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Feast of Saint Alphonsus
Today is one of IHM Congregational Feast Days … Saint Alphonsus of Liguori. We’ve invited our IHM Sister and A Nun’s Life friend Sister Joyce Durosko, IHM, to reflect with us on the life of this saint.
Alphonsus Liguori, the Saint we honor today: Nobleman, Lawyer, Hospital Minister, Preacher of Missions, Chaplain, Artist, Musician, Poet, Man of Letters, Mystic, Spiritual Director, Founder, Friend of the Poor, Moral Theologian, Superior General, Bishop, Saint and Doctor of the Church. Obviously, Alphonsus was a very gifted person about whom each of us might want to know more.
Saint Alphonsus’ life extended through most of the eighteenth century (1696-1787). Basically, he was committed to preaching missions, along with the Redemptorist Order that he founded, among the abandoned rural poor around Naples, Italy.
There is so much to say about this great man but in this reflection, I want to emphasize his friendship with the poor, who in turn befriended him leading him to a deep and transforming union with God.
“It is evident that fidelity to the promptings of the Spirit was what led St. Alphonsus to leave his world in order to assume that of the poor and most abandoned, just as it is fidelity to that same Spirit that has led some religious to choose to live among, with, for and out of the world of the poor. They embrace the physical, geographic, and human situation of the poor as a focus of their encounter with God.”
~ Jorge Colon Leon CSsR
In this context, says, Father Leon, the poor are seen as a theophany, for in them the transcendent God makes himself present, causing us to question our bourgeois attitudes, calling us to consider whether our ministry choices-personal, community, or worldwide are really in line with call of the Gospel. There is a strong link, insists Kevin Dowling, CSsR, between allowing ourselves to be called by the poor or evangelized by the poor and explicit, prophetic and liberating proclamation of the Gospel to the poor.
My own IHM congregation of Monroe, Michigan was founded by a Redemptorist priest, Father Louis Gillet CSsR. His zeal for poor, educationally deprived girls challenged him to establish a Catholic school in 1845 on the River Raisin frontier in Monroe. That school still exists today in the form of a consolidation referred to St. Mary Catholic Central.
But more than beginning a school for poor girls, Fr. Gillet, needed women religious to staff this school, so he thought, if I can’t find them, I will make them. Thus, began the establishment of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1945. Our charism explicitly calls us to serve the most abandoned wherever we find them.
So I ask myself and you, the reader, to ponder: In the light of the Gospel, in what ways can I be involved in action to break down the sense of isolation and alienation among the poor and marginalized in my area or situation? How can I actively participate in poor people’s organizations and movements which focus on economic and political structures and systems? How can I personally live in unity with the poor from the faith perspective that we are one community in Christ? How can the Nunslife community as a group express some form of solidarity with the poor and marginalized?
The following is a link to all the 111 writings of St. Alphonsus which are available to the reader at no cost. Though the eighteen century language might not be the readers’ style, the beauty of his words and mystical expressions of his deep love for God is quite profound. Celebrate this great feast and treat yourself to some beautiful writings of a very talented and great saint.
~ Sister Joyce Durosko, IHM
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{ 2 comments }
my dad works as a drug and alcohol counselor for homeless health care in chattanooga, tennessee. i go by the county’s homeless kitchen now and then, these days just to eat and see old friends (some are homeless for decades), but once to cook and serve on holidays and other days i could get away. it turns out that homeless people are exactly that: people. human. real. i knew that, in my brain, but after i started this practice in my 20s my heart learned it, too. i can’t get there as often as i want anymore, but i remember.
Beautiful reflection and very important questions, S. Joyce. It’s easy for us to become complacent with our situation or to resign ourselves to the reality that all struggle in some way so we give up any hope of making difference. Yet in light of the Gospel and because of the reality of community, we can all strive to live the words of Blessed John Paul II when he visited Giant Stadium in 1995, “There is no one who is too poor to give, nor anyone who is to rich to receive.” A challenging, yet prophetic reality. The poor may not have material things to share but instead the riches of wisdom and the rich may not have need of material things but instead the riches of wisdom.