St. Anthony

 The image of St. Anthony is well-known worldwide, and many people may know a variation of a little prayer asking St. Anthony’s help in finding lost things. But who was this man, and how is it that he is still so loved and respected almost 800 years after his death?

St. Anthony was born in Portugal in 1195, where his father was a captain in the royal army. He joined the Augustinian Order as a young man, but left it in order to join the newly-founded Franciscan Order in 1221, at age 26. When he was still in the Augustinians, the bodies of five Franciscan friars who had been martyred in Morocco, North Africa, were brought to the monastery where St. Anthony lived on their way to their burial place. St. Anthony decided he wanted to become a Franciscan in the hopes of shedding his blood for Christ and becoming a martyr, too. He went to Africa to preach; however, he came down with an illness that weakened him for life. While traveling back to Portugal, his boat was thrown off course by a storm, and he landed in Sicily, where he was welcomed and sent to Assisi to live with the Franciscans there.

Given the task of household labors, St. Anthony grew in holiness by doing the menial tasks in a humble fashion. He was never given an education in preaching, and yet, on one occasion, when the priest who was to give the sermon for an ordination ceremony fell ill, St. Anthony was chosen to give the sermon. He agreed to out of obedience, though he had never given a sermon in public before. His eloquence, intelligence, and humility amazed all in attendance, and he was soon given permission from St. Francis of Assisi to go out and preach among the peoples of Padua, Italy.

Earning the nickname the “Hammer of Heretics,” St. Anthony was very firm in his great protection for the teachings of the Church, while still explaining them in a simple and innocent manner meant to be understood by all. People would come from miles around and fill churches to listen to him. His teachings encouraged people to reconcile with one another and seek holiness in all their daily tasks. Once when the people would not listen to him, he turned and began preaching to the fishes (which poked their heads out of the water to listen), in an effort to continue sharing the Word of God as his heart was so impassioned to do. His teachings earned him the title of Doctor of the Church in 1946.

Once while a visitor was staying with St. Anthony, he came upon the saint holding in his arms the Child Jesus, who was beautiful and surrounded with heavenly light. It is because of this event that St. Anthony is often depicted holding the Child Jesus in his arms.

St. Anthony died at the age of 36, after living a life filled with taxing labors and a body weakened by illness. Upon his death, the children in Padua went through the streets crying “The saint is dead. Anthony is dead.” He was canonized a saint one year after his death by Pope Gregory IX. Upon exhumation of his body 336 years after his death, his body was found to be corrupt; however, his tongue was completely intact, symbolic of the great teachings which were formed upon it. So many miracles have been attributed to his burial place that he has earned the title of the “Wonder-worker.” His feast day is June 13.

St Anthony Holy Card Image

The Patronage of St. Anthony of Padua

St. Anthony of Padua is known as the patron saint of: animals, the elderly, expectant mothers, infertility, lost articles, the poor, sailors, the starving, travelers, and unmarried women.

St. Anthony in Art

St. Anthony of Padua is often depicted in the brown habit of a Franciscan. His head features the “tonsure,” in which all or part of the hair is removed as a sign of religious devotion and humility. He carries lilies as a sign of his purity, and often holds a book, showing that he is a Doctor of the Church. The most common image of St. Anthony pictures him holding the Child Jesus in his arms.

Prayers of St. Anthony

Let Saint Anthony be your partner in prayer as you say one of the prayers below or as part of your rosary devotion. Find Saint Anthony Rosary Beads here.

St. Anthony the Wonder-Worker

Holy Saint Anthony, gentle and powerful in your help, your love for God and charity for His creatures, made you worthy, when on earth, to possess miraculous powers. Miracles waited on your word, which you were always ready to request for those in trouble or anxiety. Encouraged by this thought, I implore you to obtain for me [request]. The answer to my prayer may require a miracle. Even so, you are the Saint of miracles. Gentle and loving Saint Anthony, whose heart is ever full of human sympathy, take my petition to the Infant Savior for whom you have such a great love, and the gratitude of my heart will ever be yours. Amen.

Prayer to St. Anthony to Find Lost Articles

Dear Saint Anthony, you are the patron of the poor and the helper of all who seek lost articles. Help me to find the object I have lost so that I will be able to make better use of the time I will gain for God’s greater honor and glory. Grant your gracious aid to all people who seek what they have lost – especially those who seek to regain God’s grace. Amen.

“Something is lost and can’t be found
Please, St. Anthony, look around”

The Blessing of St. Anthony

Behold, the Cross of the Lord!
Begone, all evil powers!
The Lion of the tribe of Judah,
The Root of David, has conquered!
Alleluia, Alleluia!

St. Bernard: On the Song of Songs

 

St. Bernard: On the Song of Songs

 

By your leave then we shall search the Sacred Scripture for these three things, the garden, the storeroom, the bedroom. The one who thirsts for God eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired word. Know that there we are certain to find the one for whom we thirst. Let the garden, then, represent the plain, unadorned historical sense of Scripture, the storeroom its moral sense and the bedroom the mystery of divine contemplation. For a start I feel my comparison of scriptural history to a garden is not unwarranted, for in it we find persons of many virtues like fruitful trees in the garden of the Bridegroom, in the Paradise of God. You may gather samples of their good deeds and good habits as you would apples from trees.

 

Grace alone can teach it, it cannot be learned except by experience. It is for the experienced, therefore, to recognize it and for others to burn with the desire, not so much of knowing as of feeling it, since this canticle is not a noise made by the mouth but a jubilation of heart, not a sound of the lips but a tumult of internal joys, not a symphony of voices but a harmony of wills. It is not heard outside, for it does not sound externally. The singer alone can hear it and he to whom it is sung, namely the bridegroom and Che bride. For it is a nuptial song, celebrating the chaste and joyous embraces of loving hearts, the concord of minds and the union resulting from reciprocal affection.

 

If we fervently persist with prayers and tears, the bridegroom will return each time and not defraud us of our express desires. But only to disappear soon again and not to return again unless he is sought for with all our heart. And so, even in this body we can often enjoy the happiness of the bridegroom's presence but it is a happiness that is never complete because the joy of his visit is followed by the pain of his departure. The beloved has no choice but to endure this state until the hour when we lay down the body's weary weight and raised aloft by the wings of desire freely traverse the meadows of contemplation and in spirit follow the One we love without restraint wherever he goes.

 

But let me tell you what I have attained to or rather what I believe myself to have attained to. And you must not regard as a boast this communication which I make only for your own good.  There is a place where the Lord appears truly tranquil and at rest. It is the place neither of the judge nor of the teacher but of the bridegroom. It becomes for me (whether for others also, I do not know) a real bedchamber whenever it is granted me to enter there.\ . . . If, my brothers, it should ever be granted to you to be so transported for a time into this secret sanctuary of God and there be so rapt and absorbed as to be distracted or disturbed by no necessity of the body, no importunity or care, no stinging of conscience or, what is more difficult Co avoid, no inrush of corporal images from [he sense of imagination, you can truly say, "The King has brought me into his bedchamber. "

St. Basil: The Greater Rules 7

 

St. Basil: The Greater Rules 7

 

Those who are pursuing the same objective, if they live together, will find many advantages in this sharing of their life.

 

In the first place, none of us is self-sufficient when it is a question of material needs. We all need one another to procure the necessities of life.

 

The foot, for example, is capable of doing certain things on its own. If the absurd could happen and it was cut off from the other limbs, the owner would realize that the foot's capabilities are not enough to preserve its existence and acquire the things it must have.

 

This is what happens in the solitary life: what we have is no use to us and what we are lacking we cannot procure. Yes, it is God's will that we should be indispensable to one another so that we can be in unity with one another.

 

This is what happens in the solitary life: what we have is no use to us and what we are lacking we cannot procure. Yes, it is God's will that we should be indispensable to one another so that we can be in unity with one another.

 

Besides this, Christ's commandment to love does not allow us to be solely concerned with ourselves. 'Love does not seek its own interest.' [1 Cor. 13:5]

 

The solitary life, by contrast, seeks that, namely the advantage of the individual – an objective which is evidently the opposite of the law of love. Suffice to consider how Paul kept this law: “Not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.' [1 Cor. 10:33]

 

In the second place, it is difficult for solitaries to discover their faults. They do not have anyone to point them out. They have no one to correct them.

 

A reproof, even if it comes from an opponent, stirs up the desire for improvement if the soul is well disposed. But the person who is not living in community will find neither reproof nor improvement.

ROMANO GUARDINI: The Lord

 

ROMANO GUARDINI: The Lord

 

The old commandment, fifth of the Ten from Sinai, runs: Thou shalt not kill. Jesus seizes upon the wickedness that is expressed by murder and traces it back to its origin in the murderer's heart. What breaks out in violence is already present in the evil word or intent, or rather, everything that follows is the result of that intent. The intent then, not the deed that expresses it, is decisive. Notice that Jesus does not even mention downright hatred; a brother's irritation or having "anything against thee" is enough to sow the dragon-seed of evil. From irritation grows anger; from anger the word; from the word the deed. . . .

 

The Old Law used justice as its norm of human behavior. As others treat you, so shall you treat them. Violence may be returned for violence, evil for evil. The justice of the day consisted in not returning more evil than the amount received, and naturally one was allowed to protect oneself from anything that seemed threatening. Christ says: That is not enough. As long as you cling to "justice" you will never be guiltless of injustice. As long as you are entangled in wrong and revenge, blow and counterblow, aggression and defense, you will be constantly drawn into fresh wrong. Passion, by its very definition, surpasses measure—quite aside from the fact that the claim to vengeance in itself is wrong because it lies outside our given role of creature. He who takes it upon himself to avenge trampled justice never restores justice. The moment discussion of wrong begins, wrong stirs in one's own heart, and the result is new injustice.

 

If you really want to get anywhere, you must extricate yourself from the whole embroilment and seek a position far removed from all pro's and cons. You must introduce a new force, not that of self-assertion, but of selflessness; not so-called justice, but creative freedom. Man is really just only when he seeks more than mere justice. More not merely quantitatively, but qualitatively. He must find a power capable of breaking the ban of injustice, something strong enough and big enough to intercept aggression and disarm it: love.

Dom Hubert van Zeller, The Choice of God

 

Dom Hubert van Zeller, The Choice of God

 

The Divine Office is not a vocal prayer primarily but a contemplative prayer. Expressed verbally, it is prayed contemplatively. The words and sentiments and chants are there, but through them the interior life of the soul stretches out in worship to God. It is as if the pages of the breviary were transparent, and that the soul took the printed prayers with it on its way.

 

Those who imagine that their whole duty towards the Divine Office is fulfilled by the careful observance of the rubrics and the articulate enunciation of the syllables are remote from the main purpose. The main purpose is to join interiorly with Christ in paying homage to the Father.

 

The homage rendered in the recitation or chanting of the psalms is the homage offered by the whole mystical body, Head and members. And because matter as well as spirit must pay its debt of praise, there must be outward forms to show that the physical is in harmony of worship with the spiritual.

 

But because it is always easier to cultivate the outward than the inward, the Martha side of the liturgy has a way of asserting itself at the sacrifice of the Mary side. At least when you are singing or reciting or performing the stipulated movements of the choir you are doing something. You have something which yields to measurement: you can tell, more or less, whether you are doing the thing properly or not.

 

It is the fear of not doing enough in prayer, as much as the desire to make a display in church, that leads to ritualism and 'vain repetition'.

 

Nor is the multiplication of words for the sake of multiplication encouraged by the Church. In the recurring psalmody, the same psalms and antiphons and chapters coming round week after week; it is not the mere repetition that is of value in the sight of God; what is of value is the disposition of soul which is content to go on repeating the familiar prayers without looking for the interest of novelty.

 

In his book Perfection Chrétienne et Contemplation, Pére Garrigou-Lagrange refers to the liturgy as a means of preparing for contemplation. But surely it is more than this?

 

Is it not itself a form of contemplation—an exercise in which the contemplative act can be as fruitfully employed as when praying in solitude?

 

Where the intellect, will, memory and imagination are directed towards God, and where the outward senses are acting in conjunction with this inward elevation, you get a state of soul which could hardly be called anything else than contemplative. The whole man, with all his faculties recollected into unity, is at rest in the proper object of his desire. Certainly a soul can be contemplative in choir.

 

Thus, in a sense the Divine Office is not so much a preparation as a culmination: it is the crowning of the interior endeavors which have been going on in private. The Divine Office does not guarantee contemplation where there is no contemplative prayer before, but it does provide a medium for contemplative prayer where contemplation is there already.

 

An objection is sometimes raised that the long hours spent by religious in choir might better be spent in work for souls. But the Divine Office is work for souls. The apostolate feeds upon what is generated, and again and again regenerated, in the choir. The Divine Office is the Church's indirect apologetic: its influence, if we make any allowance for the supernatural, penetrates more deeply behind the barriers of unbelief, ignorance, hostility, than anything that is done by more immediate contact. Allowing that grace is stronger than argument, and that the scope of the liturgy is not confined to the four walls between which it happens to be observed, the prayer of the choir can be counted as an essentially missionary activity.

 

With every Dominus vobiscum the believer and the unbeliever alike receive something from the prayer-life of the Church which he will not get out of a book. Every Kyrie eleison brings down upon him a mercy which he is either too busy, too ignorant, or too lazy to ask for. It is from the treasuries of the liturgy that man, whether he knows it or not, draws pardon and grace.

 

When the world again comes to recognize what it recognized in the ages of the Faith it will not be surprised to find that its inheritance has been preserved over the years of materialism and unbelief in the centers where the Divine Office has been faithfully prayed.

 

To conceive of the psalter being out of date, to imagine that the time has come for a revision of ideas about the liturgy as a worthwhile occupation for educated men and women, to plan a substitute which can be carried into the world as a spearhead, and in lay dress with popular appeal, is to miss the nature of prayer altogether. What more fruitful prayer can there be, either in regard to the soul who prays or to those who benefit by the soul's prayer, than that which continues the prayer of Christ, joins with the prayer of the blessed in heaven, and recalls the human powers to their fullest possible function as originally designed?

 

For the religious the Divine Office is at once the warehouse from which he refurnishes his interior mansions when the ordinary store has worn out, the platform from which he preaches the inspired word of God, and the element in which his soul finds its freest expression. He can go on piling up metaphors like this for ever, and will not exhaust the possibilities: the Divine Office should become his second, and better, nature.

 

'But I am far more recollected out of choir ... there is no devotion, but rather exasperation, in having neighbours who cannot follow the common practice ... it is often more a penance than a prayer.' Amice, ad quid venisti ('Friend, to what purpose have you come?'). You have come that you may do the will of God. You have said 'Lord, teach us how to pray', and now that He has told you how He wants you to pray, you bring objections. And if it is a penance as well as a prayer, the value is doubled.

 

Whether the soul feels at home or not in the liturgy does not greatly signify. The worship which it gives is the public tribute of the Church, and people do not always feel at home in public. The sense of satisfaction is not, and never is in things religious, the criterion. The quality which God looks for above all others in our liturgical worship is the desire to surrender ourselves unconditionally to the action of the Holy Spirit. And that is why the Divine Office can truly be said to re-present contemplation.

Origen:

 

Catena Aurea

 

Matt. 20:28: “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."

 

Origen: For though the Angels and Martha ministered to Him, yet did He not come to be ministered unto, but to minister; [marg. note: Matt 4:11; John 12:2] yea, His ministry extended so far, that He fulfilled even what follows, "And to give his life a ransom for many," they, that is, who believed on Him; and gave it, i. e. to death. But since He was alone free among the dead, and mightier than the power of death, He has set free from death all who were willing to follow Him. The heads of the Church ought therefore to imitate Christ in being affable, adapting Himself to women, laying His hands on children, and washing His disciples' feet, that they also should do the same to their brethren. But we are such, that we seem to go beyond the pride even of the great ones of this world; as to the command of Christ, either not understanding it, or setting it at nought. Like princes we seek hosts to go before us, we make ourselves awful and difficult of access, especially to the poor, neither approaching them, nor suffering them to approach us.

Richard Rolle, The English Writings, The English Psalter and Commentary

 

Richard Rolle, The English Writings, The English Psalter and Commentary, translated, edited, and introduced by Rosamund  S. Allen, Classics of Western Spirituality.

 

 

Rolle wrote two commentaries on the whole 150 psalms . . . one in Latin . . . and an English version much later. For nearly two hundred years Rolle's Psalter was the only authorized translation of the Bible into English; it did not need diocesan permission for its use. The consequent popularity of the work is attested by the twenty or so extant manuscripts

 

 

A great fullness of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes into the hearts of those who recite or devoutly intone the psalms as an act of praise to Jesus Christ. They drop sweetness in men's souls and pour delight into their thoughts and kindle their wills with the fire of love, making them hot and burning within, and beautiful and lovely in Christ's eyes. And those who persevere in their devotion he raises up to the life of meditation and, on many occasions, he exalts them to the melody and celebrations of heaven. The song of the psalms chases away devils, stirs up angels to help us; it drives out and (destroys discontent and resentment in the soul and a peace between body and soul; it brings desire of heaven and contempt for earthly things. Indeed, this radiant book is a choice song in God's presence, like a lamp brightening our life, health for a sick heart, honey to a bitter soul, a high mark of honor among spiritual people, a voicing of private virtues, which forces down the proud to humility and makes kings bow in reverence to poor men, nurturing children with gentleness. In the psalms there is such great beauty of meaning and of medicine from the words that this book is called "a garden enclosed, " a sealed fountain, a paradise full of apples. Now see: with wholesome instruction it brings agitated and tempestuous souls into a fair and peaceful way of life, now warning them to repent of sin with tears, now promising joy for the virtuous, now threatening hell for the wicked. The song which gives delight to hearts and instructs the soul has become a sound of singing: with angels whom we cannot hear we mingle words of praising, so that anyone would be right to reckon himself exiled from true life if he does not in this way experience the delightfulness of this gift of wonderful sweetness, which never grows sour with the corruptions of this world, but is everlasting in its own superlative quality, and is always increasing in the grace of purest softness. All the pleasures and delights of earthly loves vanish away and at last disappear to nothing, but the longer this gift persists, the greater it is, and is greatest of all, quite the opposite of cursed human love affairs, when love is most perfected.