13th June 2020, 10th Week in Ordinary Time

St. Anthony of Padua

Saint Anthony was canonized (declared a saint) less than one year after his death.

There is perhaps no more loved and admired saint in the Catholic Church than Saint Anthony of Padua, a Doctor of the Church. Though his work was in Italy, he was born in Portugal. He first joined the Augustinian Order and then left it and joined the Franciscan Order in 1221, when he was 26 years old. The reason he became a Franciscan was because of the death of the five Franciscan protomartyrs — St. Bernard, St. Peter, St. Otho, St. Accursius, and St. Adjutus — who shed their blood for the Catholic Faith in the year 1220, in Morocco, in North Africa, and whose headless and mutilated bodies had been brought to St. Anthony’s monastery on their way back for burial. St. Anthony became a Franciscan in the hope of shedding his own blood and becoming a martyr. He lived only ten years after joining the Franciscan Order.

So simple and resounding was his teaching of the Catholic Faith, so that the most unlettered and innocent might understand it, that he was made a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII in 1946. Saint Anthony was only 36 years old when he died. He is called the hammer of the Heretics. His great protection against their lies and deceits in the matter of Christian doctrine was to utter, simply and innocently, the Holy Name of Mary. When St. Anthony of Padua found he was preaching the true Gospel of the Catholic Church to heretics who would not listen to him, he then went out and preached it to the fishes. This was not, as liberals and naturalists are trying to say, for the instruction of the fishes, but rather for the glory of God, the delight of the angels, and the easing of his own heart. St. Anthony wanted to profess the Catholic Faith with his mind and his heart, at every moment.

He is typically depicted with a book and the Infant Child Jesus, to whom He miraculously appeared, and is commonly referred to today as the “finder of lost articles.” Upon exhumation, some 336 years after his death, his body was found to be corrupted, yet his tongue was totally incorrupt, so perfect were the teachings that had been formed upon it.

GOSPEL “Say yes when you mean yes and say no when you mean no”

Today, Jesus goes on commenting the Commandments. The Israelites had a great respect for the name of God, a fearful veneration, for they knew that names refer to persons, and God deserves all respect, all honor and all glory, by thought, word and deed. This is why —bearing in mind that swearing is to place God as witness to the truth of what we are saying— the Law commanded them: «Do not break your oath; an oath sworn to the Lord must be kept» (Mt 5:33). But Jesus comes to perfect the Law (and, therefore, to perfect us too by following the Law), and goes a step further: «Do not take oaths. Do not swear by the Heavens (…), nor by the earth (…)» (Mt 5:34). We cannot actually say that to swear is bad, per se, but to make an oath legitimate a few conditions are needed first, such as a fair, grave and serious cause (for instance, a lawsuit), and that your oath be true and good.

But the Lord says even more: «Say yes when you mean yes and say no when you mean no» (Mt 5:37). That is, He invites us to live in truth on every instance, to conform our thinking, our words and our deeds to the truth. But, the truth is what? This is the great question, already formulated in the Gospel, during the judgment against Jesus, in Pilate’s own words, which so many thinkers, throughout time, have been trying to answer to. The Truth is God. Whoever lives by pleasing God, by abiding by his Commandments, lives in Truth. The Rector of Ars says: «The reason why so few Christians act with the exclusive purpose of pleasing God is because they are immersed in the most terrible ignorance. O God, how many good deeds are lost for Heaven! ». It would be good to ponder over it.

We must develop ourselves, to read the Gospel and the Catechism. And afterwards, we must live by what we have learnt.