You're listening to the SSPX Podcast. We're happy to present another installment of true heroes.

Stories of the Lives of the Saints, delivered by Father Thomas Tam. Father is also put together a

video of each of these episodes. You can see the video at SSPX Podcast.com. Now here's Father Tam.

Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace or to accept a lofty vocation,

God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts the spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand.

St. Bernardine of Siena.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to True Heroes.

Today we're going to discuss the life of St. Bernardine of Siena,

who dedicated his life to the service of others and preaching the Word of God,

especially devotion to His Holy Name.

Let us begin his story.

In the year 1400, a young man came to the door of the largest hospital in Sienna.

A plague was raging through the city, so horrible that as many as 20 people died each day just in the hospital alone.

Seems not all that significant considering what we're going through right now, but anyway.

And many of the people who died were those who were needed to tend the ill.

It was a desperate situation.

More and more people were falling ill and fewer and fewer people were there to help them.

St. Bernardine, who was the young man standing at the door, offered to run the hospital,

and with the help of the other young men with him, nursed patients there for four months.

He escaped the plague himself, but was so exhausted that a fever confined him for several months.

He spent another year, caring for a beloved aunt whose parents had died when he was a child,

and at her death began to fast and pray to know God's will for him.

...