Poor Alphonsus ...

     I was not very inspired today when approaching this post.  The gospel was the same as yesterday, and the first reading listed the vegetarian preferences of the Hebrew people.  I'm not a vegetable person, and would have enjoyed the "tasty cakes", even if they were made from manna.

     Anyway, I was showing our secretary an app that I had downloaded called the Roman Catholic Calendar.  It gives a run down of the saints of the day.  Today is Saint Alphonsus Liguori, and I knew a little of him as founder of the Redemptorists and as a bishop and Doctor of the Church.

     But as I read the description of his life on the Calendar app, I had to laugh.  He was from Naples, and was trained as a lawyer.  But he lost a high profile case by misinterpreting a key document which in fact proved the case for his opponent.  It says that "he immediately left the law and studied for the priesthood."  Talk about a career change.  I wonder if the seminary questioned his reasons for entering?

     But God works in mysterious ways.  Alphonsus became a priest, and boasted that he never delivered a sermon that the poorest old woman in the congregation could not understand.  Actually, that is a tremendously powerful boast, and a wonderful gift that God gave to him.  He loved the liturgy, and prayed it in a dignified way.  He founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in 1749.

     The other thing that made me smile was that, according to this source, the founding of the Congregation proved to be troublesome.  Their formal establishment was delayed for ten years because of bickering, and in his retirement in his 80's he tried to make peace within the factions, but with no success.  In fact, the two separate Congregations at the time each rejected him.  The group that he founded didn't want him.  It wasn't until after his death that unity was restored.

     If these facts are not accurate, I offer apologies to the Redemptorist Community.  But it made for some very real and human response to difficult situations.  In the end, Alphonsus is a great saint known for his holiness, his moral teachings, and his patience and moderation with sinners.  God is very good and generous - to Alphonsus, to his brothers, to you and me.   "Poor" Alphonsus is indeed "rich" in blessing.