The eighteenth century is often called an age of “Enlightenment,” a period marked by skepticism, worldliness, and a turning away from God in favor of constructing a purely human society. Yet long before this crisis emerged, God had already prepared an apostle to confront it: St. Alphonsus Liguori. Renouncing prestige, legal success, and worldly advantage, he placed Christ at the center of his heart and devoted his life to setting souls ablaze with love for the Redeemer.
But the roots of St. Alphonsus’s mission reach even deeper, into the hidden and extraordinary life of a woman chosen by God to shape the very character of the Redemptorist family: Blessed Mary Celeste Crostarosa. Originally a Carmelite, she later joined another community where God revealed to her the Rule of the Most Holy Redeemer. Her revelation became the foundational inspiration for St. Alphonsus’s new congregation.
This biography unfolds the profound spiritual closeness between Mary Celeste, St. Alphonsus, St. Gerard Majella, and the early Redemptorists. At the same time, it invites the reader into her interior life—a life marked by contemplation, mystical graces, miraculous interventions, and deep union with God. Her path was not without suffering: she endured persecution, misunderstanding, and painful trials, yet always returned to prayer with humility and trust.
As The American Ecclesiastical Review observed: “The contemplative and mystic life of Sister Mary Celeste is a true drama. At each step the supernatural direction of Providence is manifest. God chose to use her as His chief instrument in revealing to St. Alphonsus his life’s work—the foundation of the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer.”
This is a sweeping and spiritually rich portrait of two great figures whose fidelity helped renew the Church in an age of confusion.
