May 28, 2023 - "Alphonsus Ligouri"

In July of 1723, Alphonsus Ligouri, a rising star on the legal scene at Naples, was arguing a case on behalf of Neapolitan nobleman, Filippo Orsini.  Orsini was suing the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Cosimo III) over the rights to a rich estate of land.  Even though Alphonsus had prepared meticulously and was sure that he would win the court case, he overlooked a technicality. To complicate matters Alphonsus was fighting against powerful political forces.  The argument presented by Alphonsus was brusquely dismissed.  Momentarily stunned and speechless, Alphonsus eventually exclaimed, “O world, I recognize you now!  Goodbye to courtrooms” and stormed out of the chambers. Three months later, over the strenuous objections of his father, he received tonsure and began studies for the priesthood.  As scholars have studied the life of Alphonsus, they have determined that he had been pondering a religious vocation for some time.  But the courtroom incident gave the dramatic push that Alphonsus needed to begin a long and distinguished career of priestly service. 
 
Alphonsus had excellent teachers who introduced him to the study of Scripture, Church history, and mysticism.  After his ordination to the priesthood in 1726, Alphonsus continued to serve the outcasts of society and to do what he could to raise the spiritual level of the clergy of Naples.  Alphonsus and those who worked for the spiritual improvement of the clergy in the early eighteenth century had a real challenge on their hands. The social and financial benefits of the clerical status in the Kingdom of Naples led to an unfortunate glut of ill-educated and often dissolute priests.  In 1732 with his friend Thomas Falcoia, who had been named Bishop of Castellamare (located on the Amalfi Coast below Naples), Alphonsus established a new missionary society to work among the rural poor.  In 1749, the group received papal approval under the title of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (popularly known as the Redemptorists. 
 
Even though Alphonsus had written a few minor works encouraging religious devotions before 1745, his literary career began in earnest that year with the publication of his Visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Over the next thirty years he wrote 110 works in the field of apologetics, dogmatic theology, ascetical and spiritual theology, and especially in moral theology.  Some of the works can be read with profit today, such as The Eternal Maxims, the Glories of Mary, and The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ (which is considered to be the synthesis of his thought and his masterpiece). In 1760, he reluctantly was appointed Bishop of Sant’ Agata dei’Goti in the province of Benevento (located to the northeast of Naples) where he got to put into practice the Reflections Useful for Bishops, which he had written in 1745. Despite bouts of ill health, Alphonsus provided an example of sound pastoral leadership at a time when the Italian church was so tied to political privilege as to be pastorally ineffective.  In 1775, almost totally bedridden, he resigned from his diocese.  The last twelve years of his life were plagued with severe illness, noisy quarrels about trivial matters within the Redemptorists, and inner spiritual trials.
 
In his audience on St. Alphonsus Ligouri on March 30, 2011, Pope Benedict gave a good synthesis to the approach that Alphonsus took in discussing the moral life:
 
In his day, there was a very strict and widespread interpretation of moral life because of the Jansenist mentality which, instead of fostering trust and hope in God’s mercy, fomented fear and presented a grim and severe face of God, very remoted from the face revealed to us by Jesus. Especially in his main work entitled Moral Theology, St. Alphonus proposed a balanced and convincing synthesis of the requirements of God’s law, engraved on our hearts, fully revealed by Christ and interpreted authoritatively by the Church, and of the dynamics of conscience and human freedom, which precisely in adherence to truth and goodness permit the person’s development and fulfillment.
 
Alphonsus recommended to pastors of souls and confessors that they be faithful to the Catholic moral doctrine, assuming at the same time a charitable understanding, and gentle attitude that penitents might feel accompanied, supported, and encouraged on their journey of faith and human life.
 
On learning of the death of Alphonsus Ligouri in 1787, Pope Pius VI exclaimed: “He was a saint!” Alphonsus was canonized in 1839 and in 1871 was declared a Doctor of the Church.  Pope Benedict stated that it was appropriate for a number of reasons: “First of all because he offered a rich teaching of moral theology, which expressed adequately the Catholic doctrine, to the point that Pope Pius XII proclaimed him ‘patron of all confessors and moral theologians.’”
 
Until next week,
Fr. John