St. Francis de Sales on Prayer (Part II)

Summary

Catholic Saints Podcast: St. Francis de Sales on Prayer (Part II)

Produced by the Augustine Institute | Released: January 27, 2026
Hosts: Dr. Ben Akers and Dr. Christopher Bloom

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Episode Overview

This episode is the second in a four-part series on St. Francis de Sales, focusing on his teachings regarding prayer—specifically, the need for attentiveness in one's prayer life. Dr. Ben Akers and Dr. Christopher Bloom dive into the second part of “Introduction to the Devout Life,” uncovering the connection between attention, prayer, spiritual growth, and how to incorporate St. Francis’s insights into today’s busy lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. St. Francis de Sales’ Vision of Prayer

• St. Francis synthesizes earlier spiritual masters (notably Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross) into practical teaching.
• Prayer is "talking to God as a friend"—not just speaking, but also listening.
  • “Just as Teresa, as la grande Teresa said, prayer is talking to God as a friend. …It’s a question of talking for sure, but also listening to God.” – Dr. Bloom [01:34]
• St. Francis uses vivid, natural images for prayer (e.g., living waters, shade under a tree) to help believers relate.

2. The Importance of Attentiveness

• Prayer is about focusing attention:
  • “Prayer places our understanding in the brightness of divine light and exposes our will to the warmth of heavenly love.” – Dr. Bloom quoting St. Francis [03:13]
• Distinction between study and prayer:
  • “Prayer is much more like the exercise of friendship. …What do friends do? They want to have a conversation…” – Dr. Bloom & Dr. Akers [04:10]
• Being truly present with God mirrors being truly present with a friend.

Notable Quote

• “In a conversation with a friend, you’re at the very least thinking about the friend…When you turn that into a conversation with God…your intellect is turned towards what is most luminous, and your will, your heart is turned towards what is most lovable.” – Dr. Bloom [04:16]

3. The Challenge of Distraction and the “Human Condition”

• Distraction is not new to modern times—it’s a perennial human issue.
• Created things constantly demand our attention, requiring a deliberate return to God.
  • “That created things draw us to themselves…we have to, in some sense, work to bring our attention back to the God we cannot see.” – Dr. Bloom [05:29]

4. Time and Place for Prayer

• St. Francis recommends starting the day with prayer; this still applies today, even if busy.
• Advice for modern listeners:
  • Quiet time in the morning—even if brief—is key; avoid using phones as alarm clocks to create sacred space.
  • Find a room, chapel, or place where you can be alone without causing hardship to others.
  • Sacrifice may be required; example shared about adjusting sleep schedules or shared parenting to prioritize prayer.
    • “It is a sacrifice. …But for her and for me…it’s worth it.” – Dr. Akers [08:31]

Memorable Moment

• Dr. Akers describes his wife’s practice: waking before their early-rising children to have quiet prayer time as a real sacrifice and example of prioritizing prayer. [08:11–08:40]

5. Establishing Patterns (“Rules” or Methods) for Prayer

• St. Francis advocates for a method: Begin every prayer by invoking God’s presence.
• Dr. Akers expresses modern skepticism about "rules" for prayer, but Dr. Bloom clarifies:
  • “These elemental forms of politeness…are rules, if you will. There’s a kind of universality of practice…” – Dr. Bloom [10:37]
• Having structure is akin to training wheels or scaffolding, aiding habit formation until prayer becomes second nature.
  • “The method…keeps you from falling over. They don’t actually get you riding the bike. …Once you have a habit of prayer, you know you’re going to be doing those things.” – Dr. Bloom [11:51–13:17]

6. Immediacy and Accessibility of Prayer

• Don’t wait for perfect circumstances or advanced direction—begin praying now.
• St. Francis: Even lacking a spiritual director, you can start to pray right away.
  • “He’s not gonna waste any time to teach prayer, right? ...Right now you can start praying.” – Dr. Akers [13:45]

7. Praying Like Christ—Becoming Christlike

• Immersing oneself in Christ’s life and words through meditation transforms the believer.
  • “If you contemplate Him frequently in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with Him. …You will grow in his likeness, and your actions will be modeled on his.” – St. Francis via Dr. Bloom [13:47–15:10]
• Children learn to speak by imitation—the Christian learns to live and pray by imitating Christ.

Notable Quote

• “If we cleave to the Savior in meditation…we shall learn in time through his grace to speak, act, and will like Himself.” – Dr. Bloom quoting St. Francis [13:47]

8. Imaginative Prayer with the Gospels

• Use imagination to place oneself in Scripture scenes, engaging more deeply.
• This method keeps the mind focused but must be guided by the intent to learn and respond to Christ, not just to mentally “run a movie.”
  • “We put ourselves in that situation…we’re not supposed to just run the movie in our mind, right. We’re supposed to think about, okay, what’s the lesson here? What is the Lord saying to her? What is He saying to me?” – Dr. Bloom [17:38]

Memorable Moment

• Discussing becoming different Gospel characters depending on the day:
  • “There’s some days when we’re Zacchaeus…I just need to see Jesus…I’m going to climb that tree. …Some days when we’re Martha, troubled about many things, and we need to be reminded of the thing that’s most needful…” – Dr. Bloom [15:46]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Introduction to the episode & context – [00:22]
• St. Francis de Sales' concept of prayer – [01:34]
• Images of prayer and connection to the Psalms – [02:16]
• Prayer as attentiveness / friendship – [03:13–04:54]
• Challenges of distraction & modern busy life – [05:15–07:00]
• Sacrifice, family life, and establishing time for prayer – [08:11–09:29]
• Rules/methods in prayer—training wheels analogy – [10:14–13:17]
• Prayer as imitation of Christ—becoming Christlike – [13:45–15:21]
• Imaginative, Gospel-based prayer – [16:32–18:03]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is encouraging, warm, and practical, with honest acknowledgment of modern obstacles to prayer. Both hosts are deeply rooted in the lived realities of lay Catholics, bridging St. Francis de Sales’ spiritual wisdom with today's family and technological challenges.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Prayer is much more like the exercise of friendship...it is, in fact, the exercise of friendship.” – Dr. Bloom [03:13]
• “These good things can’t be as important as God. 365 days of the year…” – Dr. Bloom [08:40]
• “If you contemplate Him frequently in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with Him. …You will grow in his likeness, and your actions will be modeled on his.” – Dr. Bloom [13:47]
• “Children learn to speak by hearing their mother talk and stammering forth their childish sounds in imitation. …If we cleave to the Savior in meditation, listening to his words…we shall learn in time through his grace to speak, act, and will like Himself.” – Dr. Bloom [13:47–14:37]
• “If we focus on Christ, if we keep our eyes on Christ, we’re going to start to look at him, for example, but also think like Him in approaching the world.” – Dr. Akers [15:22]

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Conclusion

This episode presents an accessible, deeply practical guide to prayer according to St. Francis de Sales. Through lively dialogue, the hosts encourage listeners to cultivate attentiveness in prayer, prioritize time with God, and use structure or method as support—emphasizing that the goal is always transformation in Christ. They remind us that, whatever our stage in the spiritual life, we can—starting today—grow richer in friendship with God through attentive, imaginative, consistent prayer.

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Next episode topics: Sincerity and bravery in the Christian life.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Hello and welcome to Form now, my name is Dr. Ben Akers. I'm the executive director of Formed and joining me today is Dr. Christopher Bloom, the academic dean and at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. Welcome to part two of a four part series where we're talking about St. Francis de Sales and the character of a Christian. The first episode, what we did was we focused on the virtue of obedience and the importance of devotion. Today we're going to be talking about the importance of attentiveness and especially attentiveness in prayer. If you'd like to follow along, our conversation is based on a PDF handout that you, you can find below this video. If you're watching on Roku, if you're watching on your phone, it's going to look like there's a link attached, but there's no link there. So you're going to have to go to your computer and download the PDF if you'd like to follow along. But our discussion is Based on the second part of the introduction to the devout life by St. Francis de Sales, known as a spiritual master, as a great teacher of prayer. And that's the theme that you've presented for us today. This idea of an important part of the life of a Christian is prayer. What does St. Francis de Sales mean by that?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, so as you know, he's regarded as a kind of someone who collected the great wisdom of the 16th century masters. So he read Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, when they're like hot off the press, you know. And just as Teresa, as la grande Teresa said prayer is talking to God as a friend, you know. And this is, this is Francis Desales conception of prayer. It's a question of talking for sure, but also listening to God. That's maybe a little bit simplistic, but at the same time it takes us right to the heart of what it means to be human.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

It does. And one of the things that I was struck by when I was reading this text that you presented for us is the images he uses for prayer. And they're immediately relatable, they're immediately draw me to actually want to pray. Living waters, it's the tree under which I can take shade. These are things that just really immediately resonate well.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right. Like any good Catholic priest, he's a man who's living by the Psalms, you know. And the Psalms themselves present us with not just those images and others like them, but with the images enacting of that kind of state of soul. Right. That clinging to God from this or that sense of need or a rejoicing in God from gratitude, for instance.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

So if we're. Importance of prayer, how does prayer relate to attentiveness according to St. Francis de Sales?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah. I think if we look here at the beginning of the text, we can see some of the clues here. He begins, prayer places our understanding in the brightness of divine light and exposes our will to the warmth of heavenly love. Nothing can so effectually purify the mind from its ignorance or the will from its perverse affections. A little bit later in the text, he says it's very important to distinguish prayer from. From study. Right. When we study, we've got some particular end in mind. There's a test to take, or there's a paper to write, or there's some deadline that we have to meet or something like this. Prayer is much more like the exercise of friendship. It is, in fact, the exercise of friendship.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

That's.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

What do friends do? They want to have a conversation. They want to talk about. About good and holy and pious things together.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Exactly, exactly. And so if. If in a conversation with a friend, right, you're at the. At the very least thinking about the friend. You may be. The two of you may be thinking about some third topic, like we are today. Right? But I'm in your presence, you're in mine. We're somehow dealing with one another. Right. When you. When you turn that into a conversation with God, Right. Then your intellect is turned towards what is most luminous, and your will, your heart is turned towards what is most lovable. Thus the purification that Desales is talking.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

About and the importance of attention. I think really what resonating with me in reading this text was his attention to attention, his focus on, you really have to be attentive. And the way you just described that about being in the presence of the person. I'm not on my phone right now. I'm not, you know, I'm actually paying attention to you. That's something that comes out in the text as well.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

I think it does. You know, and it's just this should. This should console us that, you know, we think that our time is uniquely far from God.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

At least that's. Some mornings we wake up and think that.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right? Yeah.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

But in fact, it's just the human condition that. That created things draw us to themselves. Shiny objects of one kind or another. Right. And that we have to, in some sense, work to bring our attention back to the God we cannot see.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

What would then St. Francis de Sales, in this text, he goes through and he says, soko, attention's important. He mentions time and place for prayer. Anything we can draw today for us? About the same. Because he says, do an hour of prayer today.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

And I was like, ah, and go to the chapel besides.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Go to the chapel.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right, yeah. No, he does time and place. I think I mentioned this last time as just a warning in advance that he's assuming an audience that has personal servants. So he's living in a time when the only people who were reading books were people who were, by our standards, quite wealthy. Or at least today in 2021, we think anyone who has a maid must be extraordinarily wealthy. This actually wasn't the case before the 20th century. So there was a whole higher part of society which might have been the wealthier 25% of the society, a big, big chunk of the society where personal service was normal. In the 16th century, those were the only people who read books. Therefore, he takes it for granted that you're not doing the laundry.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right. So you actually do have the time to devote. So if I'm the busy father husband, I go to work. What can I take from this text?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, I think a couple of things to take from it. I mean, first, just the priority of prayer. Right. So he wants you to start in the morning. And this is a theme throughout the introductory devout life and also in his letters to spiritual direction. First thing. Right. So quiet time comes first, however long it is. Could be five minutes, could be 20 minutes, whatever you got, you know, that's what comes first for us, quite literally. That means figure out a different alarm clock than your phone. Right. Have the phone be downstairs or off somewhere so that the quiet time is sacred. Right. As far as place is concerned. I mean, I think, again, this is going to vary according to persons, but if there's just a room in your house where you can actually be alone without your desire to be alone harming the rest of your family.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Sure.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right then. Or inconveniencing the rest of your family, then that's the place in question. Or perhaps it's the chapel that's down the street from work, and you get to work 20 minutes early so you.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Can make a visit.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Make a visit, exactly.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

My wife is. I'm so blessed with my wife. And I've also been blessed with children. And my children like to wake up early. And so my wife and I were lamenting that it's hard for us to pray. And so my wife, in her heroic virtue, decides to get up even earlier than our early rising children. Which means that, you know, the sacrifice is she goes to bed earlier.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

But it's a commitment that she makes and if somehow that doesn't work out, I try to watch the kids while she gets to pray. But it is a sacrifice. But it for her and for me.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

It'S worth, is worth it, you know, And I think that we could draw this back to this point about attention, right? The phone with what it offers to us, right? And let's just assume that it's good things that the phone is giving to us, right? We're getting a text or email about something that really matters, family or work or whatever, or we're seeing a notification of some kind that's actually relevant to the good deeds that we do, right? So we're talking about good things here. These good things can't be as important as God. 365 days of the year, right? Is there an occasional day when you just need to be waiting for that message? Sure there is, but it can't be every day. So I think that's really the key. What do we put first?

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right. And that's what I, you know, it is often the very first thing when we wake up. It's easiest to give the first thing because we don't know what the rest of the day is going to look like. But we can control that opening moment. So even if we don't pray the first time of first moment of our day, we should know which moment during that day we will pray. So even if we can't make it in the morning, we know afternoon at 3 o', clock, I'm going to make some time for prayer. So we have time, we have place. And then he talks about this on page two. He says, begin all prayer, mental or vocal, by an act of the presence of God. If you observe this rule strictly, you'll see how useful it is. When I hear that in my modern formation, I hear rules for prayer, I say no, no. Prayers of relationship, prayers of conversation with friends. What rules are we talking about? This sounds restrict what's going on here.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

It does. And then the rules just go on from there, right? He's got a method. He does. Yeah, he does. And I think that the way to put this is just, you know, let's just remember what comes naturally to us, but nevertheless that we had to learn about our relationships, right? So we say please and thank you to Our friends, to our spouse, to the people we really admire.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

We refrain from interrupting people who we care about. Right. Our starting point is that we're going to listen to what the person has to say. Right. Whether it's a child of ours or a co worker who's got a problem or whatever. Right. So these elemental forms of politeness, right. The things that we say, that our stance towards. Towards how valuable the person's time is, well, these actually are rules, if you will. There's a kind of universality of practice that with any luck, we've embodied by the time we get to be adults. Right, Right.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

My wife doesn't have to remind me to say thank you when someone says that to you. Or please, when you pass the. The peas. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

So it becomes just part of the.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Because your mom said it to you 10,000 times.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Exactly. Right. Until it ingrained in me. So this is what he means by a rule or method. He said this is gonna. So this is what he'd say would be the value of having a rule or method.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, it's. It's scaffolding. Right. Once the building spilled, you don't need it.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Okay. So would that be the limit of having a method or.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

I think so, but I mean, I think too, you know, scaffolding may not be the best metaphor here, but maybe. Maybe something like training wheels on a bike. Right. So training. What do training wheels do? They keep you from falling over. They don't actually get you riding the bike. Right. And that's kind of how the method is here. Right? Like the method, the overall description here of being the presence of God, invoking God's assistance, possibly imagining in the interior faculty of the imagination, some seen from the life of our Lord. Right. And then turning to thinking about his words and deeds. Right. And then allowing or prompting a response to the goodness or the appropriateness of what the Lord shows us or tells us, making a resolution to apply that to our lives, and then finally having a little spiritual bouquet to take with us, you know, whatever that might be. That's the riding of the bike. Okay. The method part is like, you know, memorizing the order in which those seven things go, or something like that. Sure, right. I mean, but once you have a habit of prayer, you know you're going to be doing those things.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

And he even says as much. He said, I'm going to teach you a method. You're gonna probably read a book about this or some other spiritual director is gonna teach you about this. And, you know, this will this is just to help you until you. You have that encounter. And I love that he's. He. He's not gonna waste any time to teach prayer, Right? He's imitating get on with it. Get on with it. Right. He said so, like, you know, you might not have, you know, I have a spiritual director. I'll get a spiritual director next year. Once I say no, he said, right, now you can start praying.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

And I'm gonna teach you how to do it.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

No, that's exactly right. Yeah. And if we just look at the. At how he begins here, he really first shows us. Right. It's so beautiful. Especially, I commend earnest mental prayer to you more particularly, such as bears upon the life and passion of our Lord. If you contemplate him frequently in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with Him. You will grow in his likeness, and your actions will be modeled on his. He is the light of the world. Therefore, in him, by him, and for him, we shall be enlightened and illuminated and so on. Children learn to speak by hearing their mother talk and stammering forth their childish sounds in imitation. And so if we cleave to the Savior in meditation, listening to his words, watching his actions and intentions, we shall learn in time through his grace to speak, act, and will like Himself. Right. So this is how to pray. Right. To listen to our Lord saying whatever it might be. Right. But, you know, consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet they are arrayed like Solomon in all his glory, and so on. Right. Those are his words. Right. And then we might ask ourselves, ask the Lord, what do you mean for me by this? Right. Well, we're already praying.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

I. This, this is. It's so inspiring to. To hear these words because it makes you want to pray, because he said prayer will make you more like Christ. And this is the Christian life.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

The Christian life is being more and more conformed to Christ. And we think about the things that are important to us. We think about the things that are on our mind that we put in our mind. And so there's so many things to be anxious about and worried about, so many concerns of daily life. But if we focus on Christ, if we keep our eyes on Christ, we're going to start to look at him, for example, but also think like him in approaching the world.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah. And I think we're going to read ourselves into the Gospel too, you know, and we're going to be different characters on different days according to God's good interior Prompting of us. You know, there's some days when we're Zacchaeus, right? You just. I just need to see Jesus. I'm going to climb that tree. You know, there's some days when we're Martha. Troubled about many things, and we need to be reminded of the thing that's most needful. Right. There's some days when we're like the anonymous sinner in Luke 7, right down there, just weeping at the feet of the Lord. And if we pray with the Gospels, these moments of privileged encounter between God and the human race can become our own.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

So it sounds like I need to use my imagination then, to put myself into these scenes. How do I make sure it doesn't run away with me? Or is there a danger with that?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Well, there certainly could be. You know, I mean, his. His discussion here of imagination is. Is. Is really good. I mean, in some ways, imagination really is the training wheels. But that's the wrong metaphor because he seems to think that we're almost always going to be relying upon the meditation upon the imagination, even though prayer is not fundamentally an exercise of imagination. Right. So it's a careful bit here on page 7. Often this use of the imagination tends to concentrate the mind on the mystery. We wish to meditate and to prevent our thoughts from wandering hither and thither and so on. And that's absolutely right. So if we put ourselves in the house at Bethany with Mary and Martha, you know, and we, you know, I tend to identify more with Martha. Right. You know, Lord, right, Tell my sister what I'm doing all the work here. Right.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

You know, Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

And, you know, we put ourselves in that situation, then we're not supposed to just run the movie in our mind, right. We're supposed to think about, okay, what's the lesson here? What is the Lord saying to her? What is he saying to me? How am I going to respond to that message? Why am I hearing this message today? Because, of course, God's providence is in the details.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

It is. That's such a beautiful way that you had said it earlier about read yourself into the Gospel. Then we start to read the Scriptures, we start to read the Word of God. It's not so much us going through the gospel passages as the gospel passages and life of Christ going through us and forming the way we think, forming the way what we choose, where we spend our time, and our time is up here. In our discussion on this second part of the introduction to the Devout Life, we talked about attention and the importance of attentiveness in prayer. So again you can follow along by looking at the PDF that's below this video. And please join us for the next two sessions where we're going to be talking about the importance of sincerity and bravery in the life of a Christian. Thank you and God Bless.

[Podcast Host]

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