Homily for Thursday, 13 June 2019– Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 3:15-4:1, 3-6; Psalm 85:9ab, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 5:20-26

Thursday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

“Dear St. Anthony, please come ‘round. Something is lost and cannot be found.” How many of us have prayed this prayer or a prayer like this to St. Anthony when we have lost something?

St. Anthony of Padua is known as the patron saint for finding lost items. This association between St. Anthony and lost items is based on a legend of a Franciscan novice under St. Anthony’s guidance who left his religious order in anger, taking with him St. Anthony’s breviary, or book of daily prayers. According to the legend, an angry St. Anthony appeared in a dream to the novice the night after the novice had suddenly left the Franciscans with St. Anthony’s breviary. St. Anthony’s appearance in his dream convinced the novice to return to the Franciscans and to return the breviary to St. Anthony while accepting to do penance for having stolen the breviary and for his outburst of anger.

Maybe the novice’s vision of an angry St. Anthony in his dream was so effective in persuading the novice to return St. Anthony’s breviary and return to the Franciscans because it was so out of character for St. Anthony to lose his temper. St. Anthony is one of the most versatile saints of the Church, and a patron of many causes besides lost items, but he was not known as an angry saint. However, St. Anthony is associated with instances in which he interceded to quell anger or to repair the damage of angry outbursts. In one instance, a knight in Tuscany had beaten his wife, but then turned to St. Anthony in sorrow for his own sin. St. Anthony healed the knight’s wife. Another version of this legend has a young woman whose hair had been torn out by her husband turn to St. Anthony. Miraculously, while St. Anthony prayed for the woman as well as for repentance for her husband and reconciliation in their marriage, the woman’s hair grew back in St. Anthony’s presence.

St. Anthony of Padua is a saint of repentance and reconciliation. In Matthew’s Gospel today, Jesus intensifies the Old Testament commandment not to kill to include outbursts of anger that are meant to destroy or demean others: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors… ‘You shall not kill,’ and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”

On the one hand, anger in itself is not a sin but an emotion with which God has created us all. Even God; even Jesus becomes angry occasionally, as the Bible shows us. On the other hand, God calls us to master our more intense emotions like anger so we do not use these emotions to destroy other people or ourselves. Jesus’ commandment could be extended, appropriately in our time, to avoidance of gossip, passive aggression, and other subtler but as-destructive forms of lack of control of our anger.

Maybe most important, though, is what Jesus says further on in today’s Gospel. If we are aware that another person “has anything against us,” Jesus says, “go first and be reconciled with your brother.” In other words, we might recognize that we are all sinners and that, sooner or later, we will need another’s forgiveness or need to forgive another person. Jesus asks us to anticipate this need for forgiveness, to be reconciled to one another, in a sense, preemptively. On this memorial of St. Anthony of Padua, may St. Anthony intercede for us, so that we might master anger; that we might know our own and one another’s need for reconciliation, and anticipate one another in this need, going “first” to “be reconciled with” our brothers and sisters.

Homily for Tuesday, 13 June 2017– Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Psalm 119:129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135; Matthew 5:13-16

Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Have any of us ever wondered how saints become associated with particular causes, such as finding lost items in the case of St. Anthony of Padua?

There are so many stories and legends, sayings and sermons connected with St. Anthony, so that I think it would be quite reasonable for us to wonder how he became the go-to saint when we have lost something. Of course, St. Anthony is rightly the patron of many other causes, too. He is called the “Evangelical Doctor”; of the thirty-six recognized “doctors” or master teachers by their writings and example in our Church’s history, St. Anthony is renowned as an evangelist, somebody who spread our faith by his preaching and gentle, humble presence that echoed the presence of Christ to the people. For his legendary efforts at preaching to fish (I hope to try this next time I go fishing!), St. Anthony is the patron of many things marine and water-related. He is the patron of his native Portugal and of Brazil. But St. Anthony is connected, far more often it seems than with other causes, to lost people or objects, and is the patron of objects that become easily lost, like mail (and mail carriers).

But why is St. Anthony most often recognized as the patron of lost objects? It all started with a Franciscan novice stealing his prayer book, with all the notes St. Anthony was using to teach the novices in his care. Those novices… I was once a novice, although I never stole my novice director’s prayer book! St. Anthony prayed, and so the novice was moved to return his prayer book.

I am not complaining about St. Anthony being too exclusively associated with lost objects. Yesterday, St. Anthony came to the aid of this absent-minded professor who thought, when leaving the house, that I would leave all my keys I did not need on the corner of my desk at the rectory so I would not lose them. Indeed, I did leave my keys on the corner of my desk… in the office I am using at our St. Cecilia Church site, not at the rectory. I think “it is right and just,” as we say, then, that I (and we together) celebrate St. Anthony. If St. Peter were given the power of the keys, St. Anthony has the gift of finding those keys when we lose them!

But may we also pray through St. Anthony as the one who not only helps to find lost objects, but to find us when we become lost, in error or sin;  when we fail to be, in the words of our Gospel today, “salt of the earth, [like] a city set on a mountain,” or a lamp “set on a lampstand”;  when instead our lamps become hidden, dim, or, worse yet, lost. St. Anthony of Padua, you are a beloved example of gentle evangelization; of calling the lost to the fullest practice of our faith. Find us when we are lost, place our lamps on lampstands; make us again “salt of the earth and light of the world.” Guide us toward “our heavenly Father,” whose glory you and we serve, and help us to light the way for one another, as you did, humbly and faithfully, through Christ our Lord.

Homily for Friday, 13 June 2014‒ Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua

Friday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-16; Psalm 27:7-8a, 8b-9abc, 13-14; Matthew 5:27-32

Has there ever been a time when we have had a plan, only to have that plan change? In light of our readings today, we can see that God sometimes has plans that differ from our own.

This was Elijah’s experience of God in our first reading today. We read in the First Book of Kings just before today’s first reading of Elijah having overcome the false prophets of Baal, the false gods worshipped by King Ahab of Israel and by his wife Jezebel. For this, Jezebel becomes furious at Elijah and wants to kill him, so Elijah flees to Mount Horeb, where we find him in today’s reading, and waits for God in a cave. In fact, Elijah is in such despair that he wants to die. But God has other plans for Elijah.

God says to Elijah, “Why are you here?” as if to say, “I have greater plans for you than to hide in this cave, waiting to die.” God sends Elijah out on a mission. Elijah is to “anoint Nazael as king of Aram,” Jehu as Ahab’s successor as king of Israel,” and the prophet Elisha as Elijah’s own successor.

God has other, greater, plans for Elijah: Prophet and missionary. What are God’s greater plans for us, and how do we discern and act on God’s greater plans for us?

As a Basilian associate just beginning to discern Basilian life about six years ago, I had a valuable experience in being open to God’s greater plan for me. A priest of our order responsible for formation announced to me that the Basilians wanted to send me to Cali, Colombia to teach French and English in our high school there. At the time, I spoke no Spanish and had not taught in a classroom before, and so I questioned (although I ultimately accepted) this plan to send me to Colombia.

Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Anthony of Padua, another person for whom God had a greater plan. St. Anthony was deeply moved when he saw the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs being returned to Italy from Morocco where they had been killed. He left the Augustinians to become a Franciscan, with the hope of becoming a missionary; of risking his life for Christ. Instead, St. Anthony became known for his preaching and clarity in teaching the Catholic faith, and so his Franciscan superiors asked him to stay home in Padua. Because of his preaching and teaching ability, St. Anthony is known as the “Evangelical Doctor.”

St. Anthony wanted to be a missionary; perhaps even a martyr. But God had other plans for St. Anthony, just as God had other plans for prophets like Elijah and often has other, greater plans for us than we can even imagine. And so we are invited to discern: What are God’s plans for us, and are we open to God’s plans, especially when God’s plans differ from or exceed our own?