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Hey there, Spouse. Today is Wednesday, August 25th, 2021. Today is also the feast day of St. Louis King of France. Now, all week, we have been talking about the eighth and final beatitude. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We've already looked at the example

of St. Rose of Lima's life, who willingly accepted all sorts of suffering out of love for

Jesus. And yesterday we talked about the gift of the cross,

how suffering really is a gift and how the Christian life is a battle

that is so worth fighting because the reward is heaven.

Now today we are going to continue to examine a saint's life.

Remember I told you that no matter who the saint is,

we can find evidence of suffering that they happily accepted out of love for Jesus. And that is true

for St. Louis, King of France as well. Now, this is a difficult one because he was a king. He was a very

wealthy king. He wasn't born to a poor family and had suffering right away. Instead, he found

ways to suffer out of love for Jesus. So St. Louis King of France lived during the Middle Ages during the 1200s, and he actually

became king when he was still a small child when his father died. Eventually, he came of age and took

control of the country, and he is remembered as one of the most beloved kings in French history.

And this is for a number of reasons.

The first one is that he totally reformed the criminal justice system in France.

At the time, it was very corrupt.

If you were poor, you were very quickly convicted.

If you were rich, you were very often not convicted.

But King Louis decided to overall everything to put in other measures to ensure fairness.

And he also was the first person to come up with the concept of innocent until proven

guilty. This is something that we hear in our court system all the time,

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