Homily for Tuesday, 1 August 2017– Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori

Tuesday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 33:7-11, 34:5b-9, 28; Psalm 103:6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13; Matthew 13:36-43

How many of us enjoy friendly conversation? This may include most if not all of us. When was the last time, then, when you have had a friendly conversation with God? Might this second question be somewhat more difficult for us to answer than the first?

The saint we celebrate today, Alphonsus Liguori, is famous for having been a lawyer, with expertise in both civil law and Church law. St. Alphonsus is known as a prolific writer and a brilliant moral theologian. Yet among his many writings is a fairly obscure book called How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God.

Might any of us be thinking: Who could possibly claim to be an expert on How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God? It is difficult enough perhaps to maintain a regular habit of prayer, let alone to understand prayer as friendly conversation with God, in our busy, competitive world full of distractions from God and from prayer. But St. Alphonsus insists on this in his book: “Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with God,” St. Alphonsus says, “Speak with familiarity and confidence as to your dearest and most loving friend. Speak of your life, your plans, your troubles, your joys, your fears. In return, God will speak to you–not that you will hear audible words in your ears, but words that you will clearly understand in your heart. These may be feelings of peace, hope, interior joy, or sorrow for sin… gentle knockings at the door of your heart.”

Speak with God “as to your dearest and most loving friend.” St. Alphonsus Liguori’s suggestion to us on how to pray is beautiful, but he did not invent it. In fact, do we not hear a precedent in speaking with God as with a friend in our reading today from Exodus? We hear that, whenever the people of Israel “made camp” during their journey back home from Egypt, Moses would go to another tent, called “the tent of meeting,” and there “the Lord” would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”

What a lovely image we have of friends in conversation, God with Moses! Many cultures have long had difficulty conceiving of God as our friend. Aristotle strongly maintained that people could “not be friends with gods.” Even elsewhere in our Bible, we hear that nobody may see the face of God and live. And then we hear of Moses doing just this, seeing the face of God and not only living, but conversing with God as a friend.

In his conversation with God, Moses is able to acknowledge God’s mercy; God’s “steadfast love and faithfulness” toward his people Israel in the desert, and is able to ask God for forgiveness of the people’s sin. This became exactly the way in which St. Alphonsus Liguori would suggest we pray: Speak with God “as to your dearest and most loving friend,” and God will speak back to us in the form of “feelings of peace, hope, interior joy, or sorrow for sin… gentle knockings at the door of” our hearts.

May God give us the grace to pray as Moses did; as St. Alphonsus Liguori did, conversing with God familiarly, as a friend.