The Little Number Of Those Who Are Saved (Saint Leonard Of Port Maurice) & The Sign Of The Cross
Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, O.F.M., (Italian: San Leonardo da Porto Maurizio) (born 20 December 1676, at Porto Maurizio on the Riviera di Ponente; died at the friary of St. Bonaventure, Rome, 26 November 1751) was an Italian Franciscan preacher and ascetic writer.
St. Leonard of Port Maurice was a most holy Franciscan friar who lived at the monastery of Saint Bonaventure in Rome. He was one of the greatest missioners in the history of the Church. He used to preach to thousands in the open square of every city and town where the churches could not hold his listeners. 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. 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. 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. He also gave us the Divine Praises, which are said at the end of Benediction. But Saint Leonard’s most famous work was his devotion to the Stations of the Cross. He died a most holy death in his seventy-fifth year, after twenty-four years of uninterrupted preaching.
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. This sermon, like his other writings, was submitted to canonical examination during the process of canonization. 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.
The reader who meditates on this remarkable text will grasp the soundness of its argumentation, which has earned it the approbation of the Church. Here is the great missionary’s vibrant and moving sermon.
A book that examines the sign of the Cross made by Christians since the primitive church up until the 19th century. It looks at stories of miracles and the writings of the father to impress upon the reader the need to make the sign of the cross reverently and frequently.
Jean-Joseph Gaume was a French Roman Catholic theologian and author, who wrote numerous books on theology, history, and education.
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Regina caeli
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Proulx, Richard
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Sublime Chant: The Art of Gregorian, Ambrosian & Gallican Chant
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