Unless it Unmakes the Church

Dear Brave and Good Young People

A Thousand Arrows

'As soon as the children of this world perceive that you desire to follow a devout life,
they will shoot at you a thousand arrows of mockery and detraction.
The most malicious will calumniate your change as being hypocrisy, bigotry, and artifice.
They will say that the world has frowned on you and that, being rejected by it, you turn to God.  
Your friends will make a world of objections which they imagine to be very wise and charitable.
They will tell you that you will fall into a melancholy state of mind;
that you will lose credit in the world...
that your domestic affairs will suffer;
that you must live in the world like one in the world;
that salvation may be had without so many mysteries....

All this is nothing but foolish and empty babbling.'

St. Francis de Sales

Painting:  William Paxton, The Sisters, 1904