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St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), bishop of Geneva and founder of the Visitation Order of nuns, was renowned for his teachings on spirituality. His masterpiece in the field of spiritual literature was The Introduction to the Devout Life. Revolutionary in its day and noted for its charm, warmth, and clarity of language, it set forth a spirituality oriented toward life in the world, an approach quite different from that of St. Francis de Sales's contemporaries, who saw spiritual perfection as possilbe only in the religious life. While the message of The Introduction to the Devout Life is still valid today, the fact is that its expression is quite dated. In this book, as in Bringing 'The Imitation of Christ' into the Twentieth First Century, Father Meninger is not offering a new translation or paraphrase of the spiritual classic. Rather, he is attempting to express the teachings of the original in a wholly contemporary idiom. Father Meninger has not hesitated to change, omit, or add to the original where necessary, the better to highlight the heart and charisma of St. Francis de Sales's teachings.
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