In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Many consider Saint Anthony of Padua an advocate to find lost things, but few know about the
fantastic miracles that God worked through this great theologian and scripturalist Saint.
He fought against heretics and was an instrument of God in curing the sick!
Saint Anthony of Padua is a popular saint, some often call him the saint of the whole world.
His life is really wonderful.
He performed a hundred miracles.
This Lent, from February 5th to March 23rd, Saint Anthony of Padua dedicated himself to
preaching every day, one after another, for forty days.
A witness says: It is a thing without a doubt to admire how, despite his natural corpulence
and laboring with a continuous illness, the indefatigable zeal for souls made him continue
to preach, teach and confess until sunset, very often fasting.
From the surrounding cities, castles and villages, almost innumerable crowds of both sexes came
to Padua, all thirsty to listen with utmost devotion to the word of life, resting their
own salvation with firm hope in his teachings.
They insisted on getting ahead of each other by rising in the middle of the night, and
with flaming axes, they hurried diligently to go to the place where he would preach.
You will see going there knights and noble matrons in the darkness of the night; and
those who spent no small part of the day indolently sheltered and relaxed on soft beds, had no
problem, as they say, in watching to see him.
The old came, the young ran, men and women, of all ages and conditions; and all of them,
laying down all sorts of ornaments, wore, I would dare say, the habits of religious.
Even the venerable Bishop of Padua, together with his clergy, devotedly followed the preaching
of the servant of God Anthony, and making himself a model for his flock, invited us
to listen to him with the example of his humility.
With such avidity they attended to each and every one of the things he said, that despite
often attending the preaching - as they count - thirty thousand people, no shout or murmur
could be heard from among so many crowds, but in uninterrupted silence, all, as a single
person, hung on his word.
Even the merchants, with all kinds of stores for the sale of merchandise, did not expose
these to the customers until the preaching was finished, because of the great desire
they had to listen to him.
The women, with ardent devotion, provided themselves with scissors and cut pieces of
his tunic, as if it were a relic; and it was considered fortunate that they could touch
even the hem of his robe.
And he would not have been able to defend himself against the onslaught of the mobs,
if he had not been surrounded by a good number of strong young men,
or watched solicitously
where to flee,
or waited until, finally, the crowds had withdrawn.
He reduced enemies to fraternal harmony; he restored freedom to the imprisoned;
He had what had been stolen with usury or violence returned,
and this in such a way that a price
was imposed on the mortgaged houses and estates, and,
by his advice, what had been stolen was
restored to those from whom it had been stolen for another cause.
He rescued the prostitutes from their infamous treatment; and he kept away from laying his
hand on thieves of other people famous for their crimes.
And so, happily after the forty days of Lent, the harvest of harvests was great, pleasing
in the eyes of God, which with his zeal he gathered.
I believe that it cannot be overlooked how he led such a large multitude of men and women
to confess their sins that neither the friars nor the other priests who accompanied him
in no small number could cope with their confession.
One of those days, according to some, on Holy Monday, March 17th, Saint Anthony of Padua
went to meet with the governor of the city
and with its Council to ask them to change
the communal statutes,
according to which, the debtor who did not pay, should be imprisoned
until his relatives will pay for him.
This for some poor people meant life imprisonment,
which was a tremendous injustice.
At his request, the revocation of this Statute was approved.
Arriving in the city, the man of God met with Friar Vinoto,
who was walking to visit him.
Seeing his extreme gravity, he began to beg Saint Anthony of Padua to go to a house,
where some friars lived next to the monastery of the poor ladies,
to whom they gave spiritual
aid, according to the custom of the Order.
Already established among the friars, his illness was aggravated and showed signs of
no small anxiety.
After a short rest, having made the confession and having received the absolution,
Saint Anthony began to sing the hymn of the glorious Virgin that begins like this:
He just finished, he raised his eyes to the sky,
and with an ecstatic gaze he stared straight
ahead for a long time.
As the friar who held him asked him what he saw,
he replied: "I see my Lord."
The friars who were present, seeing that his happy passage was approaching,
decided to
administer the sacrament of anointing to him.
When a friar came, as is customary, with the holy oils,
when Saint Anthony of Padua saw
him, he said:
“Brother, it is not necessary for you to anoint me,
since I have the anointing
within me.
However, it is fine, and it pleases me a lot”.
Holding out his hands and clasping his palms together,
he sang the penitential psalms in
full with the friars.
That most holy soul still resisted for almost half an hour,
and freed from the prison of
the flesh, went to plunge into the abyss of clarity.
The aspect of his body was in everything like that of a sleeper; the lively whiteness that
his hands acquired outshined the color they used to have;
and the other parts of his body
were flexible to the will of the person who touched them.
The very day of the death of Saint Anthony of Padua, the famous specialist in the sacred
Scriptures, the Abbot of Vercelli was far away in his room.
While he was alone, at the very hour of the death of Saint Anthony of Padua, the servant
of God entered his room.
After greeting him, the saint said to him: Mr. Abbot, I have left my donkey, referring
to his body, in Padua and am going quickly to the homeland.
As the abbot suffered from gout, the saint, gently touching the sick part, healed him
instantly and he disappeared.
The abbot, believing that he was going "to the homeland", that is, to his land on the
Iberian Peninsula,
he left the room to stop him.
Not finding him, he asked his servants and they replied that they had not seen him.
Then the abbot understood that the saint had gone to the heavenly homeland,
and by taking note,
he was able to make sure that the saint had died at the very moment that he had appeared to him.
While the friars tried with all efforts to hide the news of his death from strangers,
and with extreme caution from friends and acquaintances, so as not to be invaded by crowds,
behold,
herds of children were shouting through the streets:
“ The holy father is dead!
Saint Anthony of Padua has died!”.
Hearing this, the crowds rushed to the house and surrounded the friars' dwelling
like a swarm of bees.
Before everyone takes flight, a large crowd of inhabitants of Capo di Ponte with numerous
robust young people arrives,
and immediately they have an armed defense around the convent.
The religious come;
a crowd of both sexes rushes in, young men and maidens,
old men and children, the great and the simple, the free and the servant.
All with one voice and with the same bitterness of heart they begin to lament, expressing
the sincere affection of their soul with abundant tears and groans.
The friars from the convent of the Holy Mother of God in the center of Padua, wanting to
take the body of the saint, came to the convent.
Knowing the intentions of the friars, the inhabitants of Capo di Ponte faced them as
a single man,
and so that in no way could what they wanted to do come true,
they had the place guarded with numerous groups of armed people.
At dusk, after saying goodbye to the people,
the friars closed the doors of the house and
in order not to be pressured by an eventual assault by the mobs,
they reinforced the closures with bars.
But at midnight, while the guards were still on duty,
an impetuous mass of people,
burning with the desire to see the body,
burst into the house where the holy body lay,
taking away, without any regard, doors and reinforcements.
Three times they impetuously repeated the attack on the abode of the friars,
and admirable thing
they were not able to penetrate it even once, despite their efforts, but,
as they later confessed with their own mouths,
they were astonished at the sight of it.
The doors were open
and although the whole house was full of light,
they did not see the entrance, and they circled around, dazzled by the glare.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.