Hail, Saintly Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696 AD - 1787 AD).    St. Alphonsus was born near Naples to an impoverished noble family.  The eldest of seven children, St. Alphonsus from an early age displayed great talent for music as well as a quick and powerful mind, and his parents placed great hopes in him.   However, St. Alphonsus' parents were very pious persons whose first care was to ensure their gifted son was well-formed in the Faith.  From his father St. Alphonsus learned to put the things of God first, and each year, St. Alphonsus and his father made a retreat together. 

It was decided that St. Alphonsus should enter the legal profession.  He earned his Doctor of Laws at 16, and at 19 began practicing law in the courts of Naples.  Years of success followed, until a spectacular defeat in an important case caused by a misreading by St. Alphonsus of a critical document, led him to withdraw from the profession permanently.  "World, I know you now. Courts, you shall never see me more,"  the disillusioned Saint is supposed to have said. 

St. Alphonsus thereupon devoted himself to prayer and works of charity.  In obedience to an interior voice which told him "Leave the world and give thyself to Me,"  St. Alphonsus vowed to become a priest, and was ordained at the age of 30.  In his long career, St. Alphonsus labored as a missionary within Naples, founded and led the religious congregation known as Redemptorists, published more than one hundred books, including a seven volume study of moral theology, and served as bishop of a Neapolitan diocese. 

St. Alphonsus was canonized in 1839, and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1871.

The following is taken from St. Alphonsus Liguori's "The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ:"

St. Augustine says, that "not to go forward in the way of God is to go backward."  He that makes no efforts to advance will find himself carried backward by the current of his corrupt nature.

They, then, who say "God does not wish us all to be Saints" make a great mistake.  Yes, for St. Paul says, “This is the Will of God, your sanctification.” [1 Thess. iv, 3.] God wishes all to be Saints, and each one according to his state of life: the religious as a religious; the secular as a secular; the priest as a priest; the married as married; the man of business as a man of business; the soldier as a soldier; and so of every other state of life.