St. Bernardine of Sienna

Dear students, dear faithful

This day is the feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, a saint whose life and merits had far reaching influence even here in Poland through his friend St. John of Capistrano. The reform of the franciscan order, which gave birth to the Bernadines, had enormous effect in the defense and increase of the faith in Poland. Yet is perhaps by the devotion he encouraged to the Holy Name of Jesus and May that he is more known. The symbol that you see on the altar, the IHS, is a symbol popularized by him, and it stands for the greek abbreviation for Jesus, from whose letters you can form the phrase: Jesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Savior of men. He was renown throughout all Italy especially for his preaching which reformed all society, planting virtues where once vice reigned.

One of the principle devotions of St. Bernadine was to Our Lady. In fact he owed his conversion largely to his involvement with the confraternity of Our Lady attached to the hospital Santa Maria della Scala. He consecrated most of his early religious life to the help of the sick in the hospital, but his apostolate as a preacher was impeded because he was born with a speech defect that made him very difficult to be understood. No matter what zeal he put into his sermons he was always a disappointment for his hearers. After many years of efforts, he would often stop his sermons and cry in frustration, at being unable to communicate to others his burning love for Our Lord. Yet at last, after twelve years of struggles, Our Lady heard his prayers and miraculously his impediment disappeared in 1417. From that day forward and in thanksgiving for such a miracle he never let a day pass without preaching in honor of Our Lady.

One day, preaching in praise of the Blessed Virgin, he applied to Her the verse of the Apocalypse: “A great sign appeared in heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun...” At once a brilliant star appeared over his head. He was understood, when he spoke in Italian, by listeners of the Greek language who knew only their maternal tongue. The miracles that accompanied his preaching were numerous, and though he spoke very simply his words burned in the hearts of his hearers such that they embarked on a life of virtue with zeal and ease.

This devotion of our saint of today for Our Lady, the marvelous efficacity which it gave to his preaching, brings us to mind the preparation of our school for the consecration to Our Lady which will be in just 12 days. Our school, as we saw last week, is by its very nature a continuation and instrument of the magisterium of the Church, or rather of the preaching of the Church. Just as in the life of St. Bernadine we can see the enormous graces flowing from devotion to Our Lady in his preaching, we likewise beg of Our Lady for similar fruits flowing from the total consecration of our school to Our Lady.
We have seen the various mysteries of Our Lady, and yet there is one mystery that is most important for the work of our school and the work of education in general. Our Lady, we have seen, is the Immaculate Conception, she is also the Mother of God. Yet the work of the Redemption, of which she is an intrinsic part of, is shown especially by her presence at the foot of the Cross. She is not only the Mother of God, she is also our Mother. Yet she becomes our mother exactly at that moment when she stood at the foot of the cross.

It was in fulfilling her first religious duties as a mother, the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem, that her cooperation in the work of the Redemption was announced by St. Simeon. He said that a sword would pierce her heart [Lk 2,35]. And yet the Evangelist St. John tells us, that as Our Lord hung upon the Cross, there stood by him Mary, His Mother. What is astonishing, or rather supernatural, in the motherhood of Our Lady, is the two-fold love that unites her to her Son and to her mission in the Mystical Body.

On the one hand, like every mother, she loved the life of her Son, cherising it most of as it was a divine life, the life of the Son of God. No mother ever loved her child as the Virgin Mary, the holiest of all pure creatures, loved her Son. Her Immaculate Heart was pure in every respect, granting to that most pure maternal instinct the perfection of the most noble sentiments. Every mother worthy of the name would give their own lives for their children, as a mother by her very nature gives herself for others. No words, no description, no tears can do justice to what agony must have filled every part of her being upon seeing the tortures inflicted upon her Son.

Human nature, when put in confrontation with suffering which surpasses its ability to endure, is provided with such things as fainting spells and swoons which suspend the workings of our sensitive faculties in order to prevent those painful impressions from affecting the heart and even causing death. And yet we read in the Gospel that she stood at the Cross. She stood with all the strength of her soul. She stood, with her eyes fixed upon her Son as the sword pierced her heart. She stood in acceptation of that same sacrifice which the Son of God accomplished in that moment. The sacrifice that Our Lord offered at that moment was the same that she also offered - whereas He offered His human nature to God the Father, she offered Her only Son.
Although Our Lady loved the natural life of Our Lord in a degree commensurate with her perfection and dignity as mother, she also loved the decree of God that declared that the human race must be saved by sacrifice, by the only sacrifice that was at once human and divine. Just as Our Lord represented the new Adam, the redeemed humanity reconciled to God by the sacrifice of the Cross, so Our Lady represents and figures the new Eve, the mother of all the living who partake in the fruits of this one sacrifice. In offering of her Son to the torments of the Passion and the death of the Cross, she merits in a secondary manner the fullness of the merits of her Son.

And it is exactly on the Cross that Our Lord will recognize her merits and her intimate connection with that one sacrifice: Mother, behold thy Son. [Jn 19,26]. And in order to show us that all the graces that Our Lord won for on the Cross must pass also through her maternal hands, He then says to St. John: behold thy mother.

The reality of grace, in our present condition, cannot be separated from the reality of suffering, my dear faithful, especially in the work of education. Original sin has created a disorder in our nature that must be brought back into harmony with the original plan of God, and this disorder can only be reestablished by grace which flows from sacrifice. With every act of virtue there is something of a martyrdom and passion, that is to say, the death of sin so that grace might reign. Just as on the Cross the fault of the old Adam was washed away, so also by our daily mortifications and struggles our faults and imperfections are also slowly cleansed. And just as at the Cross, there stood Our Lady, so also in our carrying of the Cross in imitation of Our Lord, there must also be Our Lady, standing by and encouraging us.

IT is especially Our Lady that will remind us that learning and study is often not very pleasurable, and that it is in some ways very painful. And yet the rewards are infinitely greater than our meagre inconveniences. It is true that putting into memory all the facts and figures, and trying time and time again the same exercises with so little to show for it can be frustrating and even painful. And yet it is only painful if we try it without Our Lady. It is she that makes the Cross, by her presence alone, not only understandable, but even a paradise, for it is there that we receive her as our mother. It is there that she shows us the sweetness of love, a sweetness that flowers by what it offers, namely itself.

And so my dear students and dear faithful, let us put into practice this mystery of Our Lady by constantly reminding ourselves of her presence in the times of difficulty, and to call upon her aid. By this act of consecration we will, like the Apostle St. John, receive her unto his own. [Jn 19,27]. So then, in imitation of the great St. Bernadine of Sienna, and hoping likewise that Our Lady's intercession produce also extraordinary fruits through our school, let us pray to her, let us love her, let us do all through her through whom we have Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth world without end, Amen.