Monsieur Olier friend to St Francis de Sales

Jesus that does in Mary dwell
Be in thy servants’ hearts as well,
In the spirit of thy holiness,
In the fullness of thy force and stress,
In the very ways that thy life goes
And virtues that thy pattern shows,
In the sharing of thy mysteries;
And every power in us that is
Against thy power put under feet
In the Holy Ghost the Paraclete
To the Glory of the Father. Amen

Monsieur Olier prayer

It was during the illness he had in., at the close of the mission of 1637, that Monsieur Jean-Jacques eyes began to be opened, and he was enabled to perceive how much of self-love mixed itself up with everything he did. The sight of what he was filled him with dismay, and he became possessed with an intense desire of being wholly united with God, so that he cared not what might befall him if only he could attain to this blessed state. His soul was assailed with foul, afflicting thoughts, and often during the day he felt moved to repeat those words of the royal Psalmist:”Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me…O life divine! When shall I live only for God?”…God would raise him to a still higher degree of sanctity; He would empty him entirely of self, and form within him the life of His dear Son; and to this end He subjected him to humiliations the most painful to pride and self-love. He withdrew from him, not only those spiritual gifts for which he had been conspicuous, but the exercise of his natural powers and faculties. At times he lost the use of his bodily limbs; they would suddenly refuse to obey the motions of his will, as though God would show him by actual experience that we live and move only in Him. Sometimes he trembled and staggered as he walked, at others he was unable to put one foot before another….His mind was at the same time affected with a similar torpidity: his memory and understanding failed him; often he knew neither what he said nor what was said to him; he felt like a deaf man in a crowd, neither hearing nor comprehending what was going on around him. He would have a clear perception of what he was about to express, and would have begun to put his thought into words, when in an instant it would pass from him, and he no longer recollected what it had been in his mind to say; and this, not merely on subjects of high import, but in the commonest things, and while in easy converse with a friend. He seemed also to have forgotten the art of writing, and would be hours accomplishing three or four lines, and those all awry. He would suddenly forget where he was going, and the names of the persons he wished to see; he would lose his way in the streets, so that he was obliged to be always accompanied by a servant. His mother, seeing him in this miserable state, told people they would take him for an idiot or a fool; while he, on his part, offered himself to God to deprive him altogether of his senses if such were His holy will. –Edward Healy Thompson, M.A.”The life of Jean-Jacques Olier: Founder of the Seminary of St. Sulpice”

Olier,-Jean-Jacques,-painting

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