St. Alphonsus Ligouri and the Mercy of God

This Witness is adapted from a talk offered at the All Saints Club.

To introduce St. Alphonsus Ligouri, I would like to explore how God worked through him for the good of the Church and how he has helped me grow in my walk with Christ. He is a Doctor of the Church, born near Naples, Italy in 1696. At the age of 16, he earned his doctorate and went on to become a successful lawyer. After a minor but humiliating mistake while arguing a case, Alphonsus left behind the practice of law, and later while visiting the poor and sick in a local hospital, he discerned a call to leave behind the world and to become a priest. In 1726, he was ordained and dedicated himself to working among the poor in Naples.

As a preacher, confessor, and moral theologian, he was renowned for his simple preaching and compassionate and balanced approach to morality, emphasizing the mercy of God. In 1732, he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, also known as the Redemptorists, which was committed to preaching missions in rural areas and city slums. Thirty years later, Pope Clement XIII named Alphonsus the bishop of Saint Agatha of the Goths in Italy. Alphonsus at first tried to refuse by appealing to his age and bodily ailments, but eventually he accepted. Over thirteen years as a bishop, he addressed abuses by the clergy, reformed the local seminary, and sold his belongings to feed the poor during a famine. As he aged, he suffered greatly from many infirmities including arthritis, deafness, and blindness. He also faced many spiritual trials and temptations, including a dark night of the soul and scrupulosity. After retiring from his post as bishop, he went to live with the Redemptorist community before dying at the age of 90 in August of 1787. He was canonized in 1839 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1871.

Saint Alphonsus stands out to me in how his work was used by the Church to train priests as a counter to Jansenism. Jansenism was a 17th century school of thought that has been condemned by the Church. It grew from a very rigid interpretation of St. Augustine’s thoughts on grace and predestination. In Jansenism, God is presented as a merciless judge, and salvation was only for a select few. The teachings enforced that humanity was so depraved from original sin that God’s grace was irresistible and that the human will is incapable of responding to God’s grace freely. All these thoughts resulted in strict, moral rigorism that led to extreme scrutiny in confession. Many people were denied absolution. Jansenists even imposed severe restrictions on the reception of holy communion by the faithful to prevent people from receiving communion unworthily. Under Jansenist thought, the Sacraments were rewards for the elite few instead of medicine for sinners. The heavy focus on divine justice and wrath fostered increasing struggles of scrupulosity and guilt-ridden consciences among the faithful.

St. Alphonsus’ moral theology acted as a great balm to Jansenist errors. Alphonsus’ motto was ‘with him is plentiful redemption’ (Psalm 130:7). This set the tone for his teaching that emphasized God’s love for all sinners and the abundance of salvation available to us through Jesus Christ. He saw perfection as grounded in the love of God and not in the moral perfectionism of human beings. Alphonsus treated the sacraments as food and medicine for souls, an approach that helped confessors take a more merciful approach to the faithful and focus on saving souls instead of punishing sinners.

I am someone who has struggled with accepting that God truly loves me and has forgiven me, and I often gravitated towards moral rigidity and elevated God’s justice over his mercy in my own life. This has made it difficult to see God as a loving and merciful Father who desires to see me living in the freedom of his mercy and grace. Although I grew up Lutheran, I found that throughout much of my earlier life I struggled with shame and habitual sins and I had a hard time seeing myself as good. Throughout my reading of Scripture, I found myself gravitating towards the moral certainty of many of God’s moral laws. Even when I was told that I was forgiven and loved by God, I would quickly revert to striving for moral perfection instead of reveling in His grace.

When I entered the Catholic Church, I received the grace of freedom from some of those habitual sins I’d struggled with for a long time. I was amazed, but as time went on, I found myself struggling to approach Reconciliation and would often leave the sacrament asking if I had confessed my sins adequately. Had I told everything necessary to the priest? Was I truly forgiven? I agonized over these questions and soon began combing through memories of past faults to see if they were mortal sins I needed to take to Confession. Was I really in a state of grace and should I be receiving Communion?

In all this agony, I came across a ministry operated by a Redemptorist priest called Scrupulous Anonymous. Through this I was referred to a book authored by that priest titled Understanding Scrupulosity. His thoughtful answers to questions he had received over the years of his ministry helped me understand that I struggled with scrupulosity. By applying the moral principles of St. Alphonsus Liguori, this priest provided me with better ways to think and deal with intrusive thoughts that led me to doubt God’s love and forgiveness. The most important: when I am uncertain about whether I had committed a mortal sin or made a sufficient confession, I should trust in God’s mercy. Through the great work of St. Alphonsus Liguori, his moral theology, and those dedicated to his work, I know true perfection is found in God’s great love and mercy for me and all people through Jesus.

Josh Vensky