The remarkable sinlessness of St. Alphonsus de Liguori.

 

One of my very favorite saints is St. Alphonsus de Liguori. Some of my most significant moments of “conviction of sin” came from reading his Preparation for Death, for which I hope to be eternally grateful.

The below commentary is from a talk by the English prelate Henry Cardinal Manning, given in 1864 to priests of the Redemptorist Order which the saint had founded.

Mission of St. Alphonsus.

 

And when he is come, he will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment. John 16:8

I will therefore endeavour to trace out the perfections wrought in St. Alphonsus by the Spirit of God, to fit him for the work of convincing the world of sin.

 

The first and eminent grace bestowed upon him for this end was his own personal freedom from sin. They who testify against sin must needs know it; but there are two ways of knowing sin.   There is the knowledge of the sinless: such as the knowledge which Jesus had of sin; of its deformity, its baseness, its deadliness, it deceitfulness; of all that sin is and does, save only the guilt, which by personal experience the sinless Son of God could not know.   There is another kind of knowledge of sin, which comes by sinning.   And this the world preaches as the knowledge necessary for those who would save others from sin.   This was the moral theology of Satan in Paradise: ‘God doth know, that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  

 

The farther removed from sin, the more power the servants of God have over it.   The nearer to it, the more power it has over them.   To be free from it, is the chief condition of convincing and of converting the world. 

 

Now, St. Alphonsus was in a singular manner and degree preserved from sin, from his first consciousness in childhood to the end of a life of ninety years. 

 

In the Information laid before the Holy See for the judicial process of his canonisation, it is declared, that ‘the stole of innocence which he received in baptism he returned to his Creator without a spot.’    Again, in the office which we have recited on this festival, it is declared that he had ‘a wonderful innocence of life, which he never sullied by a stain of mortal sin.’   And his confessors, after his death, declared their belief that he had never committed a deliberate venial sin.   To the end of his life Alphonsus used bitterly to lament what he called his ‘great sins.’   And these were chiefly three.

 

First, a disrespectful word spoken to his father when he was grown to man’s estate, and already in the profession of the law, at a time of life when sons believe themselves to be free, and less dependent on a father’s will.   For this fault he received from his father, before a numerous company, the chastisement of a blow.   He went to his room, and spent hours kneeling in tears and prayer; and afterwards, on his knees, asked his father’s forgiveness.   The second was, that for a time he fell into a comparative lukewarmness, during which he went to theatres, though, as he said, he did not remember committing there any deliberate sin.   Yet these he lamented to the end of his life.   Lastly, when he had failed as an advocate in some law-suit, he fell into an excess of sadness and dejection, which he traced to his self-love, and to the wound of disappointed vanity.   If such sins showed prominently upon his life of ninety years, it must indeed have been white and resplendent to give them such relief. 

 

Alphonsus, like St. Augustine, had a holy mother, to whom he traces the early horror he had for sin, and his singular preservation from it.   She used to inspire him with a hatred and a fear of evil, and to take him with her to confession every week.   She used to say, ’ I do not wish to be the mother of children who are condemned to eternal death.’   He testifies of himself in words of beautiful simplicity, at the end of his long and perilous life of labour and responsibility: ‘I am a Bishop, and I ought to tell the truth.   I do not remember ever having told a deliberate falsehood, even when I was a child.’

 

From this great innocence of life sprung another perfection — his hatred of sin.   This is always equal to the purity of the heart.   It was this which caused such incomprehensible sorrow in the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the wilderness and in the garden.   And Alphonsus, in all his instincts, abhorred the presence of evil with a supernatural hatred.   He was wont to say: ‘My God, grant that I may die rather than offend Thee.’   ‘Sin is the only evil of which we need be afraid.’   ‘No sin, however slight, is a trifling evil.’   To hinder sin for a day was enough to set him in activity.   When he heard of any scandal, he never delayed a moment.   He would take neither food nor rest till it was corrected.   Often in such times he took no food till evening.   ‘Things of this sort,’ he said, ‘admit of no delays.   It is an offence against God; and if there were but one single sin, we are bound to prevent it.’ 

 

HENRY EDWARD MANNING.

Bayswater, Feast of St. Alphonsus, 1864.

 

Source:

https://pcpbooks.org/blogs/newsletter/cardinal-manning-on-the-mission-of-st-alphonsus-liguori?

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