Episode 322: St. Thomas of Villanova

Saint Thomas, the glory of the Spanish Church in the sixteenth century, was born in the diocese of Toledo in 1488. His mother was a Christian of extraordinary tenderness for the poor. God worked a miracle for her one day, when her servants had given away absolutely all the flour in their storeroom. When another beggar came to the door, she told them to go back once more and look again, and they found the storeroom filled with flour. Her son Thomas followed his mother's example, and one day gave away, to six poor persons in succession, six young chicks from his yard. When his mother asked where they were, he said, "You didn't leave any bread in the house, Mama, so I gave them the chicks! I would have given the hen if another beggar had come."