St. Anthony: Doctor of the Church

St. Anthony: Doctor of the Church

St. Anthony could be said to have become the quickest saint in the history of the Catholic Church because he was canonized by Pope Gregory IX less than one year after his death on 13^th June 1231. He is typically depicted with the Infant Child Jesus, to whom He miraculously appeared, and is commonly referred to today as the “finder of lost articles.”

Anthony was born in 1195 (13 years after St. Francis) in Lisbon (now Portugal, then a part of Spain), and given the name of Fernando at Baptism. His parents, Martin and Mary Bulhom, apparently belonged to one of the prominent families of the city. At the age of 15 he entered the religious order of St. Augustine 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 friars 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.

St. Anthony’s most famous miracle may be the sermon to the fish. We have been told that when a crowd refused to heed him, St. Anthony turned his back on them and preached from the shore to the fish in a lake. The fish responded by lifting up their heads from the water to hear him better.

Perhaps we would never have heard of Anthony if he hadn’t gone to an ordination of Dominicans and Franciscans in 1222. As they gathered for a meal afterward, the provincial suggested that one of the friars give a short sermon. Quite typically everybody declined when the superiors asked. So Anthony was asked to give “just something simple”. Anthony, compelled by obedience, spoke at first slowly and timidly, but soon enkindled with the power of the Holy Spirit, he began to explain the most hidden sense of Holy Scripture with such profound erudition and sublime doctrine that all were struck with astonishment. With that moment began Anthony’s public career. He journeyed to many places in Italy and also to many parts of Southern France on what became an evangelical crusade. His brilliant sermons and special style drew such huge crowds that the churches could not hold the people who came to hear him. A platform had to be set up outside in the town square because of the number of people who came to hear him speak. Soon the platform had to be built outside the town and cities. Eventually ten, twenty and thirty, thousand people were attending his sermons. In 1228 he preached in Rome before Pope Gregory IX and also to the clergy and the people. Pope Gregory was so impressed that he called St Anthony an “Armory of the Bible.”

Among the many miracles St. Anthony wrought in the conversion of heretics; the three most noted recorded by his biographers are the following:

· The first one is that of a mule honoring the Host when a heretic challenges him to defend the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Anthony tells him to starve his mule for several days, but when it is offered food at the end of that time, the animal refused the food placed before him, till he had knelt down and adored the Blessed Sacrament, which St. Anthony held in his hands. Legendary narratives of the fourteenth century say this miracle took place at Rimini, Italy.

· The second most important miracle is that of the poisoned food offered him by some Italian heretics, which he rendered innoxious by the sign of the cross.

· The third miracle worthy of mention is that of the famous sermon to the fishes. He is charged with preaching the Gospel to the people of northern Italy. When human hearts prove stubborn and unresponsive to the call of grace, Anthony goes down to the waterside and begin to speak to the fishes, calling on them to praise their Creator. God shows his approval of Anthony’s message by making dumb creatures more ready to listen than rational human beings!

The enthusiasm with which St. Anthony fought against heresy, and the great and numerous conversions he made rendered him worthy of the glorious title of “Hammer of the Heretics”. He died at the age of thirty-six years on 13 June 1231. He had lived fifteen years with his parents, ten years as a Canon Regular of St. Augustine, and eleven years in the Order of Friars Minor. He was canonised by Pope Gregory IX on the 30^th of May 1232, in just less than a year of his death. 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. St Anthony was later proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946.

Anthony is the Wonder-Worker of Padua and the whole world. He is perhaps the most celebrated evangelizer and the most popular saint-doctor that the Catholic Church ever had. He teaches us to be in state of communion with God. Anthony suggests a very practical maxim: avoid as much as possible any distraction that removes your thoughts from God and heaven.