Are many Adult Christians Saved!

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I came across this sermon recently which is quite sobering. It is something to be printed off and meditated on. The full sermon is at olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml Once you have done this, please comment. This is important for every catholic to get a grip of.

The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved

by St. Leonard of Port Maurice

Saint Leonard of Port Maurice was a most holy Franciscan friar who lived at the monastery of Saint Bonaventure in Rome. He was one of the greatest missioners in the history of the Church. He used to preach to thousands in the open square of every city and town where the churches could not hold his listeners. So brilliant and holy was his eloquence that once when he gave a two weeks’ mission in Rome, the Pope and College of Cardinals came to hear him. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were his crusades. He was in no small way responsible for the definition of the Immaculate Conception made a little more than a hundred years after his death. He also gave us the Divine Praises, which are said at the end of Benediction. But Saint Leonard’s most famous work was his devotion to the Stations of the Cross. He died a most holy death in his seventy-fifth year, after twenty-four years of uninterrupted preaching.

One of Saint Leonard of Port Maurice’s most famous sermons was “The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved.” It was the one he relied on for the conversion of great sinners. This sermon, like his other writings, was submitted to canonical examination during the process of canonization. In it he reviews the various states of life of Christians and concludes with the little number of those who are saved, in relation to the totality of men.

The reader who meditates on this remarkable text will grasp the soundness of its argumentation, which has earned it the approbation of the Church. Here is the great missionary’s vibrant and moving sermon. For sermon go to olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml
 
Yes, there are few who are saved. St Augustine even came up with massa damnata.
 
I have read that article before. I think it is somewhat true. You can never know how many people are going to be saved and you can not know the strictness of Gods judgement. I do think it is tough though to get to Heaven because it is so simple to choose to do evil and to choose not to do good. God wants us to do good, we are his hands and his feet here on earth, and by not doing good we are not doing his will.

It is so easy to choose the wrong thing because of peer presure or just the want to not feel any pain.
 
My view is that we walk a fine line between presumption and despair to cooperate with the grace of God and therefore gain eternal life.

Unless we constantly live a penetential life, and detest sin, we are more likely to succumb to presumption than despair.

The sermon is sobering as it calls us to really have a good look at ourselves in the context of us being one of the few or many.
 
Well, thanks. That’s just about the most depressing thing I’ve ever read.
 
I am hesitant to go beyond what the Church has said as part of the deposit of faith.

The percentage of people in hell, the names of any individual in hell and whether it is a majority of minority are all issues that go beyond what the Church has spoken on. This is an area of legitimate discussion, though.

I would not despair, though, for we do have hope. This basic virtue allows us to trust in the love of a gracious God.
 
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