![]() The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were his crusades. So brilliant and holy was his eloquence that once when he gave a two weeks' mission in Rome, the Pope and College of Cardinals came to hear him. He used to preach to thousands in the open square of every city and town where the churches could not hold his listeners. He was one of the greatest missioners in the history of the Church. Saint Leonard of Port Maurice was a most holy Franciscan friar who lived at the monastery of Saint Bonaventure in Rome. Here is the great missionary's vibrant and moving sermon. The reader who meditates on this remarkable text will grasp the soundness of its argumentation, which has earned it the approbation of the Church. In it he reviews the various states of life of Christians and concludes with the little number of those who are saved, in relation to the totality of men. ![]() This sermon, like his other writings, was submitted to canonical examination during the process of canonization. One of Saint Leonard of Port Maurice's most famous sermons was "The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved." It was the one he relied on for the conversion of great sinners. He died a most holy death in his seventy-fifth year, after twenty-four years of uninterrupted preaching. But Saint Leonard's most famous work was his devotion to the Stations of the Cross. He also gave us the Divine Praises, which are said at the end of Benediction. He was in no small way responsible for the definition of the Immaculate Conception made a little more than a hundred years after his death. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |