March 2014
I read the sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori for all the Sundays of the year. Although they placed a fair amount of emphasis on the fearfulness of hell, I liked them. A lot is expected of us, but the reward is very great.
I didn’t know that St. Alphonsus expanded the idea of redemption to include the infancy story (of Jesus), which Fr. John Kingsbury explained in his article, “St. Alphonsus and the Link Between Crib and Cross” (December 2013). The stations to help people meditate on Jesus and the infancy story are moving.
In the book Trustful Surrender to Divine Provi- dence: The Secret of Peace and Happiness (Tan Books, 1984), Fr. Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombie?re explain Jesus’ dying on the cross as an act of self-sacrificing love. I also understood this concept through Lutheran and Methodist beliefs. As a child, I wanted to be Catholic like my mother’s side of the family. It’s difficult to say how we get to where we are—genes, upbringing, something we get from Jesus and the saints?
In Martin Luther’s The Small Catechism, under the third article of the Creed it says, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” When
I read this, at about age thirteen, I thought, I believe this. Like Fr. Kingsbury’s discovery in the chapel that day—God was watching.
B. GREENE, GA