Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Contradictions, sickness, scruples, spiritual aridity, and all the inner and outward torments are the chisel with which God carves his statues for paradise.
~St. Alphonsus Liguori
Today we celebrate the Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696 – 1787), Bishop and Doctor of the Church. We remember him as a compassionate confessor and down-to-earth preacher as well as a spiritual writer, composer, musician, artist, poet, lawyer, philosopher and theologian. Liguori founded the Redemptorists, a religious order established to minister to the poor and those on the peripheries of Church and society. He wrote more than 100 books in his lifetime, including his multi-volume magnum opus, Moral Theology.
Liguori’s life in Christian ministry was marked by every kind of hardship imaginable. His father opposed his ordination to the priesthood; he faced powerful resistance both in the founding and promulgating of the Redemptorists; he endured tremendous backlash and conflict for his work, Moral Theology; authorities threatened him because of the reforms he instituted while bishop; rheumatoid arthritis bent his head to his chest, causing a physical deformity with which he suffered many years; and for at least two years before he died, Liguori experienced a “dark night” of doubt, fear, and scruples.1
In today’s Gospel, we receive St. Matthew’s account of the death of John the Baptist. Certainly, John faced tremendous opposition and hardship throughout his life and ministry, culminating in Herod’s persecution and ultimately execution. We recognize John the Baptist as a forerunner to Jesus in many ways, both in life and in death. Jesus himself faced opposition, persecution by civil and religious authorities, an arduous three-year ministry, conflict, controversy, misunderstanding, physical hardship, and ultimately his indescribable suffering in his Passion.
In St. Alphonsus Liguori, I see a man who knew what it meant to suffer for and with Christ, and to persevere to the end, running well the race marked out for him (Hebrews 12:1). In a sermon delivered on New Year’s Day 1762, Liguori remarked that he and his listeners had no way to know whether or not they would live to see this new year come to its end. “A year must dawn for us that will be our last,” he aptly observed. Then he went on to proclaim,
We should awaken our faith and strive for the remainder of our lives to live according to the maxims of our faith. Why should we wait until death overtakes us and finds us living according to the maxims of the world? Let us awaken our faith to realize that this earth is not our true home but that we are merely here as pilgrims.
Our faith will give us confidence in our difficulties, teaching us that whoever prays will be saved. May our faith make us always live with the thought of eternity. Let’s keep ever before our eyes this great thought – everything in this world comes to an end, whether it be prosperity or adversity. Eternity alone never ends.
Let us awaken our faith . . . Liguori followed in the footsteps of St. John the Baptist and Christ our Lord as he persevered and pressed through tremendous hardship and seemingly insurmountable odds. He viewed difficulties, our crosses, as the chisel with which God carves his statues for paradise. Suffering truly can be a powerful catalyst for growth in holiness as we unite it to the Cross of Christ. One way we do that is to place ourselves, our very lives, on the altar with the gifts during every Mass and so to offer ourselves to God united with Christ’s most holy and living Sacrifice. As we do that, receptive and disposed to the grace of the Eucharist, we offer ourselves to the shaping and molding of our heavenly Father, the divine Potter, the loving Sculptor. We also offer ourselves to Jesus for all the intentions of his most Sacred Heart, asking that he might receive our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings for his redemptive purposes in us and in the world. I believe that’s in keeping with the eternal perspective Liguori calls us to maintain.
Today, let us awaken our faith, strive to live according to the maxims or our faith, and unite our sufferings with those of Christ that he might use them for our good and for the good of others. St. Alphonsus Liguori, pray for us!
In the Body and Blood of Christ,
Elizabeth Wells
1Ghezzi, Bert, Voices of the Saints: A 365-Day Journey, Word on Fire, Elk Grove Village, IL, 2024, p. 598-99.