CHAPTER 32 - FRANCE
Mother de Chantal founded Visitation monasteries throughout Europe and eventually, through death, had time for abundant prayer in the presence of the God she longed to see in life. Most of her prayer on earth was filled with darkness and struggle. It was more than enough for her to know, however, that she was doing God's will as best she understood it.
As the centuries passed, the religious superior of a French Visitation monastery founded an order of Sisters and, about two years later, a related community of priests and Religious Brothers who lived by the spirit of the Visitation and the Salesian charism. These dedicated women and men were destined to become social service workers, educators, missionaries, clergy, and pastoral ministers of every sort.
Mother Mary de Sales Chappuis, VHM, encouraged the monastery’s chaplain, Father Louis Brisson, to found the Oblates of St Francis de Sales. Leonie Aviat, later to become Mother Aviat, and eventually St. Leonie, was the first Oblate Sister.
The men’s branch of the Oblates taught Brother Francis in high school. He entered the community at seventeen years of age after graduating high school, and stayed with them for almost thirty years of happy, fruitful life and ministry. His desire to become a monk in the Salesian tradition was fulfilled after Vatican Council II made changes in canon law which allowed him to pursue life as a solitary monk within the small community of members that eventually sprung up around him. It is interesting to note that Pope John XXIII, who convened this council of Church renewal, was devoted to the teachings of St. Francis de Sales as found in his Introduction to a Devout Life.
Brother Francis’ superior general gave him permission to live this way and he was welcomed by a local bishop in Pennsylvania. It was a unique vocation, not always understood by everyone, but then most unique things are by their very nature that way.
Mother de Chantal’s influence had spread to America--directly through the founding of numerous Visitation monasteries--and indirectly through the foundation of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, who became numerous in the United States and Europe.
Brother Francis celebrated the fact that his lineage went back to the time of Christ and the early Church. Within that lineage he also treasured his incorporation into the Salesian family, which dated back to the fifteen hundreds. Another aspect of his lineage involved Chinese medicine, which went back in time for about five thousand years. The monk was indeed a man in the modern world, in touch with its challenges, and yet there was something ancient in his heart. His Asian sisters and brothers believed in reincarnation. Brother Francis believed that he would live forever after death, not in an earthly way, but in a spiritual way. We were all destined to meet again.