_Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!_ Lord, increase the Faith in us!
And how is this increase of Faith to be brought about? In the same way,
assuredly, as the strength of the palm tree grows with the load it has to
bear, or as the vine profits by being pruned.
A stoic philosopher remarked very truly that virtue languishes when it has
nothing to overcome. What does a man know until he is tempted?
Our Blessed Father[1] when visiting the bailiwick of Gex, which adjoins
the city of Geneva, in order to re-establish the Catholic religion in some
parishes, declared that his Faith gained new vigour through his intercourse
with the heretics of those parts, who were sitting in darkness and in the
shadow of death.
He expresses his feelings on this subject in one of his letters: "Alas! in
this place I see poor wandering sheep all around me; I approach them and
marvel at their evident and palpable blindness. O my God! the beauty of
our holy Faith then appears by comparison so entrancing that I would die
for love of it, and I feel that I ought to lock up the precious gift which
God has given me in the innermost recesses of a heart all perfumed with
devotion. My dearest daughter, I thank the sovereign Light which shed
its rays so mercifully into this heart of mine, that the more I go among
those who are deprived of Faith, the more clearly and vividly I see its
magnificence and its inexpressible, yet most desirable, sweetness."[2]
In order to make great progress in the spirit of Faith, which is that of
Christian perfection, Blessed Francis was not satisfied with simple assent
to all those truths which are divinely revealed, or with submission to the
will of God as taught in them, he wanted more than this. It was his desire
that we should be actuated in all our dealings by the spirit of Faith, as
far at least as that is possible, so as to arrive at last at that summit
of perfect charity which the Apostle calls the more excellent way, and of
which he says that _he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit_.
[Footnote 1: St. Francis de Sales was spoken of as _Our Blessed Father_,
not only by the Visitation Nuns, but in the whole neighbourhood of Annecy.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. _The Depositions of St. Chantal_. Point 24th.]