salesian themes were also picked up in these movements. The lay and religious movements founded in Italy by Don Bosco—the only non-French groups profiled in this book—focused their attention on the "littlest" and most neglected neighbors, welcoming abandoned and homeless youth with loving care and practical education. The Society of the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales, founded as an association of single and married laywomen by Caroline Carré de Malberg (who was herself married and a mother), carried forward de Sales's special concern to offer a way of holiness that can be lived amid the demands of lay life. [End Page 352] Most of the spirituality described by the profiled figures is decidedly practical, ascetic, and apostolic rather than contemplative or mystical. This may say more about what they chose to put down in writing than about their actual interior lives. Most of the texts offered here were prepared in genres such as admonitions or rules for life, hagiography, or letters of encouragement. The only section where a more mystical dimension is prominent is in the description of the interior communications received by Mother Marie de Chappuis, the...