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[00:01]
A
Hi, I'm James Prothero, Associate professor at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. We hope you've enjoyed listening to and learning from our professors on this and all our podcasts. The Augustine Institute Graduate School exists to make Christ and his church better known and loved through the exercise of academic study. With St. Augustine as our guide, we focus on the narrative of Scripture and the evangelization of the culture. Faculty and students alike immerse themselves in the rich sources of the Catholic faith, drawing upon sacred Scripture, the catechism of the Catholic Church, and the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church. We have 550 students and over a thousand alumni serving the church in parishes, dioceses, schools, the academy apostolates, the domestic church, and even the secular world. With master's degrees in Theology, past Pastoral Theology, Catholic Education, and Biblical Studies, our programs are for anyone looking to go deeper in their faith. Are you interested in studying theology with the professors of this podcast? Earn your degree online or on campus in St. Louis, Missouri. Apply now for the coming term of study. Learn more@ augustine.edu.
[01:15]
B
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.
[01:34]
C
Hello and welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their legacy for the church and for us. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Klein and I'm joined today by Dr. Christopher Bloom to talk about St. Jane Francis de Chantelle. Thanks for joining me, Dr. Bloom.
[01:49]
D
Oh, thank you, Dr. Klein.
[01:51]
C
Dr. Bloom is a longtime colleague, so I'm curious. I haven't seen him around a ton lately. What have you been up to in the graduate school in your classes?
[01:59]
D
Well, you know, I'm teaching off campus two days a week down at the seminary in town, which is why you're not seeing me so much teaching a logic class to 13 very fine seminarians. So that's been a great joy. And often when I drive in here in the autumn when we're making this recording, I take the occasion of parking at the top of the hill and walking down and seeing the lovely view over the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and then coming in the back door here by the chapel. And just the other day I came in right at the moment when our on campus students were praying morning prayer. And they were right at the beginning of the morning prayer, they were singing the hymn before Morning Prayer. And I didn't catch the words, but I could tell that the tune was the Kaiserlied, Franz Joseph Haydn's Austrian national anthem, which is a very beautiful tune. And so they had some sacred words that they were singing to that tune. And I thought, you know, the Lord is at work here. Right. There's something new that's happening with these residential students here on our campus. And they're creating something out of nothing with the help of God's grace, which is the way things are supposed to be.
[03:09]
C
Well, that was very picturesque. Autumn walk, Sacred music drifting in the wind. Perfect setting to talk about about our French saint today, Jane Francis de Chantelle, whose feast day is the 21st of August. A great friend of Francis de Sales. So why don't you tell us a little bit about this wonderful saint?
[03:29]
D
Yeah. So, you know, maybe the first thing to say about her is that she's the foundress of a religious order, the. The Order of the Visitation, which grew mightily even before her death, at the time of her death in 1641, or already over 80 convents of the Visitation Sisters. And there are still Visitation Sisters today. And some of our listeners may know of high schools named Visitation because the Visitation Sisters here in the United States have often been educators. When the order was founded by Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal, they were thinking of a couple of things. First, of a certain expression of the contemplative life, and then also of a certain kind of charitable work, not dissimilar to Our lady's charity, towards St Elizabeth in the mystery of the Visitation. Now, it didn't turn out that the church was interested in that second charism. And so the Visitation was mainly a cloistered convent of contemplatives as it was founded, and then in subsequent centuries has adopted apostolic works in an outward facing way. But that's the first thing to say about her, is that she's a contemplative nun of great distinction, who together with her friend and spiritual director, Francis de Stales, made sort of newly available the riches of the contemplative life, that great adventure of grace, of women devoting themselves entirely to the love of God in a life of ordered prayer in community for many, many more women than could have experienced that great joy without this new foundation.
[05:24]
C
How did she come to know Frances de Sales and to become interested in the religious life and founding an order?
[05:30]
D
Yeah. So the story of her life is quite dramatic. She was the second daughter of a reasonably high ranking nobleman from Burgundy. Her father was a magistrate or a judge, and as was common with the daughter of a family like that, she had an arranged marriage with a nobleman, Christophe de Rabutin, le Baron de Chantal.
[05:55]
C
There you go.
[05:56]
D
Yeah, good name. That was the fellow. And he was a dashing chevalier, a preux chevalier, who became friendly with Henry iv, King of France. And so it was often away from home, and she took care of the household there in Burgundy and their growing family of children. They had six children born. Four survived infancy and three survived to adulthood. And then when her husband stepped down from his military role in 1601 and came home to be sort of resident landlord as part of the landed gentry, he very shortly thereafter was killed in a hunting accident. Really extraordinary story. He and his best friend were out riding with their guns in search of game, and somehow the horse's motion jolted his friend's gun into firing, and it. And it wounded him mortally. Died nine days later, very holy death, having forgiven his friend and counseled his wife to forgive his friend and so forth. And she eventually did, though it was hard for her. So she was a widow at the tender age of 29, and plunged herself into both the cares of the estate and of her young family, but also the spiritual life. She was something of a mystic even at that point as a young widow, and really felt a call to a deep union with God and was gifted with a vision of a priest who she somehow heard interiorly from God that this man would be the director of her conscience. Okay. And at the very same time, hundreds of miles away, Francis de Sales had a vision. He often had visions. It wasn't such a strange thing for him. He had a vision of a woman wearing mourning cloth. Right. A widow. And he somehow received the intimation that this woman with him would found a new religious order. So they met in two years later, in 1604, and were able to recognize one another from the visions. And then their relationship as spiritual director and directee began shortly thereafter.
[08:20]
C
And so it is for her that he wrote Introduction to the Devout Life.
[08:24]
D
Oh, no, it's not. Yeah, that's, in a sense, mistake, to be sure. And he certainly could have. The woman for whom he wrote the introduction about life very similar to Jeanne de Chantal, a noblewoman married to a husband who was often at court and far away from home. But in this case, she did not lose her husband. So, yes, that young woman was very similar to Jeanne de Chantal. I've forgotten her name. She's not terribly famous in her own right.
[08:54]
C
What a beautiful story about the visions. You know, we often think about the Lord's timing to have a vision of such confidence and wait two years to actually meet the person about whom the vision was. Is sort of interesting in and of itself. Now, has she left us any writings of her own?
[09:14]
D
You know, there's letters and there's talks that she gave to the Visitation sisters and so forth, but she was mainly busy with administrative details. She was exceptionally gifted as an administrator. I mean, it's hard to imagine that in the 30 years between the foundation of the visitation, call it 1610 and her death in 1641, that she presided over the founding of over 80 convents with all that that entails. So, yeah, she's mostly devoted to administrative work, but she is a faithful interpreter of the Spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, and I think that's how she's normally thought of.
[09:52]
C
And is there something so kind of for her in terms of her legacy that she left with the Visitation order? Is there a particular opportunity, you mentioned that this offered an opportunity to women that maybe was hitherto lacking. What was sort of the charism or what drew women to her religious order?
[10:11]
D
No, that's a great question. And of course there's going to be a mystery at the heart of that answer with respect to individual women. But, you know, one way to think about it here is that, you know, circa 1600, female monastic life is over a thousand years old in Western Europe. Right. So there's in some of these monasteries, some of These convents are 6 and 800 years old and often very, very wealthy. And so there's a whole set of convents that one can only gain admission to with a dowry if one belongs to a certain family and so forth. Right. It's also an intensely local culture. Right. One doesn't join a religious order and move 800 miles away. Exactly. It tends to be, you join something where you live, people aren't moving around on airplanes the way that we are. So there's a whole set of convents that for many women, it's sort of closed off. And then there's new forms of religious life or renewed older forms of religious life coming out of the Catholic Reformation of the Council of Trent period. Right. So mid 16th century. So by way of new orders, the Ursulines, by way of reformed orders, the Discalcarmelites, associated with Tires of Avila and so forth. And there are others. But these orders of women were very much associated with bodily austerity. Right. You know, going around without shoes on in buildings that didn't have modern H VAC systems. Right. So, you know, and a lot of fasting and a lot of vigils of prayer and this sort of thing. And so the result of this was twofold. On the one hand, the life was so hard that only healthy women were in, you know, invited to join, and the culture was so much at variance with the. With the world that older women weren't really welcome. Right. I mean, you know, this is at a time when, you know, women are getting married when they're 15 or 16 years old, you know, that's very common. And to be a spinster in one's mid-20s or late 20s at that time is to be like one foot in the grave from the perspective of culture.
[12:30]
C
Yeah.
[12:30]
D
You know, so. So older. Older women, by which I would mean, like 24, you know, just couldn't get admission to a convent. And so what Desales and Jeanne Chantal wanted to do is to offer the prospect of religious life to women who either were not wealthy with a dowry or did not enjoy perfectly good health, or were a little bit older.
[12:54]
C
Right.
[12:54]
D
And that was kind of revolutionary.
[12:56]
C
Well, it's really interesting. Before you answered the question, I thought to myself, I bet you they admitted older women because there's many periods in the history of the church where religious life will become open to a class of people who weren't sort of able to previously. Often people like widowers, people who are older, later in life, vocations, and these orders explode like the Cistercians. And so I was thinking before you answered, I bet you that they were a little more capacious in who they allot. So if anyone out there is listening and you want to renew religious life, I think that this is the case today too, when forms of religious life are opened up to different kinds of people, they often have a great springtime.
[13:39]
D
They do. Now, Desales, as the co founder of this order, he was not a naive man when it came to this sort of thing. And so in the constitutions of the order are written some very, you know, what we might say are sort of stern things about how the women, they might be older or they might have health problems or they might be poor or something, but they need to be, as we would say, to speak in a 21st century idiom, psychologically whole. They need to be mature Christians who are ready to subordinate their likes and dislikes and their will to the communal
[14:22]
C
life, which of course, is always the challenge for religious orders of people with various backgrounds and people who've maybe lived a life in the world and then had a spouse pass away like Jane Francis did. That can be even more difficult. It's already difficult, but it can be more difficult when you're sort of Habituated to other forms of life.
[14:40]
D
Exactly. Yeah.
[14:41]
C
But it's a beautiful thing.
[14:42]
D
It is a beautiful thing. It's an extraordinary thing. And it did explode. There was a great demand. Bishops, you know, were saying, oh, come found one here, and this sort of thing.
[14:51]
C
Yeah. So what do you think maybe our listeners can take away from this saint for sort of their everyday life or their life of prayer?
[15:01]
D
Yeah. Well, you know, a couple thoughts here. One, all the saints teach us, but Jeanne de Chantal teaches us in a sort of striking way that the importance of waiting upon the Lord, waiting upon God's providence. Right. I mean, here she is in a pretty tough family situation. She's, you know, been married into her husband's family. Her husband's dead, but her father in law is still alive. And her father in law was really kind of a cad. And it was. She had to play that relationship game in order to protect her own children, because whatever they were going to inherit, they were going to inherit from the father in law, according to the, you know, the way the property was all tied up there. So that she was, she was in a tough spot and experienced a lot of internal darkness and a lot of doubt. And in that time of trial and waiting, the Lord came and found her and gave her hope. And then eventually, you know, in the fullness as his plan matured, gave her the path to walk, and then the last 30 years of her life, she's a happy Mother Superior, as it were.
[16:29]
C
So if you're in doubt and Trouble, just wait two years and God might send you a Francis DeSales. You never know.
[16:36]
D
You never know. Something like that, you know. And then another thought is that this is one of any number of saints who show us how fruitful Christian friendship is for the life of the church. And there are lots of saints like this. Your dear St. Augustine is a great doctor of friendship, both with his mother Monica, but also with Alypius and Nebridius and some of the others and so on. John Henry Newman, with whom I spend a lot of time, is another person, another saint who shows us the importance of friendship. But this is a very privileged friendship. It's a deep spiritual kinship. It's a beautiful example of a woman and a man having a deep Christian friendship that's entirely pure and entirely directed towards God's ends.
[17:35]
C
Right.
[17:36]
D
Which is, of course, a very rare and very difficult thing. Right. It's so difficult that it's a sort of, you know, don't try this at home.
[17:43]
C
Yeah. Unless God sends you a vision, you might want to Think twice.
[17:49]
D
You might want to just, you know, not make this your plan. Right. But it's good to see that in God's providence, these kinds of friendships can exist. And, you know, it's not a friendship of equals. Exactly. Right. One is spiritual director, the other is directee, and there's a real, you know, one is bishop, the other is, in the first place, founder of a pious society of diocesan right entirely under the bishop's authority until it subsequently the visitation becomes, you know, canonically approved by the Vatican. But, you know, so it's not a friendship of equals. Exactly. But on the spiritual plane, it was more of a friendship of equals. And that's very beautiful to see. And, of course, the result, you know, is manifest. You know, something to think of in those terms there. Francis de Sales himself was very much devoted to the priests of his diocese, and he was bishop for 20 years, and, believe it or not, ordained 800 men to the priesthood, which is just. It's really hard to wrap one's mind around a number that's a big family to take care of. It's a really big family. Right. And one of his personal rules is that his door was always his door and his dinner table were always open to any priest who ever would show up. So this is a daily occurrence at the Episcopal palace, modest though it was there in anece. And so he had a lot on his hands. And then for him also to have in view the good of the spiritual and temporal good of young Catholic women who desire to serve the Lord in religious life and haven't found the way to do that. And his creativity in coming up with this solution. Right. Obviously prompted by the Holy Spirit and under God's providence, but nevertheless, you know, he's a full partner here. And her generosity in devoting herself to this good work, it's just a beautiful, concrete example of how the love of God spills over into the love of neighbor.
[20:08]
C
Also something I've seen again and again during these saints podcasts and reading about the lives of the saints. You'd think that the saints would kind of like, fill up their cup, you know, like, I've done enough. But it almost. It's the opposite. The saints become so aware of the great gifts that God wants to give and his generosity that they often continue to found new orders or to find God's grace in really unexpected places.
[20:38]
D
Yes. Amen to that.
[20:40]
C
I see you have a book open. Did you have any last little thing you want to read, or you just had her letters open?
[20:45]
D
Oh, actually, this is a life of St. Francis de Sales. And these are the pages that talks about the spirit of the visitation. And there's some beautiful material here, some quotations from the constitutions of the order. What he wrote with her help and what the two of them promulgated is that this congregation is founded spiritually on Mount Calvary for the service of Jesus Christ, crucified in the imitation of whom all of the sisters ought to crucify their senses, their imaginations, their passions, their inclinations for the love of their heavenly Father. Right. So on the one hand, what the author here, Father Lajeunie, is pointing out is, you know, on the one hand, here's an order of women known to be sort of merciful in terms of who's allowed to join it. Right. And, you know, dreamed up by a man who's known as this sort of gentle saint. Right. But at the. At the heart of the spirituality is an invitation to contemplate and to imitate the crucified Christ. So it's really the fullness of the gospel here.
[22:08]
C
Well, this has been wonderful. I've been so happy to learn about this beautiful saint. So thank you for joining me and sharing about St. Jane Francis de Chantal.
[22:16]
D
You're very welcome. Thank you, Liz.
[22:18]
C
St. Jane, pray for us.
[22:22]
B
Thank you for being a dedicated listener to the Catholic Saints podcast. Your support truly uplifts us. For those seeking additional thought provoking content, go to formed.org It's a platform brimming with resources, including insightful videos that align seamlessly with our podcast's themes. If you're finding value in our podcast, please consider taking a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback serves as a cornerstone for our growth and outreach.

Summary6 min read

Catholic Saints Podcast – St. Jane Frances de Chantal

Podcast: Catholic Saints
Produced by: Augustine Institute
Episode Air Date: August 12, 2026
Guests:

Dr. Elizabeth Klein (host)
Dr. Christopher Bloom (guest)

Episode Overview

This episode explores the life and legacy of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, a remarkable French saint and the foundress of the Order of the Visitation. Through engaging conversation, Dr. Elizabeth Klein and Dr. Christopher Bloom delve into the grace, trials, and spiritual friendships that marked Jane’s life, highlighting her revolutionary contributions to religious life for women, her mystical experiences, and her enduring relevance for Catholics today.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Context

Dr. Bloom shares a picturesque account of autumn on campus and a moment of hearing sacred music at morning prayer, accentuating the role of beauty and community in spiritual formation.
- "The Lord is at work here. Right. There's something new that's happening with these residential students here on our campus. And they're creating something out of nothing with the help of God's grace, which is the way things are supposed to be." (02:14)

2. Who Was St. Jane Frances de Chantal?

Foundress of the Order of the Visitation (03:28):
- By her death (1641), over 80 convents were established.
- The order was initially contemplative, inspired by Our Lady’s Visitation to Elizabeth, and later adopted apostolic works.
- Legacy continues today, notably through educational institutions founded by Visitation Sisters.
Role in Expanding Religious Life for Women:
- Jane and Francis de Sales sought to make contemplative religious life accessible not only to the young and healthy or those with wealthy dowries.

3. Jane’s Early Life and Spiritual Journey

Noble Upbringing and Widowhood (05:30):
- Born into a noble family; married Christophe de Rabutin (Baron of Chantal).
- Managed the estate and family after her husband's death in a tragic hunting accident.
- Deepened her mystical and spiritual life as a young widow.
- Experienced a vision revealing she would find a spiritual director—this prefigured her meeting with St. Francis de Sales.

Memorable Quote

"She was a widow at the tender age of 29, and plunged herself into both the cares of the estate and of her young family, but also the spiritual life... really felt a call to a deep union with God and was gifted with a vision of a priest who she somehow heard interiorly from God that this man would be the director of her conscience."
(06:25, Dr. Bloom)

4. Mystical Encounters & Spiritual Friendship with St. Francis de Sales

Mutual Visions Predicting Their Meeting (07:30):
- Both Jane and Francis experienced visions; met in 1604 and immediately recognized their spiritual bond.
- This friendship was marked by spiritual kinship and deep trust.

Notable Moment

"Now, has she left us any writings of her own?"
“There's letters and there's talks that she gave... but she was mainly busy with administrative details. She was exceptionally gifted as an administrator... she is a faithful interpreter of the Spirituality of St. Francis de Sales.”
(09:13, Dr. Bloom)

5. The Visitation Order’s Revolutionary Charism

Inclusivity and Opportunity (10:10):
- Convents prior to the Visitation often excluded women without dowries, of poor health, or those considered “older” (as young as mid-20s).
- Jane and Francis opened religious life to widows, women in poor health, or "older" women—a significant innovation post-Council of Trent era.

Memorable Quote

“Older women, by which I would mean, like 24, you know, just couldn't get admission to a convent. And so what De Sales and Jeanne Chantal wanted to do is to offer the prospect of religious life to women who either were not wealthy with a dowry or did not enjoy perfectly good health, or were a little bit older... That was kind of revolutionary.”
(12:54, Dr. Bloom)

6. Challenges of Integrating Diverse Women

Importance of Psychological Wholeness (13:38):
- While inclusivity was key, the order required entrants to be emotionally and spiritually mature.
- Adaptation to communal life was recognized as especially challenging for widows or late vocations.

7. Providential Waiting and Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Lessons from Jane’s Trials (15:00):
- Jane’s life exemplifies trust in God’s providence through difficult and uncertain times.
- Her endurance amid family and legal obstacles illustrates patient faith.

Notable Quote

“All the saints teach us, but Jeanne de Chantal teaches us in a sort of striking way that the importance of waiting upon the Lord, waiting upon God's providence.”
(15:00, Dr. Bloom)

8. The Power and Limits of Spiritual Friendship

Jane and Francis: Model of Christian Friendship (16:29):
- Their relationship—both deep and pure—shows the fruitfulness of Christian friendship and spiritual collaboration.
- The friendship was transformative, not merely for themselves, but for countless others through the order they founded.

Memorable Exchange

"It's a beautiful example of a woman and a man having a deep Christian friendship that's entirely pure and entirely directed towards God's ends."
(17:35, Dr. Bloom)
"Unless God sends you a vision, you might want to Think twice."
(17:42, Dr. Klein)

9. Francis de Sales’ Creative Pastoral Vision

Bishop, Founder, Friend (18:45):
- Francis’ openness and pastoral creativity were essential to the founding and shaping of the Visitation.
- Ordained 800 priests; saw the need for women's religious life to evolve.

10. The Spiritual Heart of the Visitation

Radical Mercy and Fullness of the Gospel (20:44):
- The order was “merciful” in admissions but uncompromising in calling members to imitate Christ crucified.
- Dr. Bloom reads from the Visitation constitutions:
  
  "This congregation is founded spiritually on Mount Calvary for the service of Jesus Christ, crucified in the imitation of whom all of the sisters ought to crucify their senses, their imaginations, their passions, their inclinations for the love of their heavenly Father."
  (21:35, Dr. Bloom quoting Father Lajeunie)

11. Final Reflections and Takeaways

Saints’ Overflowing Generosity (20:08):
- Saints are models of unending generosity. Their openness allows God’s grace to inspire new beginnings, even when they’ve already achieved much.
Jane’s Relevance Today:
- Jane’s story offers hope for those experiencing loss, uncertainty, or delayed vocations.
- Her legacy is encouragement to create inclusive spaces for spiritual growth, especially for those historically overlooked.

Notable Quotes

“The saints become so aware of the great gifts that God wants to give and his generosity that they often continue to found new orders or to find God's grace in really unexpected places.” — Dr. Klein (20:08)
“In God's providence, these kinds of friendships can exist... it's good to see that in God's providence, these kinds of friendships can exist.” — Dr. Bloom (17:48)

Important Timestamps

03:28 — Jane’s founding of the Visitation Order
05:30–08:20 — Jane’s noble family, widowhood, and mystical visions
10:10–12:56 — The inclusive charism of the Visitation
13:38 — Guarding maturity in new entrants
15:00 — Lessons in patient faith from Jane’s trials
17:35 — The unique friendship between Jane and Francis
21:35 — Foundational spirit of the Visitation Order

Final Blessing

"St. Jane, pray for us." (22:18, Dr. Klein)

A rich and affecting portrait of St. Jane Frances de Chantal emerges in this episode: a woman of faith who transformed loss into spiritual flourishing, who—together with St. Francis de Sales—reimagined access to religious life and modeled creative fidelity to God’s call.

Loading summary

Transcript44 lines

[00:01]
A
Hi, I'm James Prothero, Associate professor at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. We hope you've enjoyed listening to and learning from our professors on this and all our podcasts. The Augustine Institute Graduate School exists to make Christ and his church better known and loved through the exercise of academic study. With St. Augustine as our guide, we focus on the narrative of Scripture and the evangelization of the culture. Faculty and students alike immerse themselves in the rich sources of the Catholic faith, drawing upon sacred Scripture, the catechism of the Catholic Church, and the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church. We have 550 students and over a thousand alumni serving the church in parishes, dioceses, schools, the academy apostolates, the domestic church, and even the secular world. With master's degrees in Theology, past Pastoral Theology, Catholic Education, and Biblical Studies, our programs are for anyone looking to go deeper in their faith. Are you interested in studying theology with the professors of this podcast? Earn your degree online or on campus in St. Louis, Missouri. Apply now for the coming term of study. Learn more@ augustine.edu.
[01:15]
B
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.
[01:34]
C
Hello and welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their legacy for the church and for us. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Klein and I'm joined today by Dr. Christopher Bloom to talk about St. Jane Francis de Chantelle. Thanks for joining me, Dr. Bloom.
[01:49]
D
Oh, thank you, Dr. Klein.
[01:51]
C
Dr. Bloom is a longtime colleague, so I'm curious. I haven't seen him around a ton lately. What have you been up to in the graduate school in your classes?
[01:59]
D
Well, you know, I'm teaching off campus two days a week down at the seminary in town, which is why you're not seeing me so much teaching a logic class to 13 very fine seminarians. So that's been a great joy. And often when I drive in here in the autumn when we're making this recording, I take the occasion of parking at the top of the hill and walking down and seeing the lovely view over the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and then coming in the back door here by the chapel. And just the other day I came in right at the moment when our on campus students were praying morning prayer. And they were right at the beginning of the morning prayer, they were singing the hymn before Morning Prayer. And I didn't catch the words, but I could tell that the tune was the Kaiserlied, Franz Joseph Haydn's Austrian national anthem, which is a very beautiful tune. And so they had some sacred words that they were singing to that tune. And I thought, you know, the Lord is at work here. Right. There's something new that's happening with these residential students here on our campus. And they're creating something out of nothing with the help of God's grace, which is the way things are supposed to be.
[03:09]
C
Well, that was very picturesque. Autumn walk, Sacred music drifting in the wind. Perfect setting to talk about about our French saint today, Jane Francis de Chantelle, whose feast day is the 21st of August. A great friend of Francis de Sales. So why don't you tell us a little bit about this wonderful saint?
[03:29]
D
Yeah. So, you know, maybe the first thing to say about her is that she's the foundress of a religious order, the. The Order of the Visitation, which grew mightily even before her death, at the time of her death in 1641, or already over 80 convents of the Visitation Sisters. And there are still Visitation Sisters today. And some of our listeners may know of high schools named Visitation because the Visitation Sisters here in the United States have often been educators. When the order was founded by Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal, they were thinking of a couple of things. First, of a certain expression of the contemplative life, and then also of a certain kind of charitable work, not dissimilar to Our lady's charity, towards St Elizabeth in the mystery of the Visitation. Now, it didn't turn out that the church was interested in that second charism. And so the Visitation was mainly a cloistered convent of contemplatives as it was founded, and then in subsequent centuries has adopted apostolic works in an outward facing way. But that's the first thing to say about her, is that she's a contemplative nun of great distinction, who together with her friend and spiritual director, Francis de Stales, made sort of newly available the riches of the contemplative life, that great adventure of grace, of women devoting themselves entirely to the love of God in a life of ordered prayer in community for many, many more women than could have experienced that great joy without this new foundation.
[05:24]
C
How did she come to know Frances de Sales and to become interested in the religious life and founding an order?
[05:30]
D
Yeah. So the story of her life is quite dramatic. She was the second daughter of a reasonably high ranking nobleman from Burgundy. Her father was a magistrate or a judge, and as was common with the daughter of a family like that, she had an arranged marriage with a nobleman, Christophe de Rabutin, le Baron de Chantal.
[05:55]
C
There you go.
[05:56]
D
Yeah, good name. That was the fellow. And he was a dashing chevalier, a preux chevalier, who became friendly with Henry iv, King of France. And so it was often away from home, and she took care of the household there in Burgundy and their growing family of children. They had six children born. Four survived infancy and three survived to adulthood. And then when her husband stepped down from his military role in 1601 and came home to be sort of resident landlord as part of the landed gentry, he very shortly thereafter was killed in a hunting accident. Really extraordinary story. He and his best friend were out riding with their guns in search of game, and somehow the horse's motion jolted his friend's gun into firing, and it. And it wounded him mortally. Died nine days later, very holy death, having forgiven his friend and counseled his wife to forgive his friend and so forth. And she eventually did, though it was hard for her. So she was a widow at the tender age of 29, and plunged herself into both the cares of the estate and of her young family, but also the spiritual life. She was something of a mystic even at that point as a young widow, and really felt a call to a deep union with God and was gifted with a vision of a priest who she somehow heard interiorly from God that this man would be the director of her conscience. Okay. And at the very same time, hundreds of miles away, Francis de Sales had a vision. He often had visions. It wasn't such a strange thing for him. He had a vision of a woman wearing mourning cloth. Right. A widow. And he somehow received the intimation that this woman with him would found a new religious order. So they met in two years later, in 1604, and were able to recognize one another from the visions. And then their relationship as spiritual director and directee began shortly thereafter.
[08:20]
C
And so it is for her that he wrote Introduction to the Devout Life.
[08:24]
D
Oh, no, it's not. Yeah, that's, in a sense, mistake, to be sure. And he certainly could have. The woman for whom he wrote the introduction about life very similar to Jeanne de Chantal, a noblewoman married to a husband who was often at court and far away from home. But in this case, she did not lose her husband. So, yes, that young woman was very similar to Jeanne de Chantal. I've forgotten her name. She's not terribly famous in her own right.
[08:54]
C
What a beautiful story about the visions. You know, we often think about the Lord's timing to have a vision of such confidence and wait two years to actually meet the person about whom the vision was. Is sort of interesting in and of itself. Now, has she left us any writings of her own?
[09:14]
D
You know, there's letters and there's talks that she gave to the Visitation sisters and so forth, but she was mainly busy with administrative details. She was exceptionally gifted as an administrator. I mean, it's hard to imagine that in the 30 years between the foundation of the visitation, call it 1610 and her death in 1641, that she presided over the founding of over 80 convents with all that that entails. So, yeah, she's mostly devoted to administrative work, but she is a faithful interpreter of the Spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, and I think that's how she's normally thought of.
[09:52]
C
And is there something so kind of for her in terms of her legacy that she left with the Visitation order? Is there a particular opportunity, you mentioned that this offered an opportunity to women that maybe was hitherto lacking. What was sort of the charism or what drew women to her religious order?
[10:11]
D
No, that's a great question. And of course there's going to be a mystery at the heart of that answer with respect to individual women. But, you know, one way to think about it here is that, you know, circa 1600, female monastic life is over a thousand years old in Western Europe. Right. So there's in some of these monasteries, some of These convents are 6 and 800 years old and often very, very wealthy. And so there's a whole set of convents that one can only gain admission to with a dowry if one belongs to a certain family and so forth. Right. It's also an intensely local culture. Right. One doesn't join a religious order and move 800 miles away. Exactly. It tends to be, you join something where you live, people aren't moving around on airplanes the way that we are. So there's a whole set of convents that for many women, it's sort of closed off. And then there's new forms of religious life or renewed older forms of religious life coming out of the Catholic Reformation of the Council of Trent period. Right. So mid 16th century. So by way of new orders, the Ursulines, by way of reformed orders, the Discalcarmelites, associated with Tires of Avila and so forth. And there are others. But these orders of women were very much associated with bodily austerity. Right. You know, going around without shoes on in buildings that didn't have modern H VAC systems. Right. So, you know, and a lot of fasting and a lot of vigils of prayer and this sort of thing. And so the result of this was twofold. On the one hand, the life was so hard that only healthy women were in, you know, invited to join, and the culture was so much at variance with the. With the world that older women weren't really welcome. Right. I mean, you know, this is at a time when, you know, women are getting married when they're 15 or 16 years old, you know, that's very common. And to be a spinster in one's mid-20s or late 20s at that time is to be like one foot in the grave from the perspective of culture.
[12:30]
C
Yeah.
[12:30]
D
You know, so. So older. Older women, by which I would mean, like 24, you know, just couldn't get admission to a convent. And so what Desales and Jeanne Chantal wanted to do is to offer the prospect of religious life to women who either were not wealthy with a dowry or did not enjoy perfectly good health, or were a little bit older.
[12:54]
C
Right.
[12:54]
D
And that was kind of revolutionary.
[12:56]
C
Well, it's really interesting. Before you answered the question, I thought to myself, I bet you they admitted older women because there's many periods in the history of the church where religious life will become open to a class of people who weren't sort of able to previously. Often people like widowers, people who are older, later in life, vocations, and these orders explode like the Cistercians. And so I was thinking before you answered, I bet you that they were a little more capacious in who they allot. So if anyone out there is listening and you want to renew religious life, I think that this is the case today too, when forms of religious life are opened up to different kinds of people, they often have a great springtime.
[13:39]
D
They do. Now, Desales, as the co founder of this order, he was not a naive man when it came to this sort of thing. And so in the constitutions of the order are written some very, you know, what we might say are sort of stern things about how the women, they might be older or they might have health problems or they might be poor or something, but they need to be, as we would say, to speak in a 21st century idiom, psychologically whole. They need to be mature Christians who are ready to subordinate their likes and dislikes and their will to the communal
[14:22]
C
life, which of course, is always the challenge for religious orders of people with various backgrounds and people who've maybe lived a life in the world and then had a spouse pass away like Jane Francis did. That can be even more difficult. It's already difficult, but it can be more difficult when you're sort of Habituated to other forms of life.
[14:40]
D
Exactly. Yeah.
[14:41]
C
But it's a beautiful thing.
[14:42]
D
It is a beautiful thing. It's an extraordinary thing. And it did explode. There was a great demand. Bishops, you know, were saying, oh, come found one here, and this sort of thing.
[14:51]
C
Yeah. So what do you think maybe our listeners can take away from this saint for sort of their everyday life or their life of prayer?
[15:01]
D
Yeah. Well, you know, a couple thoughts here. One, all the saints teach us, but Jeanne de Chantal teaches us in a sort of striking way that the importance of waiting upon the Lord, waiting upon God's providence. Right. I mean, here she is in a pretty tough family situation. She's, you know, been married into her husband's family. Her husband's dead, but her father in law is still alive. And her father in law was really kind of a cad. And it was. She had to play that relationship game in order to protect her own children, because whatever they were going to inherit, they were going to inherit from the father in law, according to the, you know, the way the property was all tied up there. So that she was, she was in a tough spot and experienced a lot of internal darkness and a lot of doubt. And in that time of trial and waiting, the Lord came and found her and gave her hope. And then eventually, you know, in the fullness as his plan matured, gave her the path to walk, and then the last 30 years of her life, she's a happy Mother Superior, as it were.
[16:29]
C
So if you're in doubt and Trouble, just wait two years and God might send you a Francis DeSales. You never know.
[16:36]
D
You never know. Something like that, you know. And then another thought is that this is one of any number of saints who show us how fruitful Christian friendship is for the life of the church. And there are lots of saints like this. Your dear St. Augustine is a great doctor of friendship, both with his mother Monica, but also with Alypius and Nebridius and some of the others and so on. John Henry Newman, with whom I spend a lot of time, is another person, another saint who shows us the importance of friendship. But this is a very privileged friendship. It's a deep spiritual kinship. It's a beautiful example of a woman and a man having a deep Christian friendship that's entirely pure and entirely directed towards God's ends.
[17:35]
C
Right.
[17:36]
D
Which is, of course, a very rare and very difficult thing. Right. It's so difficult that it's a sort of, you know, don't try this at home.
[17:43]
C
Yeah. Unless God sends you a vision, you might want to Think twice.
[17:49]
D
You might want to just, you know, not make this your plan. Right. But it's good to see that in God's providence, these kinds of friendships can exist. And, you know, it's not a friendship of equals. Exactly. Right. One is spiritual director, the other is directee, and there's a real, you know, one is bishop, the other is, in the first place, founder of a pious society of diocesan right entirely under the bishop's authority until it subsequently the visitation becomes, you know, canonically approved by the Vatican. But, you know, so it's not a friendship of equals. Exactly. But on the spiritual plane, it was more of a friendship of equals. And that's very beautiful to see. And, of course, the result, you know, is manifest. You know, something to think of in those terms there. Francis de Sales himself was very much devoted to the priests of his diocese, and he was bishop for 20 years, and, believe it or not, ordained 800 men to the priesthood, which is just. It's really hard to wrap one's mind around a number that's a big family to take care of. It's a really big family. Right. And one of his personal rules is that his door was always his door and his dinner table were always open to any priest who ever would show up. So this is a daily occurrence at the Episcopal palace, modest though it was there in anece. And so he had a lot on his hands. And then for him also to have in view the good of the spiritual and temporal good of young Catholic women who desire to serve the Lord in religious life and haven't found the way to do that. And his creativity in coming up with this solution. Right. Obviously prompted by the Holy Spirit and under God's providence, but nevertheless, you know, he's a full partner here. And her generosity in devoting herself to this good work, it's just a beautiful, concrete example of how the love of God spills over into the love of neighbor.
[20:08]
C
Also something I've seen again and again during these saints podcasts and reading about the lives of the saints. You'd think that the saints would kind of like, fill up their cup, you know, like, I've done enough. But it almost. It's the opposite. The saints become so aware of the great gifts that God wants to give and his generosity that they often continue to found new orders or to find God's grace in really unexpected places.
[20:38]
D
Yes. Amen to that.
[20:40]
C
I see you have a book open. Did you have any last little thing you want to read, or you just had her letters open?
[20:45]
D
Oh, actually, this is a life of St. Francis de Sales. And these are the pages that talks about the spirit of the visitation. And there's some beautiful material here, some quotations from the constitutions of the order. What he wrote with her help and what the two of them promulgated is that this congregation is founded spiritually on Mount Calvary for the service of Jesus Christ, crucified in the imitation of whom all of the sisters ought to crucify their senses, their imaginations, their passions, their inclinations for the love of their heavenly Father. Right. So on the one hand, what the author here, Father Lajeunie, is pointing out is, you know, on the one hand, here's an order of women known to be sort of merciful in terms of who's allowed to join it. Right. And, you know, dreamed up by a man who's known as this sort of gentle saint. Right. But at the. At the heart of the spirituality is an invitation to contemplate and to imitate the crucified Christ. So it's really the fullness of the gospel here.
[22:08]
C
Well, this has been wonderful. I've been so happy to learn about this beautiful saint. So thank you for joining me and sharing about St. Jane Francis de Chantal.
[22:16]
D
You're very welcome. Thank you, Liz.
[22:18]
C
St. Jane, pray for us.
[22:22]
B
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