The motto St. Alphonsus
Ligouri chose for this beloved Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer was: "Copiosa
apud eum redemptio"--from the Latin Bible, verse 7 of Psalm 130 (the
"de profundis"). With Christ, there is Plentiful Redemption. COPIOSA APUD EUM REDEMPTIO
WITH HIM THERE IS PLENTIFUL REDEMPTION
(Psalm 130: 7)
The motto St. Alphonsus
Ligouri chose for this beloved Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer was: "Copiosa
apud eum redemptio"--from the Latin Bible, verse 7 of Psalm 130 (the
"de profundis"). With Christ, there is Plentiful Redemption.
St Alphonsus was a voice announcing the Glad Tidings of the Infinite Love of God for humanity, especially for sinners, at a time when Jansenism had spread a coldness and rigorism over so many sectors of the Church. St Alphonsus' heart beat with the Heart of Christ, the compassionate and good Shepherd, who leaves the ninety nine to search out the lost one....thus Alphonsus' commitment to preach the Gospel to "the most abandoned."
Below is just one selection from the immense body of writings of this great Doctor of the Church, yet it is very typical in its clarion proclamation of a Love beyond all expectation, beyond the wildest dreams of our own minds and hearts. This selection is taken from the opening page of his classic jewel, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ:
THE PRACTICE OF THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST,
BASED ON THE WORDS OF ST. PAUL:
"CHARITY IS PATIENT, IS KIND" (1 COR. 13:4)
ADDRESSED TO THOSE SOULS WHO ARE IN EARNEST ABOUT ADVANCING IN THE WAY OF PERFECTION
THE WHOLE SANCTITY and perfection of a soul consist in loving Jesus Christ, our God, our sovereign good, and our Redeemer. Whoever loves me, says Jesus Christ himself, shall be loved by my eternal Father: My Father loves you, because you have loved me (John 16:27).
Some, says St. Francis de Sales, think perfection means an austere life, others prayer, others frequenting the sacraments, others works. But they deceive themselves. Perfection means loving God with our whole heart. The Apostle wrote, "above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection" (Col. 3:14).
It is charity which keeps united and preserves all the virtues that render a man perfect. Hence St. Augustine said: "Love God, and do whatever you please," because a soul that loves God is taught by that same love never to do anything that will displease him and to leave nothing undone that may please him.
But perhaps God does not deserve all our love? He has loved us with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3). Oh man, says the Lord, behold I was the first to love you. You were not yet in the world, the world itself was not created, and I already loved you. As long as I am God, I love you; as long as I have loved myself, I have also loved you.
As almighty God knew that man is won by kindness, he determined to lavish his gifts upon him and so to take captive the affections of his heart. For this reason he said, "I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bands of love" (Os. 11:4).
I will catch men by those very snares by which they are naturally caught, the snares of love. And such exactly are all the favors of God to man......
"Heaven and earth, and all things, tell me to love thee," says St. Augustine. "My Lord," he said, "whatever I behold on the earth, or above the earth, all speak to me, and exhort me to love thee, because all assure me that thou hast made them for the love of me."
....But God was not satisfied with giving us so many beautiful creatures. He has gone to such lengths to gain our love as to give himself to us. The eternal Father did not hesitate to give us even his only-begotten Son: "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" (John 3:16).
When the eternal Father saw that we were all dead and deprived of his grace by sin, what did he do? For the immense love, as the Apostle writes, for the too great love he bore us, he sent his beloved Son to make atonement for us, and so to restore to us that life which sin had robbed us of, who "for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ" (Eph. 2:4-5).
And in granting us his Son (not sparing his Son, that he might spare us), he has granted us every good together with him, his grace, his love, and paradise, since assuredly all these gifts are much less than that of his Son.
And so, likewise, the Son through his love for us has given himself wholly to us. In order to redeem us from everlasting death and to recover for us the divine grace and heaven which we had forfeited, he became man and put on flesh like our own. Behold then a God reduced to nothingness. Behold the Sovereign of the world humbling himself so low as to assume the form of a servant and to subject himself to all the miseries which the rest of men endure.
But what is more astonishing still is that he could very well have saved us without dying and without suffering at all. But no, he chose a life of sorrow and contempt, and a death of bitterness and ignominy even to expiring on a cross--the gibbet of infamy, the award of vilest criminals. But why, if he could have ransomed us without suffering, why should he choose to die, and to die on a cross? To show us how he loved us. He loved us, and because he loved us, he delivered himself up to sorrows and ignominies and to a death more cruel than ever any man endured in this world.
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