Advice from the Guy Who Makes Converts

Catholics who find it challenging in our spiritual climate to evangelize—let alone actually to win converts—might take solace in the travails of the great convert-winner whose feast day we celebrated last week (or yesterday): St. Francis de Sales. One story in particular from Francis’s life proves two things: first, that every one of us, man and woman alike, is called to “missionary combat,” and second, that even the best convert-winners will struggle at times, and they should not be discouraged.

More than a decade before the saint penned the letters to the French noblewoman he nicknamed, with all paternal affection, “Philothea”—in other words, Lover of God—that became his iconic Introduction to Devout Life, Francis de Sales’s Christian heart, forged in the arsenal of rigorous self-denial and intense study, was tested on the best kind of proving grounds, one where human savagery and holy opportunity collided: Le Chablais, 1594-1598. There, in the words of hagiographer André Ravier, S.J., we encounter not Francis “the gentle pastor watching over tender sheep and lambs in the midst of meadow flowers,” but instead, Francis the warrior, engaged in—you guessed it—“missionary combat.”

In the sixteenth century, the Chablais was a province in the Duchy of Savoy. Placed by God at the bloody crossroads of France, Italy, and Switzerland, the province was a battleground in the wars spawned by the heresies of that most unpleasant of religious rebels—or “stinker,” as Francis called him in an unguarded moment—John Calvin. The iconoclasts of Geneva rolled though the once bucolic Chablais, leaving behind political turmoil, hundreds of desecrated churches, and a mere remnant—perhaps no more than 100 among 25,000—of terrified and persecuted Catholics, holding out hope for a return of the Roman liturgy, the sacraments of the Church, and the joy of Catholic life.

The man who restored the Faith to the Chablais was Francis de Sales. Two years into his priesthood, he volunteered for the task. Armed with a Bible and a few texts of Bellarmine, and joined only by his cousin, Canon Louis de Sales, Francis left his chapter in Annecy and ventured north.

Hilaire Belloc’s high praise of Thomas More, that in the end he acted alone, applies no less to Francis de Sales in the Chablais. Indeed, the English martyr of not too distant memory (he was beheaded in 1535; Francis was born in 1567) must have been an inspiration to Francis, who, save the fraternity of his cousin, found himself altogether abandoned in his effort. Most painful must have been the resistance from his own father, the Lord of Boisy, who refused to give him the least sum to support his venture or even bid him farewell.

Each day, Francis and Louis walked ten miles from a friendly nobleman’s fortress into the region’s capital city, Thonon. There they preached the Catholic faith to those who would hear. At the end of the day, they walked home. To overnight in Thonon would have put their lives in danger, and Francis over the next four years would suffer assassination attempts, attacks by wolves, and the privations of winter. The saint’s unshod feet left bloody footprints in the snow.

More discouraging than physical suffering was the apparent failure of the mission. A year passed, and then another, and then another, and still Francis had but a few converts to show for his efforts. In his correspondence Francis describes preaching Advent sermons to “four or five,” a number that our internet-burdened age would judge inefficient, to say the least.

Did Francis yield? Never for a moment.

To the yearning, deprived Catholic remnant, he brought the sacraments. He slid his tracts defending the Faith under the doors of Tholon’s citizens, and he treated the city’s ranking Calvinist clergy with abundant insight, wit, patience, and good humor. When Louis showed signs of losing hope, Francis smiled and assured him that they had planted so much seed that the harvest would not be far off.

In the fourth year, like ears of wheat, the converts came. A laborer here, a prominent Calvinist theologian there—before long, Francis’s field was abundant with souls, thousands, brought back to Holy Mother Church. As he later described it, “the vines were exhaling their perfume.” The young priest had brought love to all he did. He had left the results to God. And God had delivered.

The conversion of the Chablais is one of the great stories of Catholic apologetics—not so much for numbers, staggering as they ended up being, but more for the truth that apostolic work will not bear fruit if it is absent an interior life focused on Jesus Christ. Again and again in Soul of the Apostolate, a work every man who is serious about apostolic work should read and reread, Dom Chautard offers the example of Francis de Sales to drive home his theme:

In the Chablais district of the Alps, every effort of orthodox Christianity fell through, until the appearance of St. Francis de Sales upon the scene. On his arrival, the Protestant leaders made ready for a fight to the death. They desired nothing less than the life of the Bishop of Geneva. But he appeared among them full of gentleness and humility. He showed himself to be a man whose Ego had become so subdued and effaced that the love of God and of other men possessed him almost entirely. History teaches us the almost incredibly rapid results of his apostolate.

Apologetics enthusiasts will be interested to know that Francis’s heroic mission in the Chablais gave us a jewel of Catholic apologetics, only recently translated by my friend Christopher Blum and published by Sophia Institute Press: The Sign of the Cross.

St. Francis’s Défense de la saincte Croix de nostre Sauveur Jesus Christ saw publication in 1600—that is, after the mission to the Chablais—but it finds its origins in a controversy that took place three years prior. As his mission was gaining steam, and souls, Francis staged a public celebration, the Forty Hours devotion, at Annemasse. The two days’ festivities included public conferences and religious ceremonies, but also popular songs and the firing of guns. The centerpiece of the celebration was a large cross facing Geneva, erected on the site of a ruined Calvary, desecrated by Calvinists years before. Francis placed around the cross large placards on which he wrote a Catholic defense of the holy cross, its power and proper veneration.

The relevance of this work in our own age must strike the reader. Crucifixes to be sure, but even bare crosses also, are conspicuous by their absence in America’s Evangelical churches, and making the sign of the cross is regarded as superstition at best. (To sharpen the point, Blum has wisely chosen to translate the word Huguenot as “Evangelical.”)

Francis gives us a guide and a method to take up the defense of the cross in conversation with our separated brethren. He gives us also a note-perfect example of Catholic apologetics. Written with the zeal of a young man and the tact of a wise man, the work appeals to the unbroken line of Tradition—from the fathers to the apostles to our Lord himself. The treatise reflects the precision of Francis’s thought, honed in the law schools of Paris and Padua. Above all, it is suffused with love of God, the virtue without which apologetic work will bear no fruit.