“Pass It On” was a song that was prevalent through my time as a youth in United Methodist circles (the mid-to-late 1970s). The opening words are “It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.”

Today’s saint, Bernardin of Sienna, was one of those sparks. He worked tirelessly in a hospital (15th-century Italy) and was employed in helping the sick and destitute when plague swept through the area, and his hospital alone easily saw 20 deaths a day (just among those who were even brought to the hospital), coupled with a mass exodus of volunteers and hospital workers who did not want to be contaminated by contact with these infected patients.

Clearly people with good hearts were in a moral quandary: they wanted to help and not abandon their work, but the reasons to leave were mounting up–what help could they be if everyone was going to die, anyhow? what help could they be if they themselves got sick? what about the people outside the hospital depending upon them? what about… Many of these arguments bear a striking similarity to “what good can I do for people if I can’t first get elected?” as a rationalization for abandoning certain first principles under guise of doing it to preserve those very principles!

These were not bad people–those hospital workers who wanted to leave off while the pestilence was raging. What they lacked was someone willing to be a SPARK. That someone was Bernardin. He sent out the call: Give me a group of young men willing to stay and serve these suffering people right alongside me, with no hope for themselves other than a reward in heaven! In other words–I’m going to do it, and I want others to do it, in full recognition that it might well mean your own sickness and death but in recognition that it’s the right thing to do! And you know what? Bernardin ended up with a dozen young men who went “all in” to expend themselves in caring not only for the ill but also for the suffering families in their needs. They put in long hours, they forewent concerns about their own safety, they provided true presence and practical service. And they stayed for the four years of the plague.

And Bernardin, who did not himself contract the disease, was felled by exhaustion for a long spell after the plague was over–yet during his convalescence, he used that time in prayer and contemplation to discern how next he might be of use to the people of God–not meaning Christians but meaning all human beings. His next step, after recovery, was to care for a dying aunt who was blind and bed-ridden. After her death, he again drew away from others to discern his next calling. This time it was to preach. Simply. From the heart. Again–a spark to other souls.

Bernardin–thank you. On behalf of the sick you did not abandon, on behalf of the families you recognized suffered when their loved ones suffered, on behalf of those good but weak people who were wavering over where their true commitments lay, on behalf of your aunt, on behalf of those needing a spark to join themselves to something good and life-giving–thank you.