You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello and welcome to our four-part series on St. Francis DeSales and the character of a Christian.

My name is Ben Acres, and I'm the executive director of Formed.

And joining me today in this conversation is Dr. Christopher Bloom, who is the academic dean at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology, as well as being a translator of two works of St. Francis DeSales and the host of true reformers, which you can find on form where one of the key episodes is on St. Francis DeSales.

St. Francis DeSales is a great spiritual master of the spiritual life. And our conversation is to be talking about four characteristics, four essential

traits of a Christian that we find in his work. Christian should be obedient, should be attentive,

should be sincere, and should be brave. Before we dive into that, tell me a little bit about

St. Francis DeSales. Yeah. So he said, just a spectacular saying 1567 to 1622, Ben, in the counter-reformation period,

you know, felt the stirring in his soul for holy priesthood really from a very young age,

somewhere around the age of 10, something like that, kept that sort of between himself and God for quite some

time when he was a student. He would study theology outside of his regular coursework. And then

when he came home from his law degree in Northern Italy, he told his father, the Lord wants me to be a priest.

And his father was kind of shocked because he was the eldest son of a noble family and

it was going to be a senator of the region and so on. But seeing his son's determination

gave his consent, DeSales became a priest. who was a missionary for about four years in a

Calvinist area, not too far from his hometown of Geneva. And then at a very young age was a bishop

and served with great distinction as a bishop for the last 20 years of his life.

One of the things that I remember receiving this actual copy right here of this introduction

to the devout life was 25 years ago and I was first introduced to the introduction

to devout life.

And this is called a spiritual classic.

...