To immediately access free online The Glories of Mary by St. Alfphonsus Audio or Book, please skip to the end of the post.
When I first came across the Glories of Mary, I was about 12 years old. I eventually found it buried in a box of books in the cellar of my grandmother’s house.
At the time, my sister, Christine, and I had claimed my grandmother’s basement as our personal club house because it was super awesome! It was strewn with 40s ballgowns and blingy satin spike heel shoes. A big old sink that smelled of beach guarded the entrance to the cellar from the house, and one of the first models of Singer sewing machines sat on a rug remnant. There was also a life-sized picture of Jesus standing straight up which my sister and I were afraid to pass by. One time, after having disobeyed Grandma by playing with lots of rusty, dangerous tools in my Uncle Franky’s deserted workshop, it took us 10 minutes to run by Him as we had to shore ourselves up. It was one of those paintings where the eyes follow you-so scary and cool!
There were piles of antiquated religious books and one voluminous dictionary. We liked the dictionary because it was too heavy to pick up. We had to go to IT to look up a word. I tried reading some of the old books, but I was 12, you know. I’d usually give up after having read one page that I’d flipped to in the middle .
However, The Glories of Mary struck my heart. I learned that Mary loved me so much and that ANY sinner could be saved by her intercession. The saint writer was clearly in love with Mary, and there was a lot of information about her that I didn’t know. The Glories of Mary filled me with warm, positive emotions and hope for Heaven. It was weird because the book was riveting to me after having briefly tried several other Catholic books and deciding to toss them aside. Later on, I found out that the writer, Saint Alphonsus, was the saint on my birthday. It made me feel as if he somehow sat there with me and encouraged me regarding this particular book.
Well, eventually, the winter storm of 1977 revved up and threw the Atlantic Ocean from across the street into our cellar, and so we lost our “happy valley” with all of its treasured objects. However, Christine and I were really very excited by the whole affair as we got to wade waste deep in the Atlantic Ocean while it was sitting in my grandmother’s cellar while singing Beatle’s songs at the top of our lungs. As you can well imagine, the waste-deep-wading didn’t go over well with Grandma, and we got in big trouble. Grandma was also deeply upset and burdened by the damage the flood brought, but the magic of being 11 and 12 is that you have little to no empathy. So Christine and I ended up being just jazzed and feeling that it was a fun and fitting end to our boss hideout.
I think The Glories of Mary was the only thing that survived the surge because it was the only thing I took upstairs to my room. I take it as a good omen. Because I saved it, I think it just might save me.
Here is Chapter 1 Part 1 from The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus Audio :
https://archive.org/details/glories_of_mary_amb_1407_librivox/gloriesofmary_01_liguori_128kb.mp3#
Here is the link to the free online Book: http://www.themostholyrosary.com/the-glories-of-mary.pdf