I'm a big fan of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. What a prolific writer he was. Every Catholic could benefit from having him for a friend and intercessor. His statement, "By the grace of God I have never confessed having acted from passion," gives me a twinge. Would that I could say that. But I have a friend in heaven to ask for help! I have no doubt he will respond to my request because he had such zeal to save souls.
Awhile back my husband's spiritual reading was St. Alphonsus's Preparation for Death. At our ages, that's a serious consideration. I have many of St. Alphonsus' books. One I particularly want to read is his Victories of the Martyrs. Walking in their footsteps is a sure path to salvation.
But the book I'll be focusing on now is The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ. Advent isn't that far off, but the book is long and has small print. Beginning now I'm likely to finish in time for the St. Andrew's novena. And then for Lent I can study The Passion and the Death of Jesus Christ. St. Alphonsus seems to me to be a one-man library of the faith! One could easily choose his books by the liturgical seasons. More than once I've read Love God and Do What You Please adapted by Redemptorist priest M.J. Huber, C.SS.R. He says in the introduction:
St. Alphonsus wanted all God's children to burn with the spirit of Christ. In bringing the good news of Christ to his fellow men he made a vow never to waste a moment of time. Truly the motto of his life might well have been not just "God and me!" but "For God and for the world!"
St. Alphonsus lived in the post Renaissance age of flowery preaching and "highfalutin mumbo jumbo." His approach in the pulpit emphasized simplicity. "I have never preached a sermon which the poorest old woman in the congregation could not understand." As Butler's Lives entry on St. Alphonsus tells us:
He treated his penitents as souls to be saved rather than as criminals to be punished or frightened into better ways; he is said never to have refused absolution to a penitent.
This was during a period of rigorism, a holdover from the heresy of Jansenism which denied that man's free will was necessary for salvation. The Jansenists believed that God gives grace where He will or God denies it. All the action is God's; man's free will is insignificant. I'm no student of the Jansenist philosophy but it sounds like Calvinism to me.
To sum up, St. Alphonsus is a sure guide and is there for spiritual direction. Reading about the saints and studying their writings has converted numerous souls. St. Edith Stein's mentor was St. Teresa of Avila. St. Ignatius found reason to convert reading the lives of the saints. St. Maria Goretti's murderer, converted through a dream about his victim. St. John Newman was converted by reading the Doctors of the Church.
Want to grow in faith? Read the saints. Make friends with them and seek their intercession. Don't you ask people here on earth to pray for you? What makes more sense than to ask your friends in heaven to help?
I'll end with a wonderful article on some spectacular conversions, some unexpected like John Wayne and Wild Bill Cody. I'll add one that's not here, Oscar Wilde who became a Catholic on his death bed. So if you have family members about whom you're concerned remember that it's not over until it's over. Ask St. Liguori to join with their guardian angels in praying for a miracle of grace. Those are the greatest miracles of all.
