In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We know that our saint was born in Lisbon, so the Portuguese prefer to call him Saint Anthony
of Lisbon and not Padua.
His parents were very young and belonged to a distinguished family.
His father belonged to the army and was called Alfonso Martín.
His mother was Maria Taveira.
They named him Fernando Martins Taveira,
but the day of his birth is not known for sure,
although some speak of August 15th.
It is also not known for sure what year he was born.
Some say that it was the year 1290,
but most prefer to write down the year 1295,
since various information indicates that when he died in 1231,
he was 36 years old.
He surely had a sister named Maria.
Of her it is said in the Martyrology of San Vicente of the
national library of Porto:
Maria Martins, sister of Saint Anthony of Padua
died on February 18, 1279.
There was another sister named Feliciana and perhaps some other brother.
He was baptized in the Lisbon Cathedral that was near his home.
Until the age of fifteen,
more or less,
he studied at the cathedral school,
which was next to the same cathedral.
He studied
the normal courses of that time:
The Trivium which involves : grammar, logic and rhetoric.
Perhaps right there he began the studies of the Quatrivium which are arithmetic,
music, geometry and astronomy.
If he could not finish the latter,
he would finish them in the convent,
since he decided to get away from family and friends,
leaving everything for God.
He unilaterally decided to renounce his paternal inheritance
and opt for religious life,
because his parents would not have allowed him to.
Fernando Martins had the pleasure of having very close, in his own church, the remains
of holy martyrs.
And his spirit, already full of God, was kindled in the desire to be himself
a martyr.
For this reason, he spoke secretly with the religious of Saint Anthony of Olivares,
expressing his desire to wear his habit
on the condition that they send him to preach to Morocco
so that he could die for Jesus Christ.
Hardly obtaining the permission of the Prior of his
convent and of his Community,
he went to live with them in the middle of 1220 at 25 years old,
changing his name of Fernando to Anthony,
perhaps by the name of his new convent.
Saint Anthony thus renounced the continuation of studying and his safety,
since he was supported by a convent, and chose penance, work and austerity.
He stayed in the
convent of Saint Anthony of Olivares for a very short time,
as his martyrdom wishes were many.
In the summer of 1220 or early autumn,
Saint Anthony of Padua
accompanied by another religious
as was the norm in the Franciscan Order,
had arrived in Morocco.
He fell seriously ill
and throughout the winter he was unable to get up.
As soon as he improved a little,
he thought that it was not God's will to continue in Morocco and
he took a ship to return to Portugal.
In March or April of 1221 he was already in Sicily.
Because against his will, the ship on which he embarked,
carried by the winds,
reached Messina,
where the Franciscans of the place welcomed him with fraternal charity.
From the Franciscans of Messina
he learned that there was a general chapter of the
entire Order
from May 30th to June 8th of that year 1221
and to which all the friars
of the great Franciscan family were invited to attend.
He resolved to attend.
We do not
know if he was still convalescing or totally healthy,
but he arrived at this general chapter,
which was the last in which all the religious were admitted.
Saint Anthony of Padua was delighted by the spiritual joy shared by those monks
and, above all, by the personal sight of the founder,
Saint Francis of Assisi.
It seems that he went unnoticed and unknown.
On September 24th, 1222,
many friars came to Forli for their sacred ordinations.
Saint Anthony attended, not to ordain himself as some say since he was already a priest.
On the day of the ordinations, before going to the cathedral,
an exhortation was to be given to the ordinands,
as was customary.
It turned out that none of the priests present,
not even the Dominicans who had
come, had prepared,
and they refused to improvise.
In this situation,
the Franciscan Superior turned
to Saint Anthony of Padua
to say a few words of spiritual edification.
And Saint Anthony,
who had not yet discovered his deep biblical and theological insights,
left everyone in
awe of his great biblical and theological culture
as well as his deep spirituality.
In October of 1222,
Anthony began his mission as a preacher imposed by his Superior.
He spends all
his time evangelizing in towns and cities.
He preaches the same to his brothers in his habit
in their convents as to groups of students or in monastic meetings of different Orders.
In the villages he tries to bring peace between the parties in discord,
and to strengthen the
faith of the Catholics against the heretical dissidents,
who abounded in certain places.
He tried to convince them, having public debates; and supporting his preaching with famous miracles.
Among the heretics, the most dangerous were the Cathars.
They said that spirits
were created directly by God,
while the world and everything material had been created by the devil.
Christ, according to them, could not have been man or born of the Virgin Mary,
since that would have meant being born a sinner,
since the flesh was created by the devil.
The believers, to be saved, had to be pure
Cathar means pure and had to live poorly and renounce the
world and sexual relations, which were bad.
For them it was preferable to fornicate than to have
relations with the same wife.
In addition, they were invited to individually take their own life,
allowing themselves to starve or suffocate,
after having received from the heads of the sect
what they called consolationum or dispensation from all their sins to go directly to heaven.
According to them, it was not worth living in this sinful land, the work of the devil.
And they ridiculed the rich and the ecclesiastics, who lived with many comforts.
There were also other heretics like the Albigenses and Waldenses,
who were strong in some places in the south of France and in some cities of Italy.
For his triumphs they called Saint Anthony malleus haereticorum which means hammer of
heretics.
Among the heretics there was one who was famous.
His name was Bononillo and
he had been in the Cathar sect for more than 30 years.
He disputed with him in Rimini.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.