St Bernardine of Siena

We honor today a saint who spent all his life trying to turn people towards God. Born on September 8, 1380, he was a well known preacher who traveled all over Italy, calming hot-headed people, and attacking paganism which was prevalent in many towns. He was often seen preaching to as many as 30,000 people. The Pope compared him to St Paul, the itinerant preacher with an extraordinary energy to project the message of the Gospel in people’s hearts. His only weakness was a low soft voice, often hoarse with all the preaching, of course at a time when microphones and loudspeakers were only a dream.

When he was only 20, a plague devastated Siena and neighboring towns, and yet Bernardine with some friends did their best to help the patients, even though they were facing a contagious and deadly disease. When he escaped the plague, he suffered from high fever and other illnesses which today would have been easily dealt with by penicillin or antibiotices, but this was the 15th century. Yet he recovered and at the age of 22  he joined the Franciscans and was ordained a priest two years later. Even when he tried to live in solitude, his superiors realized the gift he had for effective preaching and begged him to travel on a preaching mission. No wonder he always was losing his voice! He had a special devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus and even created the acronym for the name of Jesus, IHS (Iesus Huios Soter) the first 3 letters of the name of Jesus in Greek. This symbol was reappearing on churches, missals, tabernacles, altars, pulpits and even hosts. When he started his missionary work, he had 300 Franciscan students, and when he died he had 4,000. He kept preaching until he died on May 20, 1444, precisely during one of his preaching expeditions.