A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to the crowds, the reign of God is like a buried treasure which a man found in a field. He hid the treasure again and rejoicing at his find, went and sold everything that he had and bought that field. Or again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant's search for fine pearls. When he found one really valuable pearl, he went back and put up for sale everything that he owned and bought that pearl.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Today is the feast of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, died in 1787, a little bit after our revolutionary war.
He lived through a period of great turmoil in the church and a great political turmoil in Southern Italy and the Papal States. He also lived through a tremendous turmoil on the part of the society of Jesus, which in the second half of the eighteenth century was shall I call it? Was discontinued by the Holy See. That was when Bishop Carroll was over here. Now I had the great privilege of growing up beside a river, the Patapsco River, which is of course constitutes the harbor of Baltimore City.
And about five mill miles up the river was Woodstock, which was the fortress of the Jesuits. And then about five miles down the river in Ilchester was the fortress of the Redemptorists. They had a big house there. I guess both I know one of them's gone, Woodstock's gone, and I suppose the Redemptor's house is gone too. Anyway, I grew up with Jesuits on one side and Redemptorists on the other.
And from time to time, members of those congregations would come into our parish at Ellicott City and, give missions. So I was acquainted with these orders as they were represented by the priests who came to our little parish. Now yesterday we had the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Now his sixteenth century. Saint Alphonsus, you can he dies in '87, was born in about 1696, so roughly eighty seven years in the eighties, practically spread that century.
Now, I reread his life, And again, I know you're going to get tired of my saying this, but I don't get tired of reading it because it's the same story with all of these men. See, we have an attitude that we read about these saints and all their great works. We have we hear about what they accomplished, how their foundations have endured, and we get an impression that their lives were all one thrust, and that everybody was applauding, everybody was approving, everybody was clapping their hands. It was, you know, just a glorious journey with the objective objectives all clear, everything working smoothly and efficiently. And of course, simply nothing could be farther from the truth.
That's a simple fact. You read the yesterday we had Ignatius. How did he start? He started by by being knocked out, by his whole career, his whole life seeming to collapse. Everything seemed invented for this very promising young nobleman who was a who was a confidant of the king and the queen of Spain.
Everything seemed to have come to an end. That was just the beginning of his troubles because he became converted to Jesus Christ, and that's when his real troubles started. Not ended, but started. And from then on it was an uphill grind. If we look back and the work that he did, we see how successful it was.
He didn't see that. He only saw the next step ahead of him, which he took. Which he took. And that's the point. But when you read the life of Saint Alphontus Agora, you see something, it's the same.
Of course, the details differ, but the the theme is the same. Alphontus came from a very noble family, rich, had tutors, had everything given to Southern Italy, Naples, had everything given to him. And he was taking it he was a good young guy. There wasn't anything wrong with him. He wasn't a a young Saint Francis of Assisi running around.
He was a very serious man. He had his he knew what he was gonna do. At 16, he got his degree in both laws. And then the the patron that he was defending somehow or other caused Alfonso's to lose faith in him by some chicanery. Now that's a simple thing, but that changed Alfonso's whole life.
That thing, the fact that his employer, the man that he was defending in court, wasn't at all as faithful and as upright, the man of integrity that he thought he was, that changed Alfonso's life. He went home and start and put on clerical garb, and from then on gave himself to Jesus Christ. Now I don't care what you wanna call this. Today, you know, you talk about reborn Christians. I but it's a fact.
There's no question that with so many of these people, there was a definite moment in time when something very startling happened. Now they did not appreciate it at the moment, of course not. They may not have appreciated to their dying day. We look back and we see how things worked out. We see not only the beginning and the middle, but we all seems also see the ending.
They didn't. None of them saw that. Now showed Alphantus, then one thing led to another. He became a priest. Then then he he didn't know what he was going to do as a priest.
He saw the need for bringing the word of God, the good news, to the rural areas to and so he started what we call missions and catechism. And he saw that what was needed now notice, this is the eighteenth century, the first half of it. He he also saw the need of some good solid textbooks to guide the preachers and helping people to guide their own lives conscientiously with right principles. It's not enough to be conscientious. That's like being sincere, and you can be a devil.
No one's ever accused the devil of being insincere, has they? So the mere fact that you're conscientious doesn't mean anything. The point is to have a right conscience, a conscience which is lined up with the law of Jesus Christ. I said law, not my feelings of fulfillment and comfort and satisfaction. So one thing led to another.
He was forced to do a lot of writing. And I what I want to insist, there wasn't an year in that man's life that was free of conflict. I mean conflict on high levels with the government, with the papacy, and when the when the Jesuits were suspended, discontinued, he came under the band too to some extent. So it was a very tumultuous life. And yet that man became a bishop, a pastor, and a voluminous writer, voluminous, and a man of tremendous influence in the Western church.
Those of you who have read Newman's Apologia Provita Sue will know how much Newman made of the moral theology of Saint Alphonsus. Saint Alphonsus, he wrote a book on moral theology which he worked and revised all during his life. It became one of the most important books in Western Christendom on moral theology. Not the only one, but one of the most important. I would say one among about four.
And Alphonsus became an authority on moral theology in himself by himself. The The one thing that Alfonso stressed that I wanna bring home to you this was the freedom of the human conscience and the responsibility of the individual making up their conscience, as we say forming their conscience, on right moral principles. Now notice, right moral principles. These are objective. I don't create them.
I find them out. I discover them. I learn them. They don't come with my mother's milk. So it was so what he tried to do was to be extremely practical because here's a man who who was on the missions.
He knew what it was to preach to ignorant people. He knew what they needed, and he tried to give it to them, and he tried to give it to his seminarians. He tried to give it to men who would be their priests. Now this isn't the only work he wrote. I tell you he wrote voluminously, But this is one of his most important books, his book on moral theology, Theologia Morales.
Three volumes. And he kept revising it all during his life. He was a very sensible man. But the point I want to emphasize is his awareness of of the concrete situation in which men and women have to make up and form their consciences. You don't make up your conscience and form your conscience in the abstract.
That's for the university professor sitting up behind his desk. It's the man and the woman facing a problem here and now. Is it moral? Is it right? Is it something in accord with the law of God, or isn't it?
In other words, what must I do here and now? Here and now. And, of course, you know what the principle today is, do what you're comfortable with. If anything could be more absurd than that, I have yet to hear it. That's almost in a class with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You can't pursue happiness. That's a fiction. You can pursue things which make you happy. And so I've looked Saint Alphonsus, he's exerted and around this area, you see, the the Redemptorists were very very strong, very strong. You'll see the the big house they have in Annapolis.
They they came over here, that was their center. Then they sent their missionaries all out from the house in Annapolis and from the seminary down in Ilchester. They were extremely active, and they still are a very strong order. They have not disintegrated as much Jesuits have, by a long shot. And so today, what I wanna bring home to you is what we can learn from this great saint.
That in our station of life, not in something we are not, but in in view of what we are today, the August 1984, what is the main thing that I have to do? Is to do what a Saint Alphonsus this was his overriding principle above all other principles. Do the will of God. The will of God. And that's not a great miss mystery.
It isn't something tomorrow. It isn't some obviously, if God wants us to do his will, we've got to know it. As I say, whatever you can say about god, he's not absurd. And if he wants us to do his will, we've got to know it. But the trouble with what do we how do we expect to discover his will?
In many instances, his will isn't what we want at all. His will isn't what's going to make us comfortable at all. It may be very disruptive. Believe me. And yet that's the that's the Christian spiritual life in a nutshell.
God, what do you want me to do? With your grace, I will do it. In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit. Amen.