Welcome to the traditional Catholic daily devotional for Tuesday, May 20th, 2025.

It's the Feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, third class with a color of white.

In this episode, The Meditation, as I have loved you, dying to self.

Today's news from the church, Pope Leo theIV, and today's thought from Archbishop

Marcel Lefevre.

But first the collect of today's Mass.

O Lord Jesus, who bestowed on Blessed Bernardine, thy confessor, an unusual love for thy holy

name, we beseech thee by his merits

and intercession, graciously pour upon us the spirit of thy love. Some saints suffer persecution

or pushback, not Bernardine. He just seemed to charge straight at the world's problems

with a kind of holy energy that never wore out.

Born in Siena in 1380, Bernadine lost both parents by age seven.

As a young man, when the plague struck his hometown, he didn't run.

Instead, he ran the hospital, literally nursing patients daily with a team of volunteers.

He somehow escaped infection but collapsed afterwards from exhaustion.

After a year recovering and caring for an ailing ant while he was supposed to be recovering,

he asked God what to do with his life.

The answer? Join the Franciscans.

And so he did. For over a decade,

he lived in silence and prayer, until God and his superiors sent him out to preach. And so preach he did. Bernadine became the voice of 15th century Italy, walking from town to town,

drawing crowds of 30,000 people or more, calling riots,

denouncing vice, and urging conversion. He had a raspy, weak voice at first, until after praying

...