THREE MINUTES WITH THE SAINTS

St. Francis de Sales and the Prayer That Changed His Life

It might just change yours too

Statue of St. Francis de Sales in Vivoin, France (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this year, I published a very brief biography of St. Francis de Sales, the Patron Saint of Writers. I read over it again recently in preparation for a book I’m working on about my favorite saints and realized I had left out something important. I focused heavily on his classic book, Introduction to the Devout Life, as I should have (it’s one everyone should read) but completely neglected a key aspect of his prayer life.

As with any priest or member of a religious order after the 3rd century, Francis would have prayed the Liturgy of the Hours on a regular basis (these are prayers taken mainly from the Book of Psalms); since the 1800s, all clergy have been required to pray this daily. Certainly, every saint prayed the Lord’s Prayer given to us by Jesus himself in Matthew 6:9–13. And we know that from the time of St. Dominic in the 1200s, all of them had a love of the rosary (as a side note, October is the month of the rosary).

But in addition to these obvious prayers, there was one that had a massive impact on his life. In 1586, Francis was 19 years old and studying humanities and philosophy in Paris at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont. Influenced by Calvinists he met…