Padova

Arrived in Padua today for a few days of prayer and retreat at the tomb of St Anthony.  Be assured that I will remember all those who read this blog in my prayer at his tomb.  If you have any petitions, send your Guardian Angel with them to me. You'd never think it, but you have to tread carefully when it comes to St Anthony: two countries claim him, and give him their own title.  His native Portuguese call him Anthony of Lisbon, and the Italians invoke him as Anthony of Padua and see him almost as a naturalised citizen.  Others know him as Anthony the Opportunist who hides what you are looking for, makes you promise cash to get them back, and then produces the lost object and, bingo!  Pay day!  That is extortion, and we all keep him in business.

Seriously, St Anthony is one of the most loved of all saints, and rightly so.  My devotion to him springs from my inheritance from my grandfather.  Though he had died years before I was born, my grandmother gave me a prayer card which he had cherished in life - it was of St Anthony.  I still have it, carefully preserved.  Apart from his prowess in finding the lost, he is one of the Church's great Scripture scholars and preachers, and as such encourages us to make Scripture part of our daily lives - reading it, meditating on it and living it.

For what it is worth, I am posting the homily I delivered in his Basilica, during the Fraternity pilgrimage to Turin and Padua.  Many of the pilgrims have requested a copy of it, so here it is.  Forgive the typos and mistakes.

Mass at the Basilica of St Anthony (Il Santo), Padua

13^th May 2010

When Friar Anthony from Portugal was asked to preach a sermon at an ordination because there had been confusion over who was to speak, the experience would prove to be much greater than anyone had anticipated.  They did not expect much – he was Portuguese – so not a native speaker of Italian; he had seemed rather quiet, and while faithful to his duties in the kitchen of the hospice of San Paolo, he did not give the impression of being very learned.  Besides, there would be a number of Dominicans present and with their being renowned for their ability to preach, the poor Friar Anthony would be a meagre offering: it would be down to Franciscan humility and spiritual poverty to excuse his efforts.  However, when Anthony began to speak, everyone was taken by surprise, not only was he eloquent, not only was he learned, but he knew the Gospels and Holy Scriptures so intimately that he seemed like a living icon of the Word of God himself.  When St Francis heard of it, he immediately wrote to Anthony, calling him “My bishop”, and asked him if he would become the theologian of the new Order, and devote himself to teaching and preaching. Francis who knew Christ intimately recognised another who knew Christ in the depths of his soul and could entrust to him the formation of the friars. Later, in 1946, when he was declared a Doctor of the Church, St Anthony was given the title Doctor Evanglicus – the Evangelical Doctor - the Doctor of the Gospel.

As we gather in his basilica, near the ark which contains his sacred remains, we come to honour one of the Church’s most popular saints, but also to listen to him as we continue on our pilgrimage-retreat towards the Solemn Exposition of the Holy Shroud.  To seek the Face of Christ – as this is our theme, indeed the desire of our lives, was also St Anthony’s desire.  As he opened the Holy Gospels, therein, living and breathing in the Spirit, he found the Face of Christ:, Jesus, the Word of God present in the Scriptures.  And so Anthony, on fire with this encounter, proclaimed he whom he had met in the Gospels to the world.  A man transformed by the One he met in Scripture, continues to preach right down to our day for all who are prepared to listen.     When he was canonised on the 30^th May 1232 he was not a year dead, such was the popularity and obvious sanctity of this humble friar. This popularity continues, yet for all of it, Anthony’s life and mission remains a mystery to many who see him as no more than an aid in finding lost objects.  The treasure which is St Anthony is not his ability to push the forgetful in the general direction of a lost possession, but rather his ability to lead the faithful on the path to Christ so they may find again the road to heaven and win the treasure which God has stored up for those who are faithful. 

Anthony was born in Lisbon, in Portugal, just beside the ancient Sé, the magnificent cathedral of the city.  In that holy place he was baptised, and in its shadow he grew up in a devout family, discerning a vocation to the priesthood and religious life.  He joined the Augustinian Order and was ordained.  In an attempt to escape the continual visits of his family, he asked to be sent to the Order’s community in Coimbra to dedicate his life to prayer, study and service.  It was there in 1219 that he met a group of five Franciscan friars going out to Morocco to reach the Gospel.   The following year, he was preset when the remains of the five who had been martyred were being brought to their resting place.  Their example inspired him to seek admittance to the Franciscan Order – to leave behind the ease of the Augustinian life and embrace the poverty and simplicity exemplified by the now famous Francis who was still living in Italy and inspiring a real reform in the Church.  Receiving the Franciscan habit in Coimbra, he set out for Morocco, to preach the faith and be martyred, but his health was bad, and he was sent back to Europe – to go Italy, making his way to Assisi for the General Chapter of 1221.  

Looking so sickly when he arrived, he found it difficult to get an appointment – they did not expect him to live long.  However, out of pity’s sake he was sent to work in the kitchens of the Hospice of San Paolo where his skills were discovered.  Once he was appointed theologian of the Order, he spent the rest of his life travelling around Italy and Southern France preaching against the heresies of the day, working miracles and astonishing all by his humility and obvious sanctity.  He drew huge crowds who came for many miles to hear him.  In early 1231 he had his famous vision of the Infant Jesus, and on the 13^th June of the same year, he died in the Poor Clare convent in Arcella at the age of 36.  After a row over where his holy body should be buried, he was brought back to Padua which he had made his base in the last years of his life.  A few years after his swift canonisation this magnificent basilica was built over the chapel in which his body was entombed.   St Bonaventure in 1263, when Minister General of the Franciscan Order, had the Saint’s body examined a few years after his death and found his tongue and vocal cords, the organs of his preaching, incorrupt.

St Anthony of Padua, the teacher of the Gospel urges his listeners, his brothers and sisters in the faith, to put the Holy Scriptures at the centre of their lives, just as he did.  If you wish to know God, if want to see his Face – go to the Holy Scriptures – this was his advice. “The Word of God is alive and active, it cuts more finely than a double edged sword”, so says the Psalmist, reminding us that the Scriptures are radical – that they are not ordinary literature, but the Word of the living God, the place where the Holy Spirit moves and works in a creative way, bringing the reader to an encounter with Christ who is the Word Incarnate.  As the Word of God, we see that between each word of Scripture there are great spaces within which our loving God is present and reaching out to us.   As we enter into the Scriptures, we encounter the living God who speaks to us, and so, if we allow him, he touches us, changes us, transforms us.  As a master of the Scriptures, St Anthony opened himself to the Holy Spirit working in the Word of God, and preaching them, touched the hearts and lives of those he preached to.  One primitive writer called him the “pen of the Holy Spirit”, Pope Gregory IX called him an “ark of the covenant”: Anthony was indeed an ark, because the Holy Scriptures had found a place in his mind and his heart and they led him to a deeper love and understanding of God.  He was a true servant of the Gospel.  The legacy of the Saint of Padua is one in which we are urged to go to the Scriptures and there to acquaint ourselves with the life and teaching of Jesus, with the Spirit moving through those sacred words, and come to see the meaning of our lives. 

St Jerome, another great Doctor of Church tells us that “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” – Anthony wholeheartedly agreed with that.  Living in an age when most people were illiterate, and those who could read and write may not have had access to the Scriptures, now as we have now, Anthony’s sermons were completely based on the Word of God.   He told the stories from the life of Jesus, taught the Lord’s teachings, spoke of the Old Testament and led his listeners into a deep understanding of the prophets, all of Scripture pointing to Jesus, the Incarnation and his mission of saving souls through his death and resurrection.  His approach to the Scriptures was rich.  Drawing on the tradition established by the post-Apostolic writers and Fathers of the Church, he saw the hidden treasures of the Scriptures and he opened the vault to admit even the humblest of people to enter into the palace of God’s Word.   We know Anthony as the Saint of Miracles and the Wonder Worker, God gave him the gift of healing and miracles, not to make him a magician in the eyes of the people, but to assist him and to draw people’s attention to what he said: as in the public ministry of Jesus, they were signs.

What is the best way to honour St Anthony?  Do we have to give up our simple devotion to him, ignore him when we have lost something.  No, not at all.  He has already made it clear through his miracles and assistance that he is happy to continue to help us in this little things.   But we must also widen our devotion – make it greater so we will sit and listen to him, as did the people he preached to in life.  And how do we do that?  We may read his sermons – they are available and easy to read – we only have his notes written after his preaching, but they are enough.  But we must eventually – (sooner rather than later I hope) to the Holy Scriptures and put them at the centre of our lives with the Holy Eucharist.  Take your holy picture of St Anthony, and put it in your Bible, and allow him, in prayer, to lead you through the Sacred Words and then help you to meditate on them, to see your own life in them, and come to encounter the Hidden Face of Jesus, the Word of God Incarnate.  St Anthony is a great Doctor of the Church, not for the academics and theologians, but for us, for you: he can be, and should be our teacher in the Scriptures. 

Drawing on St Anthony’s own words, then.  He says that Scripture contains the knowledge that surpasses all knowledge: “Just as gold excels all other metals in excellence”, he writes, “so does the knowledge of Sacred Scripture surpass all other forms of knowledge”.  If we seek wisdom, then again, we will find it in Scripture: he says, “The plenitude of knowledge is found in the Old and New Testaments. Here also is the totality of knowledge which alone teaches wisdom and makes a person intelligent.”   If we wish to love God more, as he reflects on Moses receiving the two tablets of stone from God on Sinai, he says: “These two tablets symbolise knowledge of the Two Testaments… This is the one true knowledge which teaches the love of God, the contempt of the world, and the subjugation of the flesh.”  In his sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter, he compares Scripture to a mirror.  He says: “A mirror is a fitting symbol for Sacred Scripture, because in it all of us can see ‘the face with which we were born; whence we were born, as far as the baseness of our origin, what kind were we born, as far as the frailty of our existence, and why we were born, as far as the dignity of our future glory.”  As we find ourselves in Scripture, as we find the Lord, we must begin to listen to God’s word and live it.  In the same sermon, again using the image of the mirror, he warns, “A man who listens to God’s word, but does not put it into practice is like a man who looks into a mirror at the face with which he was born, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looks like”.  If we seek the Face of Christ, we need Sacred Scripture to assist us on our journey – it is the map, the blueprint, the Testament which will bring us to him.

An interesting miracle from his life serves as a good teaching about the life of a Christian.  During one of his preaching tours, a notorious miser and usurer died.  Teaching the necessity to put God at the centre of their lives, Anthony, in fulfilment of the Lord’s teaching that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Lk 12:34), predicted that the miser’s heart would not be in his body, but with that he treasured most in life.  When they opened his body, the corpse had no heart at all, when he opened his money chest, there was the heart lying in the midst of the miser’s carefully amassed coins.  If our hearts are truly in immersed in Christ, then they will be found in the midst of the Holy Scriptures. 

May the Holy Doctor of the Gospel, our dear St Anthony, the Saint of Miracles, help us keep Christ as the treasure of our lives and bring us to know and love him more.   St Anthony’s last words are appropriate for our theme of our reflections on this pilgrimage-retreat.  As he was dying, after he had received Holy Communion, he kept looking upward with a smile on his face.  When asked what he saw there, he answered, “I see my Lord”.   May that vision be ours also.