The Temptation to Despair

From the life of St. Francis de Sales.

At seventeen, Francis de Sales was studying in Paris and living a life given over to God, full of the joy of his love. To test his faith, God allowed the devil to press on him the thought that all his efforts were useless, because he was already condemned by God's decree.

God also left him for a time in spiritual dryness, so that he could feel none of the comfort of God's goodness, and this made the temptation weigh all the harder. Through fear and desolation he lost his appetite, his sleep, his color, and his good spirits, and everyone who saw him pitied him. While the struggle lasted he could think and speak only of sorrow and distrust, grieving that he might never see God or the Blessed Virgin in heaven, and yet still loving them. The temptation went on for a month. At last God freed him through Our Lady.

One evening, on his way home, he went into a church and saw a small tablet on the wall with a prayer of St. Augustine written on it, the reminder that no one who ever fled to Mary for help was left abandoned. He knelt before the altar of the Mother of God and prayed it with deep feeling. He renewed his vow of chastity, promised to say the rosary every day, and asked Mary to be his advocate with her Son, begging that even if in the next life he should somehow be unable to love God, he might at least love him with all his strength in this one. Then he gave himself up to God's mercy.

He had hardly finished when Mary freed him all at once from the temptation. His peace came back, and with it his health, and from then on he lived as a devoted servant of Mary, proclaiming her mercies in his preaching and his writing for the rest of his life.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the "example" stories that St. Alphonsus Liguori placed at the end of each section of The Glories of Mary. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the 1888 English translation. Liguori himself, in his author's "Protest," noted that the miracles and apparitions in the book are offered on human authority only, not as articles of faith.