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St
Alphonsus, 1696-1787. Marian and Morality Doctor, Feast Aug
1st.
The only modern day Doctor of the Church prior to St
Therese was a brilliant priest and leading lawyer who lived in
Naples. Before establishing a religious order, he acknowledged his
gifts from God by never attending to the law courts without first
attending the holy sacrifice of the mass.
Painstakingly
devout from Italian parents, Alphonsus was scrupulously steeped in
the fear of God. Why anyone highly successful in any profession
would abandon it indicates that God will enlighten and move us to
new heights if we ask. Prayer enriches us with new unknowns. It led
Alphonsus continually because he prayed daily. Success is not
necessarily a guarantee that we are doing the right thing. Success
and sanctity do not necessarily run in parallel paths. Holy
discernment with total surrender is necessary to become holy, happy
and a true follower of Jesus.
Father Liguori is the patron of
confessors and moral theologians. This is indeed a most high honor
and distinction. He is an exemplary model for canon lawyers,
theologians and bishops. He submitted his precious gift of choice to
the church continually. He was continually humble and docile to the
movements of grace. He allowed this to draw his heart and mind. His
conscience was formed and fixed on the love of God, neighbor and the
church. He was absolutely consumed with zeal for souls and he poured
himself out daily practicing what he believed.
Alphonsus was
aware of his conscience and that made all the difference. Many are
not aware that the conscience needs formation and guidance to
operate fully and effectively. It is only when one is open and flexible that one
receives what God is speaking to the consciousness beyond the
natural from the supernatural. The soul has an awareness that is
supernatural but the mind follows to the natural or lower awareness.
The whole area of conscience of morality stems from one aspect.
There is an illusion that since we act according to our conscience
one cannot be wrong. Conscience is the door of the soul but the key
to open it is awareness. There is a difference. You obtain the key
by honesty, prayer and willingness to change and be open to grace.
You must be true to your conscience. It is the 'aboriginal' vicar of
God. However, it sometimes is difficult to tap into it. The
conscience is a sanctuary and God's voice. It whispers within and
echoes silently. We need to be on the right attunement from God to
hear. It requires absolute honesty and practice to pick up God's
signals.
There are many degrees of consciousness. Some
include physical consciousness, self-consciousness and there is that
important element of spiritual consciousness. Obviously, those who
are spiritually conscious have the highest degree of awareness
because their insights come from above. Each dimension of
consciousness has different depths. Consciousness is
multi-dimensional. The gift of faith is a spiritual consciousness.
It is a belief one holds onto because the individual considers it to
be true. The more one exercises faith, the firmer it becomes. Faith
gives us an inner vision. We are able to see the inside 'world' from
the outside and from within. St Alphonsus had penetrating, spiritual
insights and all of his writings reflect his vision from within. Our
own perception becomes more illuminating through God's graces.
Awareness of God is obviously firmly established in the heart as
well as in the mind. When this happens, one becomes less impervious
to the devices of the Devil, temptations and his ruses. Grace gives
our perception more purity and precise understanding of God and how
God works in our life. Many business leaders and religious founders
have great visionary skills. This comes from grace, experience and
intelligence.
All deep spiritual life is given grace to have spiritual awareness and strength and enters
into its imitation through divine providence's designs. There are positive and negative
components to all life and substances beginning with the atom. Some
spiritual, positive aspects of spiritual consciousness or awareness
are wholeness and enjoyment. Some spiritual, negative aspects are
fragmentation and the absence of joy. Wholeness and enjoyment we can
equate with love and the opposite of that is hate or the absence of
love.
Alphonsus is a most distinguished, Catholic, doctor in
matters of morality because of his absolute surrender to God in
faith and his conscience. Moral philosophy focus is on ethics and
the discipline dealing with good and bad and with moral duty and
obligations. The Ten Commandments are not a wish list. Christ
crystallized them for us by saying they are summed up in love for
God and neighbor. We can not attain our victory over immorality
unless we possess virtue. Virtue is moral excellence. Our business
world for the past two decades has been reading In Search of
Excellence. Christians need to ponder moral excellence. The Book of
Virtues, edited by William Bennett, will give one a superior insight into
authentic virtues, morality and the entire range of good and bad.
Good principles contain just rules and right order. They can be
comprehensive and fundamental laws, doctrines or assumptions. They
are rules or codes of conduct and they can be habitual devotion to
right or wrong principles or laws. Listen to the wise statement of
Aristotle, who was considered a pagan, and what he had to say about
excellence. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We
do not act rightly because we have excellence or virtue. It is when
we act virtuous that we have excellence. Thus, right is excellence.
Wrong is not excellence. The more we act rightly, the more our
excellence will be seen and manifested. Aristotle claims that we are
what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
Our habits make us champions or slaves. Everyone who does acts that
are right become masters of their habits. Those who perform bad
habits become slaves and prisoners of those habits. Jesus said the
same thing in the gospels.
The doctor of morality knew
spiritually (he was aware of) that Jesus had redeemed man and he was
going to allow God to use him. This insight and wisdom did not come
in a flash. It was a scrupulous and tedious struggle. He looked into
history, the church and his conscience daily. He followed God's
commandments diligently and scrupulously. He begged God for
obedience, sincerity, goodwill and virtues every day. One can not
only follow one's conscience. One becomes wise by drawing from
history, tradition, the bible, one's religion, the practice of daily
holy prayer, repentance and forgiveness to be a genuine Christian.
It may sound complicated but Jesus simplified it. It's all contained
in acting charitable. We might beg God daily to help us in the daily
practice of being kind and generous. It is very difficult and our
nature resists it. We must do our part now if we want to share God's
part later. We need to be redeemed daily-we're not angels. When we
fail, God will use other creatures to be kind to us.
All of
us are, in a sense, morality doctors. I've associated this name with
St Alphonsus mainly because of his keen sense of the awareness of
sin and guilt. Sin and guilt invade all creatures except those who
are divinely favored or exempt. We mustn't think that guilt is a bad
feeling. It is an authentic feeling. God permits us to have the
feelings we experience. Guilt can be a gift from God. It is also a
blessing and a divine favor.
We ought to beg God to let us
sense guilt when we do wrong. It is not necessarily a perpetual
gift. We can lose, forfeit, shun or spurn this precious gift. When
this happens, it is a tragedy and the beginning of spiritual
decline. This results in spiritual danger and should cause us fear.
Often we are oblivious. Sin hides truth. Human beings have the
capacity to kill guilt when God permits. This is a deplorable and
helpless state and only God's mercy and other's prayers can change
this horrible situation.
There are healthy feelings of guilt
and there are non-healthy feelings of guilt. Only by divine
discernment can one know the truth. Psychiatrists, psychologists,
counselors, therapists and priests have distinctively different
roles ordained by God. One should discuss and pray to discern which
person can help you the best when their conscience bothers them. For
those who offer counseling or pardon to others in this matter, one
needs to implore the good God not only for intelligence but also for
the wisdom to help others. One role is never a substitute for the
other and all should complement each other. St Alphonsus is an exemplary
patron for confessors. Each is a specialist and talented by God. We
should not allow others to impose a 'guilt trip' on us. That
happens sometimes and is 'dead' wrong. No one wants to feel guilty
because it is sorely distressing.
Remorse is guilt for past
wrongs. It is a gnawing distress arising from past wrongs. It is a
self-reproach. When you do bad things you are suppose to feel
guilty. That is conscience informing us of some disorder. God will
allows us to feel contrition and compunction when we sin if we are
truly sorry and repentant. However, be assured they are gifts. Some
people do not feel guilt when they do wrong. Why? Sin obfuscates!
Evil is attractively sinister and misleading. The Devil can act like
a genius. He is a crafty genius. He confuses and confounds us when
God permits. Hell is pandemonium, disorder and outrageously bitter
and hateful because of the absence of divine love. Oh, there is love
there but it's self-love, angry-love and disrespectful loathing for
oneself and all who share in utter misery, pain, torture, resentment
and despair.
Unrepentant sinners can often lose the sense of
guilt. Some do not want or refuse it. Others are obstinate about it.
Some disbelieve and often repress or suppress it. When this happens,
it will always haunt or nag the individual when God permits it.
Compunction is the painful sting of conscience. Alphonsus and the
church would urge us periodically to use the sacrament of
reconciliation, to exercise repentance, penitence, contrition and
compunction.
The Creator encourages us to regret wrongdoing.
God's goodness will supplies the gifts and courage to achieve this
when we cooperate. All creatures have some form of mental anguish.
No one escapes this ordeal. Prayers and penance will help us remove
the remorse that is guilt for past wrongs. Jesus is our victorious
Victim and Expiator of sin if we turn to him with our hearts. The
Lord has laid on him all of our burden, sin and guilt. He embraced
it in profound love. He offered his life, lovingly, in perfect
sacrifice for us. God knew we were going to sin when he made us. By
Jesus' coming we know that no one can thwart the divine plan and
that he came for each to crush and eliminate guilt, sin, death and
hell. Christ is our Conqueror and Champion.
Listen to your
heart. It is connected to your brain and that is connected to your
nervous system. Our God is a feeling and understanding Father. God
sends continual signals through your whole being: body, heart, mind,
soul and spirit. It is healthy to feel shame and embarrassment for
failures or mishaps. Acknowledge them, humbly realize your weakness
and confess them according to the appropriate channels that you
believe or endorse. Never live ashamed. Do penance and live proud!
To be proud is not pride and is a sign of humility. Those who humble
themselves will be exalted. Pride hates to admit sin. Those who
possess pride wallow in perdition. God offers his love. With grace we can choose
what we love eternally and without grace we will choose evil forever. God has given us the power and the choice to choose spiritual life or perpetual death. We have awesome responsibilities.
Alphonsus founded and established
the Redemptorist Religious Order. It is undoubtedly a great mainstay
and pillar of the church today. His book, The Glories of Mary is a
masterpiece. His writings are clear, profound, and reveal great
scholarship and erudition. No one could possibly say anything more
in quantity about Mary than Mary herself. The plethora of modern day
seers, visionaries, writers and mystics reveal Mary. Mary's
discourse to them only compliments what Alphonsus has already said.
St Alphonsus Liguori is a must read for any serious explorer of
Mariology. He is without doubt, the Marian Doctor par excellence. Other
doctors have written similar qualitative things about Mary but he
added a quantitative component. Comparisons are always odious before
God and we know that the greatest is the least in God's
kingdom.
Catherine Anne Emmerich's books on Mary are
breathtaking. They reveal an uncanny historical and ancestral
perspective and accuracy that is incredible to describe. The depth
and precision, which she records, are constantly being substantiated
by current biblical scholars and experts. Another current book on
Mary is: Meeting Mary by Janice Connell. It affords a summary of
Mary's meetings down through the century. It is beautifully written,
precise, and historically fascinating. Images, facts and devotional
books on Mary are numerous and some are listed in the Sources.
The
Primate of Italy commanded Alphonsus to become bishop and he obeyed.
His health was always a problem. His arthritis left him disabled in
a frightening position-completely bent out of shape with rheumatic
arthritis. This disability today affects more than two million and
millions more with minor forms of arthritis. This doctor would be an
excellent intercessor for those who suffer this painful condition.
Pray to him! He, with Mary, effects cures and spiritual wholeness
and purity.
The Liguorian magazine published by the
Redemptorist Fathers and Brothers carry on his spirit of
enlightenment, instruction and legacy. Subscribe to it for spiritual
enrichment, joy and pleasure. It contains fascinating stories,
insights and a rich legacy.
Alphonsus lived to his nineties
vowing never to squander a precious moment due to God either in
praying, writing, preaching missions, visiting the sick, pastoring
his flock as bishop, and giving retreats. He unendingly implores us
to visit the Blessed Sacrament, our Redeemer, and to live out God's
holy will and obtain salvation and redemption through Jesus in union
with his mother, Mary.
Another area that Alphonsus would be
most helpful toward is age. He is the oldest of the doctors and his
intercessory power will be most valuable, as we grow older.
Redemption for most will come, as we grow older. Knowing that our
Redemption is assured as we slowly age is most reassuring, and he is an
excellent model to petition for help, guidance and perseverance to
the end.
St. Alphonsus' writings on the Stations of the Cross
and martyrs are most touching and redemptive. Christ's death, and
the process that lead to it in the carrying of the cross, should
move our conscience profoundly. It was constantly in his thoughts as
they are in all sincere Christians. The stations according to some
authors and historians actually got started by Jesus' mother, Mary.
She wanted to keep the memory of her Son alive and she frequently traced
his actual steps in Jerusalem. The closing down of the holy lands
during a period in the church's history was another reason the
church rejuvenated the Stations of the Cross locally. We do not have
to wait for the Lenten season to think or make the stations. There
are hardly any catholic churches in the world that do not display
the journey that led to Christ's final agony and victory over sin
and death. This is Jesus' heroic and dramatic struggle up Calvary. It
is a cordial reminder of love bestowed by three mothers: God, our
Divine Mother and Author of all creation and redemption, the Mother
of God, the holy, Virgin Mary, and the Mother of our mystical life,
the Church.
The saint's writings on the martyrs are rich in
details. He wrote precisely and scholarly and adds to our precious heritage
the whole drama of redemption by Christ and his martyred
members. Although he is perhaps, among all the doctors, the most
prolific on this subject, his writings on martyrdom are but a tiny
snapshot when we look at the church's entire history of those who
have given up their lives for our loving Redeemer.
Butler, who is listed in the Sources, has listed thirty-five categories of martyrs. They range from small groups to large groups as the one hundred and twenty Martyrs of Persia (Iran). Each martyr's death is an extension of Christ's personal life and death. We must not think of martyrs dying only during the persecutions of the early Christians. Only two centuries ago during the French Revolution, sixteen women of the Carmel of Compiegne offered their lives at the guillotine to restore peace to the church and to France. Terrye Newkirk recounts the story of these courageous women in her book entitled: The Martyrs of Compiegne. Perhaps the best-loved opera of modern times is based upon Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites.
Martyrs give inspiration to composers, writers and thousands of other categories. Martyrdom is but one type of death. There are many martyrs of desire. Giving back to God our life in any form is most pleasing to the Almighty. It is also the seeds and the cause for the surest and fastest spread of Christianity.
The word martyrs has a board connotation outside of religon. For example: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle is also considered a martyr. The many wars that saw the sacrifices and deaths of millions of people is a horrible reality. Negotiations, compromises and goodwill has power to stop wars but none have more power as prayers and sacrifices to stop war. There is no substitute.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and many others have said: if you want to stop war, stop abortion. We must be sure we act on the right principles in order that we are not mislead. When our hearts and minds are turn toward God, we receive abundant, divine light. God always enlightens those who turn to him in trust and goodness and is never outdone in generosity.
With medical
technology most of us are going to live a long life as St Alphonsus.
Baring unforeseen accidents, our lifetime will be a long, drawn out
adventure of pleasure and pain. Our body will test us more as we
age. Only 10 percent of the general population use to live to age
65. Today, 80 percent of the general population live that long.
Perhaps the real struggle of our life may be in the area of our
faith. Weakness and gloom can creep into our consciousness with
pain, age and lack of virtue. God-given trials can inflict us for
reasons we will never know. The martyr's lives will encourage us in
our difficulties with aging and crosses. Jesus urged us to hold firm
to the end.
We always have a superior Model in Christ in his
agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Why did he, who was Almighty,
petition his Father three times to be removed from his crucifixion?
He certainly knew his redemptive calling. Wouldn't one plea have
been sufficient? We know he deeply wanted to cooperate with his
Father's plan. At the Last Supper, Jesus said that it was with desire
that he wanted to share his last meal with his friends before he
suffered.
The Morality Doctor always aims to move our
conscience toward the buying-back theme that the Man-God enacted.
With Christ's precious surrender of his life, all human beings have been
paid for with a priceless bounty. God's purchasing of humankind is
not only historical on Calvary. According to our incredible catholic
faith, tradition and theology the same scene and event is reenacted
bloodlessly during holy mass. Alphonsus' comprehension of this fact
encouraged him to attend mass as a young boy and lawyer. He
discovered his ultimate vocation only afterwards.
He was in
his late twenties when he was enlightened through his conscience to
give himself more fully to God. He was already serving God. When God
gave him more light he exclaimed that he had resisted all the
previous calls. God keeps after us if we keep after God through
earnest supplication and doing charitable deeds.
His devotion
to Mary, he claimed, helped him discover God and his vocation anew.
His devotion to Jesus and Mary, his brilliant writings, his
paintings of Mary, his holiness and his role as the founder of the
Redemptorist has ensured his place in God's church. The total
numbers of Redemptorist are around 6000 in the USA. For more
information on this Order, or any religious Order within the
Catholic Church, please consult the Catholic Almanac listed in the
Sources.
The Redemptorist Religious Order has a litany of
extraordinary models. The church holds St Gerard Majella high in
esteem as an outstanding wonder-worker. He is particularly helpful
for pregnant women. This saint greatly helps men and women to
support one another when conflict arises. Why is Gerard the patron
of expectant mothers? Read about him. Discover and learn about his
personal ordeal on this issue.
In the book entitled:
Mysteries, Marvels and Miracles in the lives of the Saints, the
author, Joan Carroll Cruz, has cited more miracles attributed to him
in her book than any other person in the entire history of the
church. This book is listed in the doctoral sources on this site.
God's will can not be known and achieved without
prayer, grace and God's favor. We are often caught between what the
law permits and what are God's laws. We need to look to the church
and individuals such as Alphonsus and Gerard whose moral courage
stands out and shows us the way.
God's laws are always
highter than man-made laws. We must always respect all laws but we
need to question it at times when it contradicts our history,
tradition and especially our conscience.
More choices are
afforded us than previous generations. It would appear we have more
freedom to choose how we want to live and whom we want to obey.
Everyone seems to have his or her own ideas of what is right or
wrong. Prayer is the basis for all spiritual growth. We can not do
better in understanding moral choices than to read the book entitled
St Alphonsus Liguori . He read everything (during his lifetime)
significantly written about the history of the church. This book
written by Fathers Miller and Aubin, both Redemptorists, expounds on
a wise author of over 100 books and is perhaps the most published
authors among the doctors along with St Augustine.
The Marian Doctor would be incomplete without listing some links on our Blessed Mother Mary:
http://legionofmary.org/
Another
Marian group St Alphonsus could identify if he were on earth would
be the Marist. To explore them go to the link:
http://www.doctorsofthecatholicchurch.com/www.maristsociety.org
You may also write the Marist Society, Inc at 4408 Eight Street NE
Washington DC 20017-2298.
Lastly, another Marian group is the
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Their National Shrine of the
Lady of Snows can be seen at
www.snows.org
For
additional links to the Redemptorist Family and Catholic communities read the below link.
The Liguorian Publication
The following links supplies a number of quotes from St Alphonsus' writings
and works.
http://www.catholic-form.com/saints/sainta09.htm
http://www.yenra.com/catholic/prayers/alphonsusdeliguori.html
Click here for many Alphonsus Liguori's links
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