The Sermons of St. Alphonse’s Liguori, For All the Sundays of the Year, by St. Alsphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Bishop of St. Agatha, Founder of the Redemptorist Order, and Doctor of the Church,
This book, if you are a Christian, will literally scare the Hell out of you.
If you are not a Christian but hold out even the slightest hope you possess an immortal soul, this book should scare the Hell out of you.
If you do not believe, I pray that you find the courage and curiosity to read the book anyway.
St. Liguori is best known as a moral theologian, but he wrote on many subjects in a practical way that could be widely understood. He executed his pastoral work with passion and seemingly endless energy. He believed that not a second of his life should be wasted, that every moment should be devoted to doing God’s work.
This book of 53 sermons, following the liturgical year, is tough love. Now, I have been attending Mass every Sunday and many times during the week for about 25 years, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been preached to about Heaven and Hell. And the few times these topics have been addressed, the message was delivered in the mildest terms possible.
Not so with St. Alphonsus. He describes Heaven in all of its glory and Hell in all of its horror — not in general or theoretical terms, but in very specific and tangible terms. And, he talks about Heaven and Hell constantly: every sermon at least touches on these subjects, and a great many of them deal with Heaven or Hell primarily. Here is but one small example:
“The bodies of the damned are called carcasses, not because they are dead (for they are living, and shall be for ever alive to pain), but on account of the stench which they exhale. Would it not be very painful to be shut up in a close room with a fetid corpse? St. Bonaventure says, that if the body of one of the damned were placed in the Earth, it would, by its stench, be sufficient to cause the death of all men. …”
Such images (and there are many) are not conjecture, not rhetorical flourishes dreamed up by St. Alphonsus; he, like the lawyer he was trained to be, backs up all of his assertions with quotes from the Bible (Old and New Testaments), the Apostles, Doctors of the Church, and other prominent, respected, authoritative sources from the time of the Apostles to his own day. His breadth and depth of learning are phenomenal, which is why, along with his clear reasoning, these words (which we are so not used to hearing) ring true.
Time and time again, the saint drives home the point that death is certain, and that we have one opportunity — one — to be saved. We either wind up Heaven for all eternity, bathed in the glory of God, or we wind up in Hell, tormented beyond our imagination for eternity.
These are big stakes. And yet, as his sermons drive home, we (no different now than in St. Alphonsus’s time), don’t think about this incredible choice, of how much we have on the line and how much it matters what we do, what we think, and what we believe.
Instead, we fritter away our time on unimportant, worldly matters that are of no importance at all by comparison. We should be thinking about how lucky we are that God created us, how lucky we are that Jesus Christ suffered a horrible death so that we might be redeemed, and how lucky we are that the Holy Spirit is within us to give us the hope of salvation. Do we appreciate how great these gifts are? Do we accept and respond to these great gifts and gain Heaven, or do we turn a blind eye and bring ourselves to ruin? This is what each sermon is about.
The ways we are to respond are presented in practical terms, in helpful terms. For instance:
“He who judges without certain grounds that another has committed a mortal sin is guilty of a grievous fault. If he only rashly suspects another of a mortal sin, he commits at least a venial offense. But, to judge or suspect evil of another is not sinful when we have certain grounds for the judgment or suspicion, However, he that has true charity thinks well of all, and banishes from his mind both judgments and suspicions. ‘Charity thinkers no evil’ — I. Cor., xiii. The head of families are obliged to suspect evil which may be done by those who are under their care. Certain fathers and foolish mothers knowingly allow their sons to frequent bad company and houses in which there are young females, and permit their daughters to be alone with men. They endeavor to justify their neglect of their children by saying: I do not wish to entertain bad thoughts of others. O folly of parents! They are in such cases bound to suspect evil which may happen; and, in order to prevent its they should correct their children. But they that are not entrusted with the care of others, ought to abstain carefully from inquiring after the defects and conduct of others.”
(The passage above should be glued to every social media site on earth.) St. Alphonsus says these things out of love; he desperately wants sinners (that is, all of us) to understand where we stand and what is at stake. And he doesn’t give us any wiggle room. Today’s soft preaching doesn’t do us any favors. If salvation is difficult, if it is for the few, if there is the possibility of an eternity of torment, then soft preaching that lulls us into a false sense of security is not helpful — in fact, it may even be sinful if it leads people to drop their guard and squander their chances for salvation. You won’t have to worry about that problem here:
“St. Paul tells us, that we have to contend not with men like ourselves, made of flesh and blood, but with the princes of Hell. ‘Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers’ — Ephes., vi, 12. By these words he wishes to admonish us that we have not the strength to resist the powers of Hell, and that to resist them the divine aid is absolutely necessary: without it, we shall be always defeated; but, with the assistance of God’s grace, we shall, according to the same apostle, be able to do all things, and shall conquer all enemies … Let us, then, be careful not to trust in our resolutions: if we place our confidence in them, we shall be lost. When we are tempted to relapse into sin, we must put our whole trust in the assistance of God, who infallibly hears all who invoke his aid.”
Soft preaching encourages us to go to confession, that it’s good for the soul. St. Alphonsus says:
“God has made sin shameful, that we may abstain from it, and gives us confidence to confess it by promising pardon to all who accuse themselves of their sins. But the Devil does the contrary: he gives confidence to sin by holding out hopes of pardon; but when sin is committed, he inspires shame, to prevent the confession of it.”
Now there is an insight you can use, and a solid reason to make haste to the confessional. And this is certainly his design: the saint is magnificently effective in creating a sense of urgency about matters that are truly urgent. He points out again and again that our next breath might be our last. Our deaths are certain, but the time of our death is unknown to us. Therefore time is of the essence in getting our souls in order. And to the saint’s great credit, he gives us practical advice on how best to use our time, and exactly what it is we should do. He instills fear and trembling not as an end, but simply as a means to make us do what we know we should do but don’t do because we are human beings: lazy, complacent, confused, distracted, skeptical, stubborn, and proud.
The book is not fun to read. It will (or should) make you question everything you have done, everything you have said, and everything you have thought — as well as everything you have not done, everything you have not said, and everything you have not thought. In other words, it will inspire a complete and uncompromising examination of conscience and give you the courage to pursue a life that is filled with divine joy and stop immediately the frustration and anger and fear and sadness that come from living for worldly things.
Structure of Sermons
The structure of St. Alphonsus’s sermons reminded me of the music of the Baroque period in which he lived. His sermons, like Baroque music, are tightly and intricately structured and yet contain great passion and meaning. At the beginning of the book, St. Alphonsus describes in great detail how a sermon should be constructed. In essence, the recommended structure is quite similar to what we learned in sales training: “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell ’em, and then tell ’em what you told ’em.” All 53 sermons have a nearly identical structure, including an introduction, one main point, one or two secondary points, a remedy, and an exhortation to act now. Very persuasive, very clear. There’s no effort to be creative in terms of style or advice, but the power of his words and the clarity with which they are delivered reaches the mind and the heart in equal measure — again, much the same way that Baroque music affects the listener.
