St. Francis de Sales on Sincerity (Part III)

Summary

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Catholic Saints Podcast

Episode: St. Francis de Sales on Sincerity (Part III)
Host: Dr. Ben Akers (Augustine Institute)
Guest: Dr. Christopher Bloom
Date: January 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is the third in a four-part series exploring the Christian character with a focus on the virtue of sincerity through the lens of St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. Dr. Ben Akers and Dr. Christopher Bloom discuss how sincerity and humility are essential to genuine Christian living, drawing practical lessons from de Sales’ teachings and scripture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Landscape of Self-Improvement versus Christian Virtue

• Self-Help in the Renaissance vs. De Sales’ Approach
  • The context of Introduction to the Devout Life (01:30):
    • Many Renaissance self-help books encouraged creating or imagining your “best self.”
    • St. Francis de Sales, by contrast, shifts focus from self-fashioning to looking at the Master—turning one’s gaze to God, not oneself.
    • "De Sales is offering... looking at the master rather than looking in the mirror." – Dr. Bloom (01:40)

The Centrality of Virtue in Christian Life

• Virtue as Foundational to Moral and Spiritual Life (02:10–03:19):

  • The end of human life is fulfilling the twofold commandment: to love God and neighbor.
  • The will is “that thirst… to be in communion”; virtues remove obstacles to loving rightly.

• Choosing Virtues Appropriate to State in Life (03:36–06:36):

  • Not all virtues are exercised equally by everyone, nor are opportunities for great public virtue always available.
  • Everyday virtues—gentleness, temperance, modesty, humility—are available to all.
  • “The self-help perspective is, imagine who you want to be… Whereas de Sales… says, ‘Come to terms with who you are.’” – Dr. Bloom (05:37)

Discerning Which Virtues To Embrace

• State in Life as Key to Growth (05:37–06:36):

  • Instead of pursuing what’s attractive, Christians are called to pursue what’s needed in their present vocation:
  • “Are you son, husband, father, employee, employer? These basic relationships… structure our lives.” – Dr. Bloom (05:57)

• Examples from Scripture: The Apostles’ Discernment (06:36–07:12):

  • Apostles had to discern their focus—preaching vs. serving—highlighting that duties arise from vocation and calling.

• Comparison Trap in the Spiritual Life (08:15):

  • Tendency to compare ourselves to others—“I’m not as bad as that person, so I must be fine.”
  • “Jesus’ call to Peter is the same to us: ‘You follow me... I have certain things I need you to do for me.’” – Dr. Akers (08:31)

The Relationship Between Humility and Charity

• Humility as the Root of Authentic Charity (09:02–10:11):

  • Pride makes us focus on ourselves and on what we think is good.
  • True humility lets us see ourselves and the world as they truly are.
  • “Humility drives Satan away and cherishes the gifts… Christ and [His] mother have always esteemed the grace of humility above all other virtues.” – Dr. Akers quoting de Sales (09:53)

• Reordering of Virtues: From Aristotle to Christ (10:11):

  • Classical philosophy (e.g., Aristotle) prized justice; Christianity elevates humility due to its openness and realism.

Sincerity as Seeing Oneself Truly

• Etymology and Practical Meaning (11:22–12:58):
  • “Sincere” means “without wax”—without a mask or makeup; seeing oneself as both recipient of God’s gifts and as sinner.
  • Danger arises from self-deception and lack of gratitude, leading to a restless craving for what we lack.

Exterior vs. Interior Humility

• External Signs and Cautions (12:58–15:11):

  • De Sales references social status symbols of his age; Facebook “likes” are the modern equivalent (13:12–14:28).
    • “No matter where you go… all of us… try to make ourselves look good… because we’re built for love.” – Dr. Bloom (13:49)
  • Natural to desire affirmation but dangerous if it becomes excessive or insincere.

• Dangers for the Spiritually Committed (15:31–16:13):

  • Even active Christians are tempted to seek admiration for their virtue or spiritual practice.

The “Inside Job”: Pursuing Interior Humility (16:13–17:53)

• Recognizing God’s Initiative
  • Humility begins with recognizing that everything—our gifts, our worth—is from God.
  • We are called and gifted by God’s grace, not our own merits.
  • “We’re all like Bartholomew… Jesus walks by and offers us something we’re really not worthy of.” – Dr. Bloom (16:50)
  • It’s freeing to let God provide the occasions for virtue: “The Lord knows what He is about.” – Dr. Bloom (17:55)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Virtue’s Aim:

  • “Charity itself just is loving rightly, but you can think of all of the other virtues as removing obstacles to our loving rightly.”
    — Dr. Bloom (02:22)

• On Sincerity and Realism:

  • “De Sales is, you might say, kind of a hard-nosed realist—actually come to terms with who you are…”
    — Dr. Bloom (05:37)

• On Comparison:

  • “‘You follow me… I have certain things I need you to do for me.’”
    — Dr. Akers reflecting on John 21 (08:31)

• On Humility:

  • “Humility drives Satan away and cherishes the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit within us.”
    — Dr. Akers quoting de Sales (09:53)
  • “Humility involves both a kind of openness to our own lowliness… and seeing ourselves as we really are.”
    — Dr. Bloom (10:47)

• On Sincerity’s Depth:

  • “How do we see ourselves rightly? Sincere—without wax, without a mask, without makeup…”
    — Dr. Bloom (11:25)

• On External Vanity:

  • “Give you the Facebook like… this is part of the inbuilt disposition of our communal nature. But if it gets outside the bounds of reason, then it becomes folly.”
    — Dr. Bloom (14:28)

• On God’s Initiative:

  • “The Lord knows what He is about. Every hair on your head is numbered and so forth. And that means He's going to provide the occasions for good deeds and you don't need to worry about what they are.”
    — Dr. Bloom (17:55)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• [01:30] – Contextualizing Introduction to the Devout Life
• [03:36] – On Choosing Among Virtues Based on Life Circumstances
• [06:36] – Apostolic Example: Discernment in Christian Life
• [08:15] – The Temptation of Comparison in Spiritual Life
• [09:02] – Connection between Humility and Charity
• [10:11] – Humility's Place in Christian Ethics
• [12:58] – Distinguishing Exterior and Interior Humility
• [15:11] – Vanity and the Peacock Analogy
• [16:50] – Internalizing Humility through God’s Grace
• [17:55] – Surrendering to God’s Providence

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Concluding Thoughts

The discussion offers a compelling challenge: instead of striving to impress others or chase external honors, Christians are called—through humility and sincerity—to recognize their real vocation and accept themselves as God’s beloved servants. The path suggested by St. Francis de Sales is a way of gratitude, realism, and deep freedom, rooted in trust that God “knows what He is about” in each life.

Next Episode: Bravery as an essential Christian characteristic.

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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 we're in part three of our four part series on St. Francis DeSales and the character of a Christian. And My guest today, Dr. Christopher Bloom, is a great friend of St. Francis DeSales. You can see an episode on St. Francis DeSales on his series called True Reformers, which is found on Formed. He's also helped translate the text that we have for you that we're discussing today and the virtue we're going to be talking about. The character, the essential trait of a Christian that we're going to be talking about today is the trait of sincerity. And last time we talked about the importance of attentiveness. And a verse came to mind in our conversation from Psalm 123 and Psalm 123 to you. I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of a servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of the maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy on us. It was a beautiful scriptural base of that attentiveness, that focus on what we're supposed to do in prayer.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, we're going to see the same thing today. You may recall, Ben, that in the first episode I mentioned that the introduction to Outlife was written at a time when, in the Renaissance, when there's a lot of self help literature out there. Okay. There's a lot of fashioning the self or creating the self or looking in the mirror. Right. And what De Sales is offering in the Devout Life is just what that verse talks about, looking at the master rather than looking in the mirror. And in a funny sort of way, we're going to see that here in his discussion of humility, which I'm suggesting we can take under the heading of sincerity.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Also, this is from the third part of the Introduction to Devout Life, and he talks about the importance of virtue. Would you mind sharing a little bit about the importance of virtue to the moral life, but also to the spiritual life?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah. So the aim of human life, of course, is the charity, the twofold, to fulfill the twofold commandment to love God and love neighbor. Right. Why is that? Well, the faculty which is deepest in us is the will. Right. We are creatures, we stand in need of other things and other personal beings as it were. People and God and angels too, for that matter. And so the will is that thirst, as it were, right to be in communion with God and neighbor. So if that's not right, if we're not loving rightly, then what's deepest enough is being thwarted. And you can think of all of the virtues. I mean, charity itself just is loving rightly, but you can think of all of the other virtues as removing obstacles to our loving rightly.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

That's, that's beautiful. And this is. He begins with a surprising title. If you're following along on the text. It's only nine pages. I encourage you to download it, read it on your computer. On choosing among the virtues. That, that, that was a little bit jarring to me. What do you mean I have to choose? Am I supposed to have all the virtues? What's he mean by choosing the virtues?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, sorry. Definitely you're supposed to have all of them.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Okay.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

So yeah, yeah, that's, that's the hidden subtext.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

So choosing the virtue. And then how do I choose which virtue is important to me?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, exactly. So at the bottom of the first page here, he states, we do not very often come across opportunities for exercising fortitude, magnanimity or magnificence. Okay. But gentleness, temperance, modesty and humility are graces which ought to color everything we do. Now, presumably here, by fortitude, he means the full exercise of fortitude, like being able to die in battle because you're not afraid to do your duty as a soldier. Right. By magnanimity and magnificence, he has in mind the, the virtues that have to do with enormous outward works.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Okay.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

In the case of magnificence, it's like being the patron of, of a monument or something like this. In the case of magnanimity, maybe he's thinking of the work of a statesman or some other sort of leader, but obvious outward sorts of things. Right. It's not up to us what outward circumstances confront us. Right. It's not. I can't wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to go win a battle and save the United States, you know? No, there has to. There has to be a battle.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Sure. That's. Yeah.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

You know, Right. Whereas his point here is that no matter where you are in life, no matter what the circumstances the day throws at you, you'll have opportunities to be gentle, self controlled, modest and humble. And so that's sort of the principle here of discernment is what do you need to do today.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

It's hard because we always want to do the great things and we want to be on show. I mean, one of the things that comes out of this is I want people to see me do great things, right? And in this, and this important, really struck me here is where he said not we don't choose a virtue according to what we want to grow in, but actually what we need to grow in. What's the most excellent thing for us in the state in life in which we find ourselves?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

And state in life is really the key here, right? So the difference between the Renaissance self help book thing and the doctrine that you're seeing here is that the self help perspective is imagine who you want to be and then strive to be it. Okay? Or to have that quality or to do that thing or what have you. Whereas Desales is, is, you might say, just kind of a hard nosed realist, you know, actually come to terms with who you are, right. Are you, are you son? Are you, I mean, you know, for male or son, but you know, in this particular aspect of your life, are you son, husband, father, employee, employer, right. Debtor or benefactor, you know, et cetera, Right? These basic relationships that structure our lives, that's what comes first, that's what measures how we act.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

And he draws our attention to, you know, with the example of the apostles, they made their decisions on which virtue they were going to preach the gospel was their vocation. So they had to hire, you know, they had to hire, they had to ordain deacons to help them with the important task of serving the poor. But that was not their primary task. The apostles were ordained to preach and spread the gospel. And so just to go back to the themes that we've been seeing in the last two episodes of Eyes on Christ, Eyes on the life of Christ. If you're trying to figure out what to do in life, this is coming from a fruit of his own meditation, his own study of the life of Christ. He's just giving us by teaching us by example. What I'm telling you is found in the Gospels.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

That's absolutely right. And also found in the Gospels is that strong lesson present so often, right. That it's the Lord who breaks into our lives and gives us the fundamental orientation of our life, right? So there's the famous episode at the end of St. John's Gospel where St. Peter says, you know, what about this fella? You know, And Jesus response is, that is of no concern to you. You follow me, right? As who you are, right? I've made you this kind of shepherd. You're the first Pope, right. So to speak. Right. Jesus didn't use those words. But I've told you what I need you to do, so do it right? And now, you know, there's a time in life when we're discerning what the Lord's call is and when we haven't made decisions that constitute a kind of objective state of life. Right. But for those of us like ourselves who are married, we actually know what our duties are. They're totally clear.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right. And just bringing that up to the Scene from John 21 is this is a temptation that often surfaces in the spiritual life and just a regular secular life of we look to others and compare ourselves to others, like, well, I must be fine with God because I'm not a Hitler. I'm not doing. Going around doing terrible things. So I'm sure, like, I'm going to get to heaven because I'm not as bad as that person. But that Jesus call to Peter is the same to call to us of, you follow me, and I have certain things I need you to do for me. And one of those is for everybody, is virtue of charity. And then this is what he talks about in the text, where he quickly moves from charity being the queen, the queen bee, if you will, and then he moves to humility. What's the relationship between humility and charity?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, well, you know, pride is the great enemy of charity, right? And pride, of course, is that disposition to look at ourselves and to imagine what we take our good to be. Right. I really need that red Ferrari, you know. And of course, we're deceiving ourselves in that pride. But this is the fundamental structure of temptation, right? So humility comes in and takes away, of course, not every impetus towards pride within our sinful souls. But, you know, it's doing the work that that can be done to regenerate us so that we're free to see the world as it is. And when we see the world as it is and ourselves in the world, then we're like, ready to do good deeds that are actually good. And this is the task, right.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

On page three, he talks about humility drives Satan away and cherishes the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit within us. For that reason, all the saints, especially King of Saints and his blessed mother. So Christ and his mother have always esteemed the grace of humility above all other virtues. It's a beautiful way to put it.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

It's extraordinary. Yeah, it is. I mean, there is a kind of Reordering of the virtues that happens with the advent of Christ. For Aristotle, justice is the great virtue because it's the rectitude of the will. Right. This is a very interesting claim here about humility. And it's a common thing for theologians to say. Right. Because humility involves both a kind of openness to our own lowliness.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Our own abasement. Right. So that we're not. The will is not striving towards goods that are above us, but it also irreducibly involves seeing ourselves as we really are. Right. And this is why I'm suggesting the notice. Sincerity is helpful to us because I think one of the real problems, both in St. Francis de Sales time and in hours and dare I say, you know, in any human situation, is self deception. Right. And so the question is how. How do we. How do we see ourselves rightly seen? Cheddar without wax.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Okay. Oh, I was going to ask you what the. Yeah. The etymology of that, since. Yeah.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Without. Without wax, without a mask, without makeup. Right. How do we see ourselves rightly? And it's interesting that Desales says, well, we see ourselves rightly when we see that God has given us good things and that we are sinners.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Yeah, he does. He basically says that nothing puts us in our place better than to realize that our misdeeds, that we deserve God's judgment, but we also look at his mercy, that we can't complain about it. He has given us so much our life that there's nothing that we have of our own accord.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah. And that's right. And also, I think, you know, part of the threat here is that we don't. We're not properly grateful for the blessings that God has in fact given us. And we allow ourselves to be deceived and constantly desiring good things that we don't have and tell ourselves, well, if I had this, you know, if I had this job, or if I had, know, whatever it might be, then I would be to be able to do good works.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

The grass is always greener on the other side.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Right. And so this is why he wants to pull us back to what. What is our objective state in life. Right. What has God in His providence called you to today and in your life generally? Start there. See yourself as God sees you, that is, through the gifts that he's given you. And why did he give you those gifts? So that you can serve his kingdom. Right. And then there's that sincerity.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

One of the things he talks about is he moves from external humility to interior humility. But the exterior humility section is interesting because it almost looks, you know, he's talking about wearing fancy clothes, having a nice trim beard, you know, the feather in the hat.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

That line about Facebook likes is really striking.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Facebook likes? I don't know. Nothing new under the sun here. And when he talks about that, is this just a holdover from the age of chivalry and honor and knights, and he himself is from a noble family? How do we deal with some of the stuff he says in there?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, he's seen a lot of life by the time he's writing this, right. And he's already done his great visitation of his diocese. He spent about three years walking the several hundred parishes of his diocese, high mountainous territory. Some of these places hadn't seen a bishop for 20 years.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Wow.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Oh, sure. You know, and he's talking to very simple people, illiterate peasants and so forth. Right. No matter where you go, no matter where you look, people are all of us, myself, yourself included. Right. We all are disposed to try to make ourselves look good. Right, Right. Because we. We, you know, we're built with this square of sense, Right. We look out onto the world, and we receive from the world, and we were built for love. So we, you know, it's okay to want people to smile at you. It's okay to want people to affirm you and to think you're charming and.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Give you the Facebook like.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, they give you the Facebook like. Right. This is part of the inbuilt disposition of our communal nature. Right. But if it. If that disposition is allowed to get outside the bounds of reason, then it becomes folly, which is what he's describing in here. But those examples apply universally.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

It's true. We're posturing. We care about honor, we care about rank. We care about the nicest office in the building. These kinds of things that when you look at the scheme of eternity in God's perspective, they're petty, they're folly. And the image he uses from nature is the peacock who fluffs his feathers, and then he's got an ugly little body underneath that's really showing your true colors, in a sense, what he's saying.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that the point here about the exterior honors is that, I mean, first, right. If we're. If we're sincere, if we're honest with ourselves in the 21st century, we will recognize that we seek these things too. Right. We want to be admired for a nice car. Right. Or whatever it might be.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Well. And even the Danger for us who are watching form nows that are talking about these reading St. Francis de Sales, taking time out of our day to day pray to try to be a disciple of Christ. The danger can also become spiritual for us where we want people to think that we are a good and faithful disciple of Jesus, that we have more of our life together in a virtuous way than we actually do. And so it's a good examine for us of even in the, even those who are living with the Christian life, even if we don't care about the car, in a sense, we do care about how people consider us.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Well, that's exactly right. Yeah. And so I think that the point here about exterior humility is that we need to pair these disordered desires away before we can do the really hard.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Work, which is the inside job.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Which is the.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Yes, exactly, the inside job of our heart. So he moves here to interior humility. He said, I was just been talking about, we might have just called that worldly wisdom of before. Nothing so tends to humble us as we talked before. The mercy of God is a multitude of his gifts. And what humbles us is the justice of the multitude of our misdeeds. And then he, you know, gives us some scripture quotes and scripture examples, especially from our Blessed Mother to think about. But when we're looking at the internal humility, Any thoughts on that that you want to share with us?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah, I just think, you know, that, I mean, again, as we were discussing last time about reading oneself into the gospel, you know, we're all like Bartholomew, you know, we're just hanging out under a tree and Jesus walks by and offers us part of his life, offers us something we're really not worthy of, which is part of his cross. He invites us to walk with him up to Jerusalem, to walk with him up to Calvary. This is all his initiative.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

How do we. How do we put that inside of us? How do we allow that to take deep root within our hearts?

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

Yeah. Well, the psalm that you began with is a good one, Right. Just to remember that he's the Master. Right. I'm not actually making my life now. That's freeing, right? Because if I were, I'd be worried. I'm not making, you know, doing it well.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

Right.

[Dr. Christopher Bloom]

But it's also really good for humility, right. That the Lord knows what he is about. As Desales like to say in his letters over and over again, the Lord knows what he is about. Every hair on your head is numbered and so forth. And that means he's going to he's going to provide the occasions for good deeds and you don't need to worry about what they are.

[Dr. Ben Akers]

That is very freeing. And that's such a beautiful gift that the Lord gives us to once we hand ourselves over to him, that he will form us, that he will give us the he will give us opportunities to grow in the virtues that we need to grow in and give us the grace to grow in the virtues that we need to grow in and so thank you for joining me today. In this conversation that we're having on the introduction of Devout life, we talked about sincerity, the importance of sincerity, and the virtue of humility. Please join us for the fourth episode where we're going to be talking about the importance of bravery and as an essential characteristic in the life of a Christian. Thank you and God Bless.

[Podcast Host]

You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting formed.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustan Institute and Ignatius Press with award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustan institute. Please visit missioncircle.org.