Thoughts From St Alphonsus For Every Day In The Year

Thoughts from St Alphonsus for Every Day in the Year, compiled by C. McNeiry and published by Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd in 1927, is essentially a spiritual appointment book for people who felt that beginning the morning without several stern words from an eighteenth-century Catholic saint represented an unacceptable decline in standards.

St Alphonsus Liguori was not, it must be said, a man particularly associated with frivolity. Founder of the Redemptorists, bishop, theologian, moral philosopher and eventually Doctor of the Church, he spent rather more time contemplating salvation, prayer, virtue and the alarming consequences of human weakness than he did recommending that everyone simply relax and see how things turn out.

Here his thoughts have been arranged into a devotional reading for every day of the year, allowing the conscientious reader to receive a measured daily quantity of spiritual reflection without having to tackle the saint’s considerably larger theological output before breakfast.

It is a wonderfully old-fashioned concept: one book, 365 days, and absolutely no possibility of receiving a notification saying ST ALPHONSUS HAS POSTED A NEW THOUGHT.

Instead, you open the book.

This revolutionary analogue system requires no password, subscription, charging cable, software update or acceptance of revised terms and conditions. Indeed, a copy published in 1927 has already demonstrated rather impressive backwards compatibility with the human soul.

The subjects are naturally the serious ones. Faith, prayer, humility, temptation, repentance, eternity, suffering, divine love and the general business of trying to conduct oneself properly while inhabiting a world which frequently offers easier alternatives. St Alphonsus was writing for people who regarded eternity as considerably more important than whatever they happened to be doing on Thursday afternoon, and the tone reflects that priority.

There is something rather appealing about the discipline of the format. You are not expected to read the whole thing in one heroic burst and emerge forty minutes later spiritually perfected. One thought a day will do. Tomorrow there will be another. Christianity, like most substantial projects, apparently benefits from sensible scheduling.

And because this is a book from 1927, it possesses all the physical seriousness that modern motivational literature often struggles to achieve. No smiling celebrity on the cover. No enormous subtitle promising that seven simple habits will transform your income, relationships and abdominal muscles. Just dark cloth, restrained gilt decoration and THOUGHTS FROM ST. ALPHONSUS announced with the confidence of a volume which sees no particular need to sell itself to you.

The cover even looks as though it might disapprove slightly if left unread.

Burns Oates and Washbourne were major Catholic publishers, and books of this sort formed part of a substantial devotional culture in which religious reading accompanied ordinary domestic life. A volume might sit beside a bed, on a small table or among the family books and quietly remain there for decades, dispensing the same reflections to successive generations.

This particular copy has done rather well at the remaining-there part.

Published almost a century ago, it is offered in Good condition, with the sort of general age and wear entirely reasonable in a devotional book which has had approximately 36,000 opportunities to provide its designated thought for the day since leaving the publisher.

It has no ISBN, naturally. In 1927 the international book trade was somehow able to operate without attaching a thirteen-digit numerical identity to everything, relying instead upon such primitive technologies as titles, authors, publishers and knowing what book you meant.

A pleasing little piece of Catholic devotional history, suitable for collectors of religious books, Christian spirituality, St Alphonsus Liguori, early twentieth-century publishing or anyone who rather likes the idea of beginning each day with somebody from the eighteenth century quietly reminding them that there are more important things in existence than emails.

Thoughts from St Alphonsus for Every Day in the Year — 365 opportunities for moral improvement, conveniently spread out so as not to overdo it.

Published by Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, 1927.
Compiled by C. McNeiry.
No ISBN.
Condition: Good.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — providing daily thoughts considerably less profound than those of St Alphonsus, but fortunately not yet collected into a volume.

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