Moving on through the troubleshooting guide that is part 4 of Francis de Sales's work (which I'm blogging about fairly steadily), we come to Chapter 2, "Courage in Devotion."
This quite short chapter deals with feelings of discouragement early in the journey.
Though light is beautiful and lovely it dazzles our eyes if we have been in darkness for any length of time; we are always ill at ease in a strange country no matter how gracious and courteous its inhabitants, until we become familiar with them.
It may well happen, Philothea, that having embarked on this new life, your soul may feel ill at ease and that you experience a sense of sadness and discouragement in bidding farewell to the follies and vanities of the world[.]
I don't think I am experiencing this in my current efforts, but I recognize it from my anti-gluttony efforts of a couple of years ago. Even though I was mostly disgusted with my own behavior, at times I moped and mourned that I wasn't ever going to eat a whole pizza by myself again.
(Boy, that sounds awful every time I type it out. It's true though.)
I guess Francis means that we may pass through a stage of mourning for the life we've died to, and that we may worry that we don't know how to live our new life. The old one, even though we've turned away from it for good reasons, is familiar to us. We know it like an old house we've lived in -- exactly what's behind every door, how to turn the faucet just so to make the water come out as hot as possible, which stair will creak under our foot, where to put all our stuff. The new one is going to take some getting used to. Change is hard.
...[B]e patient a little while, it is of no importance, only the discomfort of unfamiliarity; as soon as it has worn off you will experience abundant consolation.
In other words: You'll get used to it.
Francis reminds you that you have good reason to keep going, because what you've lost is so petty compared to what you'll gain:
At first you may regret losing the empty glory with which flattering fools rewarded your vanity, but would you exchange it for the eternal glory with which God will in truth reward you?
The futile amusements of the past may return to tempt your heart back to them; are you courageous enough to buy them back at the price of eternal happiness?
Persevere and certainly your heart will soon be filled with such pleasant and delightful consolations that you will count the pleasures in the world but gall in comparison with their sweetness, and a single day of devotion preferable to a thousand years of worldliness.
So for mourning the temporal pleasures of the old life, Francis recommends thinking about the eternal benefits of the new life (note -- not the temporal benefits of the new life) and comparing the two.
And what about the other problem, loss of courage?
Seeing the mountain of Christian perfection towering above you, you may doubt your ability to climb it; but take courage, Philothea.
Unformed bees are called nymphs and at this stage are unable to fly for honey to the flowers or hills or mountains, but little by little, feeding on the honey prepared for them, they grow wings and soon are sufficiently strong to fly in search of fresh honey far and wide.
True, we are no more than such nymphs in devotion, we cannot fly as we would like to the mountain tops of Christian perfection; nevertheless we are beginning to take shape by feeding on our desires and resolutions; we are beginning to grow wings and so may be confident that one day we shall be able to fly.
Meanwhile, we must feed on the abundant honey provided by former spiritual writers, and ask God to give us "wings like a dove" (Ps. 54:7), that we may be able to fly in this life and reach eternal rest hereafter.
We can't expect to change completely overnight. We are learning. We are strengthening ourselves. And it is on our own desires and resolutions -- all that stuff we figured out while we were reading the first three parts of the book! -- that we must feed ourselves to grow stronger.
Remember that by "desires" Francis means the spiritual goods that we wish to develop and that we really can put into practice -- meaningful, attainable spiritual goals. By "resolutions" he means, I think I can generalize, plans about how to act in order to move closer to that goal.
Can Francis possibly be writing to us simply this: that when we become discouraged because the end goal is so far away, we must simply re-focus on the goals we can really get to, and return to our habits -- our small daily decisions -- the things we can do immediately because they are in our reach?
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