Today’s Saint Bernardino Realino (1530 – 1616) demonstrates that a hidden life of doing one’s duty, day in and day out, leads to great holiness. After a brief career in law, Bernardino joined the fledgling Jesuits, and spent his entire life in southern Italy, preaching missions, hearing confessions and doing whatever other sacramental or other tasks as required, teaching catechism, and ministering to the galley slaves and the poor. He died at the age of Omnia in caritate – all things in charity. He was locally known to be a holy man, even if the Father Bernardino himself did not think so. After a fall, his health began to decline in 1610, but he kept going, until confined to his deathbed in 1616. The magistrates of Lecce asked him to be their patron saint when he went to heaven. Perhaps as a sign, they took some of his blood, which, according to reports, later miraculously liquified after his death.
Father Bernardino died peacefully on July 2nd, 1616, whispering “GesĂą … Maria“. Would that all went the same way. Father Realino was beatified by Leo XIII in 1806, and canonized by Pius XII in 1947. May he inspire us all to strive for holiness in all those things, perhaps great but mostly small, to which we are called.
