Alphonsus Liguori

She is also the means which we must make use of to go to Him.

St. Alphonsus Liguori If Jesus is the Father of our souls, Mary is also their mother.

For she, by giving us Jesus, gave us true life, and afterwards by offering the life of her Son on Mount Calvary for our salvation, she brought us forth to the life of grace.

St. John Marie Vianney All the saints have a great devotion to Our Lady.

Thus, St. Bernard teaches, such is God's will that we should have all through Mary, i.e. grace, union with Christ, salvation, eternal life.

And St. Bonaventure calls Mary the most faithful mediatress of our salvation.

Thus, St. Alphonsus Liguori teaches, God is the source of every good and the absolute master of all graces.

Mary is only a pure creature who receives whatever she obtains as a pure favor from God.

And even in this life, we know that this encounter makes us happier than anything else ever could.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori lists all the saints who, no matter what their circumstances, could barely stand the happiness that came from real intimacy with God.

And he writes about how Saint Philip Neri, after he had gone to bed, was so delighted with the goodness of God that he would say, "Oh, Lord, let me go to sleep." Or while he was working tirelessly in the mission fields of India, Francis Xavier, filled with joy, would reach for his heart and shout, "Enough, Lord, no more consolation.

My heart can bear no more." And then Saint Alphonsus ends with his own exhortation, "Oh, taste and see," says David, "that the Lord is good.

Quote from St. John Bosco, Patience smooths away lots of difficulties.

Meditation of the day, an excerpt from A Year with Mary by St. Alphonsus Liguori, page two twenty-two.

In this valley of tears, every man is born to weep, and all must suffer by enduring the evils that take place every day.

But how much greater would be the misery of life if we also knew the future evils that await us? Unfortunate indeed would be the situation of someone who knows the future, says the pagan Roman philosopher Seneca.

No prayer, sin is tolerated, then conscience is dulled, and then deeper spiritual vulnerability.

I want to continue with a quote from one of my favorite saints, doctor of the church, doctor of moral theology, is St. Alphonsus Liguori.

Those who pray are certainly saved, and those who do not pray are certainly damned.

Now, I say all this to say I want to make a few important points here because I think the whole of the Internet and the Catholic world, we're kind of too obsessed with either apologetics, intellectual content.

And so I started to live it and started to really think about what is prayer doing here in my life? besides, of course, my way of expressing my love for Jesus Christ.

Number one is you don't receive the graces you don't pray for.

This is something that I got from the book Prayer, the Great Means of Salvation and Perfection by St. Alphonsus Liguori, where it goes through all the Catholic traditions, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and so many other great saints from early, early on, doctors of the church, where they said, well, First of all, you can't say that you truly love God if you don't pray and you don't get the graces you don't ask for.

He gives it to us precisely because We ask you to listen.

Amen.

Quote from St. Alphonsus Liguori.

When an evil thought is presented to the mind, we must immediately endeavor to turn our thoughts to God or to something which is indifferent.

But the first rule is instantly to invoke the names of Jesus and Mary and to continue to invoke them until the temptation ceases.