Faith

  Sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 9, 1622

Concerning the spiritual fruits of fasting and the conditions which make fasting pleasing to God: fasting universally, that is, with all the senses and with the understanding, memory, and the appetites of the will; how completely the primitive Christians fasted, fasting through humility rather than through vanity, fasting through obedience rather than through self-will, following the community customs in fasting rather than seeking to be singular, fast­ing only to please God and not for the esteem of men, and the evil of subjecting the commands of God and our superiors to our own human discretion.

(Read further in Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent, Sermon 3, Faith)

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