Stephen Cox's St. Alphonsus for the 21st Century is a new book on the life and writings of St. Francis de Liguori, better known as St. Alphonsus the Redemptorist.
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00:00:30.000St. Alphonsus, he says, a priest gives greater honor to God than all the angels and saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary that they've ever given because their worship cannot be of infinite value. He's talking about the sacrifice of the Mass.
00:00:44.000Hey, my friends. You know what I love? I love it when authors, professors, or writers are really generous.
00:00:59.520By taking a complex topic, summarizing it, and giving us the jewels out of all of their hard labor, their research.
00:01:10.880And we've got a new book out on St. Alphonsus de Liguori, who has very, very extensive writings.
00:01:17.880Except that we get to boil it down to the jewels, and it's done by none other than Stephen Cox, LifeSite News, his own writer.
00:01:26.580And he's put out a book called St. Alphonsus for the 21st Century, which I'm sure you're going to love.
00:01:33.020We're going to talk about it here on the John Hunter Weston Show. Stay tuned.
00:01:59.380Yeah, so I would like to say that I chose St. Alphonsus, but I think more or less he chose me.
00:02:04.860Ten years ago, when I was in my late 20s, I just happened by chance to...
00:02:09.780I was living with a friend of mine at the time. We were former college friends.
00:02:13.500And he moved back into town. And just one night, we were chatting in the living room.
00:02:18.200And there was a stack of books. I said, what are all those? Because they were a foot tall.
00:02:22.540And I said, where did you get those? And he said, oh, I just found them at some bookstore or something.
00:02:27.260And we were talking about spiritual topics. And I just opened it up.
00:02:31.920And it was St. Alphonsus. And it was all of his old books from the 1800s when they were printed.
00:02:36.600He actually lived in 1696, lived till 1780s. But the books I had obtained were just so powerful.
00:02:44.100And I was reading them. And the quotations that St. Alphonsus was using, I mean, he was quoting from church fathers, from almost every book of the Bible.
00:02:52.600And I, within 10 minutes, just was so blown away by it.
00:02:56.500And I said, where has this been my entire life? I mean, where, why don't priests preach like this anymore?
00:03:02.840Why don't, we hear this from the popes, for that matter, just the sound grasp of the traditions of the church.
00:03:10.280And so, over time, it just became a desire to really reach those family and friends who I had been trying to, you know, make more aware of the issues going on in the church, as well as this basic spirituality.
00:03:27.980And I wasn't having great success. And so, I said, you know, I saw what St. Alphonsus did for me in my own spiritual life and understanding of our faith.
00:03:37.780And so, I said, this has to be more well-known. And so, I think just providentially, using my God-given talents and all praise to God for any good this book does, it just kind of happened that way.
00:03:50.240And so, here it is, finally, 10 years later, after a long journey.
00:03:55.300Beautiful. What did you really hope to convey in here? I see it has a lot of prayers of St. Alphonsus that are usually not found.
00:04:04.560Where did you get those from? And what do you think will be the takeaway for most people?
00:04:10.720Yeah, so, a lot of the prayers that he has are in just the various writings that he's had published.
00:04:17.200But everywhere I was reading, they were not in any one single space.
00:04:20.880So, it was a challenge to find all of those, gather them together, and present them in one place for people who want to read them all in this spot.
00:04:29.340Yeah. I think, to backtrack a bit, I think, you know, you have to go back to their founding of the Redemptorist Order by St. Alphonsus.
00:04:36.340And he was one of eight children. Two of his brothers entered religious life. Two of his sisters entered religious life.
00:04:42.900And he was not, he didn't become a priest. He didn't enter the seminary until he was 27.
00:04:49.100Very successful lawyer. His father was grooming him into that career, and he was very successful at it.
00:04:54.200And so, he was among the nobility in Naples at the time, again, the 1700s.
00:05:00.420And his career was on that trajectory. His father wanted him to be married, arranged for him to be married.
00:05:06.160But he gave that all up after losing a court case, a very profound and very important court case.
00:05:11.980And so, to understand, I think, the parallels is St. Alphonsus gave all that up to go and found the Congregation for the Most Holy Redeemer
00:05:20.040to preach to the peasants in the Italian countryside, basically. People laughed at him for doing that, for giving up his fame and his career.
00:05:29.580And, you know, I look back at that, and St. Alphonsus gave that all up to preach to the most abandoned souls.
00:05:36.720That's the motto of the Redemptorists. And you look around today, where are we at in the church's history?
00:05:42.260We are so far away from the church's traditions. We're abandoned by our flock, our shepherds.
00:05:52.740And so, there's a parallel there, I think, to be said. And, you know, that's why I think St. Alphonsus needs to be understood again today.
00:05:59.260And primarily, I think, about what he says about the priesthood. So, we'll probably get into that in just a moment.
00:06:03.480But that, I think, will probably be the biggest takeaway, St. Alphonsus' teachings on the priesthood, on religious life, seminarians.
00:06:11.660And there's also a section in the book about women religious. And so, it's for everybody, really, this book, for everyone at different stages in their lives.
00:06:20.660So, what is it about the priesthood that he says that's so striking today that makes it seem like we're, you know, where we need to head in his direction or back in his direction, if you will?
00:06:32.900Right. Well, I mean, growing up, I went to Catholic grade school, high school, even college, and for grad school.
00:06:40.140And the thing you often hear is the church today rails against clericalism, this undue power of just obeying whatever the priest or the bishop says, and that's it.
00:06:53.100And today, there's sort of an improper exaltation of the laity when it comes to the church's divine mission.
00:06:59.400But St. Alphonsus reiterates, and here's, I'll give you a direct quote.
00:07:04.600He says, a priest gives greater honor to God than all the angels and saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary that they've ever given because their worship cannot be of infinite value.
00:07:14.960And he's talking about the sacrifice of the Mass.
00:07:17.600And he goes on, the power of the priest surpasses that of the Blessed Virgin because she cannot absolve even one sin.
00:07:23.920Okay. And so when I first understood that, I mean, that is something that St. Alphonsus says, confession frees the soul from the claws of the devil, from the snares of hell.
00:07:40.160And when a priest does that, that's something Mary could not do, the angels cannot do.
00:07:46.840And that understanding of the priesthood, as well as what St. Alphonsus says about when the priest says the words at the consecration in Mass, God himself obeys him.
00:08:01.520He will descend to the altar at Mass, and so the priest must be pure.
00:08:07.860The priest must deny himself in all sorts of ways, his tastes, his preferences, and live only to pleasing God.
00:08:16.760I think when you hear about that, and when you really read it in the book, when it presents itself, you think about, you know, what's the state of the clergy today?
00:08:26.420What is the state of the church today? I mean, priests don't wear their cassocks, something St. Alphonsus says priests should be doing at all times.
00:08:36.200Priests should not, should be ignoring, here's another quote, his own conveniences, his interests, and amusements.
00:08:43.400I mean, really what it gets down to is we have to have a proper hierarchical understanding, not an egalitarian, flattened, sort of synodal church.
00:08:52.980We have to have that proper understanding of the priesthood, what they do, and their power, because, and priests have to understand that too.
00:09:02.680There's a quote in the book that St. Alphonsus says,
00:09:08.820The good morals and the salvation of the people depend on good pastors.
00:09:15.980If there is a good priest in charge of the parish, you will soon see devotion, flourishing, and people praying.
00:09:21.300Hence the proverb, like pastor, like parish.
00:09:23.740So, if there's not, as it is the case today, people are not praying.
00:11:42.140I mean, his father, again, tried to arrange marriage for him twice.
00:11:45.440And it was at this famous court case involving the Grand Duke of Tuscany when he was 26.
00:11:52.220And he lost the case, despite everyone in the kingdom knowing what this case was about.
00:11:59.960And he had been having so much success.
00:12:01.840And it was scuttled not through, or he lost the case, rather, not through his own negligence,
00:12:07.360which is just something that historians actually suggest or say happened quite a bit.
00:12:12.220Actually, there's been recent scholarship that discovers that the judge was actually bribed with a pair of bears, of all things, at the time, again, in the 1720s.
00:12:22.540And that a cardinal was involved with some of this.
00:12:25.580And the Medici, the very famous Italian Medici family, lawyers were his opponents.
00:15:10.800So, you learn about his private life as well as some of his other pastoral accomplishments.
00:15:16.960What I found truly fascinating was that despite his absolutely brilliant intellect, he actually made it his mission to go and talk to the outcasts, to the poor, to the...
00:15:29.540But they, you know, how would they understand him even?
00:15:32.000Well, this is the great thing about St. Alphonsus, is that there is a section in the book about preaching.
00:15:39.460He said, I never gave a sermon that the littlest old lady in the back of the church could not understand.
00:16:37.000A lot of priests, even very good holy priests, they will sometimes, particularly when traveling, let's say, not wear their cassocks because it's, you know, they get spit on or it's uncomfortable.
00:21:16.080And to visit the Eucharistic Adoration.
00:21:18.140Okay, so these are the two very big things that St. Alphonsus says, especially for laity, but especially to seminarians and priests, is to make frequent visits to Eucharistic Adoration as often as possible.
00:21:28.640He also says to obey your superior, unless there is any sort of dramatic, sinful command.
00:21:39.260Be willing to be humiliated in your community.
00:21:42.260And it actually makes the interesting point that in all the communities that there are, religious vocations, even if there are saints among them, God's going to allow some irritation to happen just based on the variety of souls, personality differences, and things like that.
00:21:58.960But St. Alphonsus says it's for the seminarians' own good that that happens, because it keeps them mindful of the fact that heaven is not on earth, that dealing with others and offering that suffering up is part of the priestly life.
00:22:16.200And to pray always, prayer is oxygen for the soul, I've read elsewhere, St. Alphonsus agrees with that.
00:22:23.420And he mentions that entirely in his writings.
00:22:26.180He says the priest has to devoutly pray his office.
00:22:29.500And again, the seminarians, as well as nuns, need to understand, to offer all of that up, and to be committed to their vocation, and to say, unless I want to be a saint, don't enter unless you want to be a saint, is what he says.
00:22:46.600If you don't have the attitude of giving all to God, don't enter.
00:22:51.500And he says, actually, one last point, John Henry, to the young women, he tells them married women, he actually advises several of the young women who asked, he wrote letters to him, he wrote thousands of letters, his letters are beyond scope.
00:23:07.100He said, look at married women, they have to deal with husbands, children, in-laws, birthday, all these things.
00:23:13.300The happiest women on earth are those in the convent.
00:23:15.720And he says, if more women understood this, everyone, every woman would be a nun.
00:23:20.160And I think that's keen advice for young women today, to consider that.
00:23:28.320It's such a glorious vocation, and St. Alphonsus encourages both young men and women in his writings.
00:23:33.800So, yeah, he definitely gives great advice to seminarians and those who want to pursue the priesthood.
00:23:42.300Hey, my friends, now is the time to stand up and fight.
00:23:44.900We are just about to have the Synod on Synodality, and everything that you've seen indicates that it's going to be an absolute disaster.
00:23:55.060We have Father James Martin as a personal appointee of the Pope speaking at it.
00:24:03.900These picks of the Pope to engage in this Synod are indicative of where we're going.
00:24:10.280We're going into heresy, and at these times of great crisis, the church, especially those called in the laity to work for the glory of Christ and his church, are called to gather and strategize.
00:24:26.620Back in 2014, LifeSite launched something called Rome Life Forum.
00:24:30.580It was a gathering at that point of some 75 life and family leaders from all around the world to strategize as to what we could do.
00:24:38.960And when we gathered, the majority of people were most concerned about what?
00:24:43.460About Pope Francis, about what was going on in Rome.
00:24:47.380But this was 2014, but the life and family leaders saw it first.
00:24:53.700Now, a decade on, we are confronted with some of the most severe challenges the church has ever faced.
00:25:00.420And so, our tradition at LifeSite is to continue with Rome Life Forum, which has continued every year until we had to take a break over COVID because we weren't permitted.
00:27:28.000And St. Alphonsus most importantly says, though, to be a child of Mary, we have to give up sin.
00:27:33.620We have to be worthy of her protection by following in the footsteps of her son, Jesus Christ.
00:27:40.760So we can't expect Mary to intercede for us during our last hours or when we're judged if we haven't been availing ourselves to her protection.
00:27:50.500And, you know, one thing he personally did, Mary appeared to him on several occasions when he was preaching one time in Italy.
00:28:00.880He elevated off the ground one time when he was giving a sermon on her.
00:28:04.780The laity said his face shone very sparkling.
00:28:09.200Our Lady of Perpetual Help, she was actually the icon of her was given to the Redemptorist Order by Pope Blessed Pius IX in the 1800s.
00:28:18.500So they're the actual protectors of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
00:28:23.260St. Alphonsus fasted on Saturdays throughout his whole life.
00:28:28.060He wore chains around his neck to make eating an act of mortification.
00:28:33.880He sprinkled bitter herbs on his food.
00:28:37.440And he always instructed his priests to give sermons on Mary.
00:28:43.200And he always said those were some of the most edifying sermons the priest ever gave.
00:28:47.860So he was very devoted to the Blessed Mother and encouraged great devotion to her.
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