The Little Number of
Those Who Are Saved
Saint 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.
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