English: Saint Alphonsus Mary de Liguori.
Русский: Святой Альфонс Лигуори.
Беларуская: Святы Альфонс Лігуоры.
Author: cssr
(Wikimedia Commons)
This Article is taken from “The Liturgical Year”,
by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 13.
Time After Pentecost.
Book IV.
Yesterday, we admired, in Peter and The Machabees, the substructure of the Palace built by Wisdom in time to endure for Eternity. Today, in conformity with The Divine Ways of that Wisdom, who in her playing reaches from end to end, we are suffered to contemplate the progress of the glorious building, to behold the summit of the work, the last row of stones actually laid.
Now, summit and foundation, the work is all one; the materials are all priceless: Witness the diamond of fine water which displays its lustre today.
To this great Saint, great both in works and doctrine, are directly applied these words of The Holy Ghost: “They that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all Eternity”. At the time he appeared, an odious sect was denying The Mercy and The Sweetness of our Heavenly Father; it triumphed in the practical conduct of even those who were shocked by its Calvinistic theories.
Under pretext of a reaction against an imaginary school of laxity, and denouncing with much ado some erroneous propositions made by obscure persons, the new Pharisees had set themselves up as zealous for the Law.
Stretching The Commandments, and exaggerating the sanction, they loaded the conscience with the same unbearable burdens which The Man-God reproached the ancient Pharisees with laying on the shoulders of men; but the cry of alarm they had raised in the name of endangered morals had, none-the-less, deceived the simple, and ended by misleading even the best. Thanks to the show of austerity, displayed by its adherents, Jansenism, so clever in veiling its teachings, had too well succeeded in its designs of forcing itself upon The Church in spite of The Church.
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Unsuspecting allies within The Holy City gave up to its mercy the sources of Salvation. Soon, in too many places, The Sacred Keys were used to open Hell; The Holy Table, spread for the preservation and increase of life in all, became accessible only to the perfect; and these latter were esteemed such, according as, by a strange reversion of The Apostle's words, they subjected The Spirit of Adoption of Sons to The Spirit of Servitude and Fear.
As to The Faithful, who did not rise to the height of this new asceticism, “finding in the tribunal of Penance, instead of fathers and physicians, only exactors and executioners,” they had but to choose between despair and indifference.
Everywhere, legislatures and parliaments lent a hand to the so-called reformers, without heeding the flood of odious unbelief that was rising around them, without seeing the gathering storm-clouds.
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