St alphonsus liguori biography

Vague rumours of impending treachery had got about and had been made known to him, but he had refused to believe them. The Saint only wept in silence and tried in vain to devise some means by which his Order might be saved. His best plan would have been to consult the Holy See, but in this he had been forestalled. The Fathers in the Papal States, with too precipitate zeal, in the very beginning denounced the change of Rule to Rome.

Pius VI, already deeply displeased with the Neapolitan Government, took the fathers in his own dominions under his special protection, forbade all change of rule in their houses, and even withdrew them from obedience to the Neapolitan superiors, that is to St. Alphonsus, till an inquiry could be held. A long process followed in the Court of Rome, and on 22 September,a provisional Decree, which on 24 August,was made absolute, recognized the houses in the Papal States as alone constituting the Redemptorist Congregation.

Father Francis de Paula, one of the chief appellants, was appointed their Superior General, "in place of those", so the brief ran, "who being higher superiors of the said Congregation have with their followers adopted a new system essentially different from the old, and have deserted the Institute in which they were professed, and have thereby ceased to be members of the Congregation.

In this state of exclusion he lived for seven years more and in it he died. It was only after his death, as he had prophesied, that the Neapolitan Government at last recognized the original Rule, and that the Redemptorist Congregation was reunited under one head Alphonsus had still one final storm to meet, and then the end. About three years before his death he went through a veritable "Night of the Soul ".

Fearful temptations against every virtue crowded upon him, together with diabolical apparitions and illusions, and terrible scruples and impulses to despair which made life a hell. He had nearly completed his ninety-first year. He was declared "Venerable", 4 May, ; was beatified inand canonized in Inhe was declared a Doctor of the Church. He was a born leader of men.

His devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to Our Lady was extraordinary. He had a tender charity towards all who were in trouble; he would go to any length to try to save a vocation ; he would expose himself to death to prevent sin. He had a love for the lower animals, and wild creatures who fled from all else would come to him as to a friend.

Psychologically, Alphonsus may be classed among twice-born souls ; that is to say, there was a definitely marked break or conversion, in his life, in which he turned, not from serious sin, for that he never comitted, but from comparative worldliness, to thorough self-sacrifice for God. Alphonsus's temperament was very ardent. He was a man of strong passions, using the term in the philosophic sense, and tremendous energy, but from childhood his passions were under control.

Yet, to take anger alone, though comparatively early in life he seemed dead to insult or injury which affected himself, in cases of cruelty, or of injustice to others, or of dishonour to God, he showed a prophet's indignation even in old age. Ultimately, however, anything merely human in this had disappeared. At the worst, it was only the scaffolding by which the temple of perfection was raised.

Indeed, apart from those who become saints by the altogether special grace of martyrdom, it may be doubted if many men and women of phlegmatic temperament have been canonized. The differentia of saints is not faultlessness but driving-power, a driving-power exerted in generous self-sacrifice and ardent love of God. The impulse to this passionate service of God comes from Divine grace, but the soul must correspond which is also a grace of Godand the soul of strong will and strong passions corresponds best.

The difficulty about strong wills and strong passions is that they are hard to tame, but when they are tamed they are the raw material of sanctity. Not less remarkable than the intensity with which Alphonsus worked is the amount of work he did. His perseverance was indomitable. He both made and kept a vow not to lose a single moment of time. He was helped in this by his turn of mind which was extremely practical.

Though a good dogmatic theologian --a fact which has not been sufficiently recognized--he was not a metaphysician like the great scholastics. He was a lawyer, not only during his years at the Bar, but throughout his whole life--a lawyer, who to skilled advocacy and an enormous knowledge of practical detail added a wide and luminous hold of underlying principles.

It was this which made him the prince of moral theologians, and gained him, when canonization made it possible, the title of " Doctor of the Church ". This combination of practical common sense with extraordinary energy in administrative work ought to make Alphonsus, if he were better known, particularly attractive to the English-speaking nations, especially as he is so modern a saint.

But we must not push resemblances too far. If in some things Alphonsus was an Anglo-Saxon, in others he was a Neapolitan of the Neapolitans, though always a saint. He often writes as a Neapolitan to Neapolitans. Were the vehement things in his letters and writings, especially in the matter of rebuke or complaint, to appraised as if uttered by an Anglo-Saxon in cold blood, we might be surprised and even shocked.

Neapolitan students, in an animated but amicable discussion, seem to foreign eyes to be taking part in a violent quarrel. Alphonsus appeared a miracle of calm to Tannoia. Could he have been what an Anglo-Saxon would consider a miracle of calm, he would have seemed to his companions absolutely inhuman. The saints are not inhuman but real men of flesh and blood, however much some hagiographers may ignore the fact.

While the continual intensity of reiterated acts of virtue which we have called driving-power is what really creates st alphonsus liguori biography, there is another indispensable quality. The extreme difficulty of the lifelong work of fashioning a saint consists precisely in this, that every act of virtue the saint performs goes to strengthen his character, that is, his will.

On the other hand, ever since the Fall of Man, the will of man has been his greatest danger. It has a tendency at every moment to deflect, and if it does deflect from the right path, the greater the momentum the more terrible the final crash. Now the saint has a very great momentum indeed, and a spoiled saint is often a great villain. To prevent the ship going to pieces on the rocks, it has need of a very responsive rudder, answering to the slightest pressure of Divine guidance.

The rudder is humility, which, in the intellect, is a realization of our own unworthiness, and in the will, docility to right guidance. But how was Alphonsus to grow in this so necessary virtue when he was in authority nearly all his life? The answer is that God kept him humble by interior trials. From his earliest years he had an anxious fear about committing sin which passed at times into scruple.

He who ruled and directed others so wisely, had, where his own soul was concerned, to depend on obedience like a little child. To supplement this, God allowed him in the last years of his life to fall into disgrace with the pope, and to find himself deprived of all external authority, trembling at times even for his eternal salvation. Alphonsus does not offer as much directly to the student of mystical theology as do some contemplative saints who have led more retired lives.

Unfortunately, he was not obliged by his confessor, in virtue of holy st alphonsus liguori biography, as St. Teresa was, to write down his states of prayer ; so we do not know precisely what they were. The prayer he recommended to his Congregation, of which we have beautiful examples in his ascetical works, is affective; the use of short aspirations, petitions, and acts of love, rather than discursive meditation with long reflection.

His own prayer was perhaps for the most part what some call "active", others "ordinary", contemplation. Of extraordinary passive states, such as rapture, there are not many instances recorded in his life, though there are some. At three different times in his missions, while preaching, a ray of light from a picture of Our Lady darted towards him, and he fell into an ecstasy before the people.

In old age he was more than once raised in the air when speaking of God. His intercession healed the sick; he read the secrets of hearts, and foretold the future. It was comparatively late in life that Alphonsus became a writer. If we except a few poems published in the Saint was born inhis first work, a tiny volume called "Visits to the Blessed Sacrament ", only appeared in orwhen he was nearly fifty years old.

Three years later he published the first sketch of his "Moral Theology" in a single quarto volume called "Annotations to Busembaum", a celebrated Jesuit moral theologian. He spent the next few years in recasting this work, and in appeared the first volume of the "Theologia Moralis", the second volume, dedicated to Benedict XIV, following in Nine editions of the "Moral Theology" appeared in the Saint's life-time, those of,, andthe "Annotations to Busembaum" counting as the first.

In the second edition the work received the definite form it has since retained, though in later issues the Saint retracted a number of opinions, corrected minor ones, and worked at the statement of his theory of Equiprobabilism till at last he considered it complete. In addition, he published many editions of compendiums of his larger work, such as the "Homo Apostolicus", made in The "Moral Theology", after a historical introduction by the Saint's friend, P.

Zaccaria, S. Pacifico"and St. Veronica Giuliani from "Vita della B. Veronica Giuliani, da F. Salvatori" ; whose canonization took place on Trinity Sunday, May 26th, Alphonsus Liguori ". In Herbermann, Charles ed.

St alphonsus liguori biography

Pirlo My First Book of Saints. ISBN Archived from the original on 12 October Retrieved 26 May Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Bishop of St. Agatha of the Goths and founder of the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer". Baltimore, Md. Murray ; London : C. Retrieved 26 May — via Internet Archive. Alphonsus Liguori Parish, Peterborough, Ontario". Archived from the original on 11 August The Hymns and Carols of Christmas.

Retrieved 11 December The Life of Saint Alphonsus Liguori. Aeterna Press. Alphonsus Liguori: Doctor of the Church. TAN Books. Retrieved 4 August Alphonsus Liguori's Moral Theology". Mediatrix Press. Archived from the original on 9 April Retrieved 26 February LiguoriPaterbornp. New York : P. New York : Benziger. Opera dell' Illustriss.

Terza Edizione. Divisa in due tomi. Tomo primo. Bassano: Spese Remondini di Venezia. London : Kegan Paul, Trench. This lifelong friendship aided Alphonsus, as did his association with a mystic, Sister Mary Celeste. The foundation faced immediate problems, and after just one year, Alphonsus found himself with only one lay brother, his other companions having left to form their own religious group.

He started again, recruited new members, and in became the prior of two new congregations, one for men and one for women. Pope Benedict XIV gave his approval for the men's congregation in and for the women's in Alphonsus was preaching missions in the rural areas and writing. He refused to become the bishop of Palermo but in had to accept the papal command to accept the see of St.

Agatha of the Goths near Naples. Here he discovered more than thirty thousand uninstructed men and women and four hundred indifferent st alphonsus liguori biographies. For thirteen years Alphonsus fed the poor, instructed families, reorganized the seminary and religious houses, taught theology, and wrote. His austerities were rigorous, and he suffered daily the pain from rheumatism that was beginning to deform his body.

He spent several years having to drink from tubes because his head was so bent forward. An attack of rheumatic fever, from May to Juneleft him paralyzed. He was not allowed to resign his see, however, until InAlphonsus was tricked into signing a submission for royal approval of his congregation. This submission altered the original rule, and as a result Alphonsus was denied any authority among the Redemptorists.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. Login Register. Alphonsus Liguori". The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Retrieved Alphonsus Maria de Liguori" p. LiguoriPaterbornp. Our dream: to make the world's treasury of classical music accessible for everyone.

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