Alphonsus Liguori, Wounded Healer

Henri Nouwen’s poetic image of the “wounded healer” has been falling out of fashion in recent times, especially as both Church and State desperately try to forget the real persons who, though flawed, were the boast of their particular eras. One such person I believe is Alphonsus Liguori, whose Liturgical Memorial is August 1st. Most hagiographers are at pains to cover up his more embarrassing or inconvenient personality quirks, much like the depiction of him above tries to piously mask his chronically debilitating arthritis, which led in his later years to his being so crippled that he had to receive the Eucharist through a golden straw because he could not lift the chalice to his lips.

Perhaps more fearsome and horrible than his physical sufferings, however, were his mental and moral ones. St. Alphonsus is well known to have suffered from debilitating and episodic attacks of depression and scrupulosity. For a man of exquisite moral character, he suffered frequently under the burden that he could have been committing mortal sins. Yet it was this tormented, poor man’s grappling with this and other issues which led to him being the writer and Doctor of the Church he is known as today. Thousands, and perhaps millions, have been treated and cured of their scrupulosity as a result of his own. Even as our understanding of the neurological and psychological causes of scrupulosity have grown, his work on the subject has stood the test of time. This is true not only for the penitents he has helped, but also for confessors and spiritual directors, who have been able to consult with him over the course of three centuries. Many people suffer from maladies for which they can find no cure by themselves. Yet certain people, by their own self-reflection aided by divine grace, seem to be blessed with the ability to transmute their own suffering into a means of healing that of others. Like Moses at the Jordan River, they themselves may never be able to fully enter the land of full health of body and mind, but they are the ones who lead countless others to the fields of contentment.

It is difficult to read Alphonsus Liguori’s works without readily perceiving both his prodigious intellect and emotive, Neapolitan temperament. His Stations of the Cross, to reference just one work of his still popularly used, shows such profound sensitivity in his meditation on the Lord’s Passion, that there is a tendency among many postmodern people to dismiss his tenderness and frequent use of the superlative adjective as overwrought and exaggerated. Although I only have anecdotal data to back it up, I have found his Stations of the Cross to be beloved and used annually among Latin populations, while they are typically eschewed by Anglo-Germanic ones. One can discern in his Stations a man familiar with mental and physical anguish, as well as the feeling of abandonment by his nearest and dearest. Like many good Christians, he channeled his own experiences into his own understanding of the Mystery of Christ as lived afresh within his own life. It is for this reason that his other devotional works, such as his one on Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, or on the Martyrs or the Holy Mass, continue to be reprinted and read. Even his Glories of Mary still remains an important Mariological text, even if some of his vocabulary may strike some as exaggerated, much like that of St. Louis de Montfort. In that text, as in others, the reader encounters a paradox between his habitual sense of moral dread, and the tender filial sentiments he expresses in his Marian piety. Perhaps the one required the other, psychologically speaking. Yet even if that analysis is not completely true, it may still be helpful in reconciling his severity with his sweetness.

The Redemptorist biographer Frederick Jones in his critical biography on St. Alphonsus did a marvellous job in examining the Saint’s life in the context of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which in several respects was a ‘wild west’ of ecclesiastical discipline, quite literally in the Pope’s backyard. Far from being an aloof academic, Alphonsus’ mastery of Moral Theology was tested and refined in the mission and in the apostolate of preaching. He was an expert in human psychology, whether he was holding a lit torch aloft in a dark Church while he declaimed the terrors of hell and of the sins that led there, or as he composed hymns as densely textured expositions of Christian Dogma. Who can read or sing Tu scendi dalle stelle to this day without marvelling at its piety and luminous theological understanding of The Incarnation? His moral works which established equiprobabilism as the middle road between Jansenist rigorism and moral laxity may have been created for the sake of the theological expert, but they were first worked out in the creative spiritual tension between Christ, judge and lawgiver, and Christ healer and friend. His ‘lion in the pulpit, lamb in the confessional’ pastoral approach was extremely effective in his own day, and shows us even today how a bold, incisive homiletic style interfaces well with a compassionate confessional praxis.

Jansenism and its rigors may have faded from the popular mindset today, but we still suffer from the inversion of his pastoral approach. I believe it is self-evident how the ‘domestication’ of Christ, along with a lack of appreciation of his ‘hard sayings’ and the demands of discipleship, end by creating a people insensitive to the unicity of Christ, his claims on the individual, and his clear call in the Gospels to repentance and conversion of life.

St. Alphonsus was ahead of St. Pope Paul VI by three hundred years by being an authoritative teacher because he was first a witness. He was a witness of Christ’s passion as experienced in his own physical and mental distress. He may not have been the most effective administrator as Bishop, if we apraise him according to the unofficial 21st century model of Bishop as CEO and Chief Psychotherapist. But his influence is undeniable in its fruits. Like St. John Vianney, whose Liturgical Memorial closely follows his own, he was a strong believer in the power of the pastoral, truly conceived. Both saints knew that experience in life and spiritual self-care are proximate preparations for an effective pastoral outreach. Although we should recall St. Francis de Sales’ dictum that certain saints have elements in their lives which are more for our edification than our imitation, we may truly say that although we may never have to carry the crosses St. Alphonsus bore, and we may not address them in the same way, we encounter afresh in St. Alphonsus’ tortured, paradoxical and brilliant earthly career how the Cross of Christ truly remains a Lifegiving Tree for those eager to understand its importance in one’s own life. Only men and women of the cross are capable of bringing spiritual resurrection to the dead hearts and minds of the postmodern world.