Welcome to the traditional Catholic Daily Devotional for Saturday, May 10th, 2025, is the Feast of St. Antoninus,

third class with the color of white. In this episode, The Meditation, Month of Mary, Help of Christians,

the devotional book Eastertide day by day, today's news from the church, the election of Leo the 14th,

and the end of the conclave,

and today's thought from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

But first the collect of today's Mass.

O Lord, may the merits of St. Antoninus,

thy confessor and bishop, help us.

And just as we praise thee for the wonders thou hast wrought in him,

so may we glory and thy mercy towards us. So you've never guessed that a man so small

and so frail would become one of the greatest moral theologians in church reformers of the 15th century.

But that's exactly who St. Antoninus of Florence turned out to be.

Born in 1389, young Anthony Pirotzi was nicknamed Antoninus or Little Anthony, either because

of his stature or his fragile health, but don't let that fool you. He was already knocking on

the doors of the Dominicans in Fiasole by the age of 15, asking to join their order.

The prior, kind of unsure of how to turn away this impetuous boy, told him he could enter if he first memorized the entire Decretum of Gratian, the canon law code of the time.

Most boys would have walked away.

Antoninus came back within the year, having done it, and done it perfectly.

Once inside the order, Antoninus led by quiet example.

He was elected a prior at a young age and became known more for his character than his speeches.

A gifted teacher, though, he eventually compiled a massive moral theology

text called the Summa Morales, aimed at helping ordinary people live faithfully in everyday life.

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