Salesian Spirit

By Elizabeth Eilers Sullivan

Georgetown Visitation's Sr Philomenia & pups Gabe and Nicholas

I attended The Salesian Conference this year at Georgetown Visitation as it capped off a wonderful week gathering around increasing our vocations to the Visitation Order. The Salesian Conference used the story of the Visitation to highlight the little virtues apparent in the Visitation Order today. Wendy M. Wright’s talk on “The Visitation as Community,” explores how “the spirit of the Visitation comes alive in people as they relate to God and, especially, with one another.” She said, “a way into this spirit is to practice the little virtues of gentleness, kindness, patience, cordiality, simplicity, and humility with yourself and others” as a means of letting go of the little things in order to be present to the bigger things in life. Different situations call for different virtues. As we practice the little virtues this also helps with our larger discernment.

St Francis de Sales says In the Devout Life, that when you are discerning something in your life, the first thing you do is pray about it. The second action is to seek sage council, do not just speak to people who will tell you what you desire to hear, but who will gently challenge you, perhaps someone who will gently remove a thorn. The third act is once you have prayed about it, and sought advice from a wisdom figure in your life, you do not look back! You trust the discernment.

The last step is typically where I get tripped up in my own discernment. My imagination is at times so strong that when I find

The view to my left, Sister Katherine at the Vocation Federation.

myself in the transition space, the sacred liminal space, of not yet to the other side of a decision, but having left the post I held, and after a prayerful discernment I look back at the “what could have beens.” With the paths not chosen, I gently torture myself out of the peace I sought with the decision made. This torture leads me into the memories of my past, and the visions of my future. This takes me out of the peace found in the present moment. When I am out of the present moment I am no longer alive to the graces that present themselves. The graces that God blesses us with in the present, in our daily life, gently and graciously guiding us into the promise and blessings of our future.

May we learn to live the spirit of the Visitation daily, with grace and trust that the little virtues will lead us deeper into this relational mystery and all its blessing.