Feast day: June 13

St. Anthony of Padua

Priest & Doctor of the Church · 1195–1231

Patron of Lost things, the poor, Portugal

Portuguese Franciscan whose hidden brilliance was discovered when he was asked to preach unprepared — and stunned everyone; he became the era's greatest preacher.

He was born Fernando in Lisbon in 1195, to a noble Portuguese family, and as a young man entered the Augustinian canons, devoting himself to study until he had a remarkable command of Scripture. His life turned when the bodies of five Franciscan friars, martyred preaching to the Muslims in Morocco, were brought back to Portugal. Fired with the desire to give his own life for Christ, he left the Augustinians, joined the new Franciscan order, took the name Anthony, and set sail for Morocco.

But God had other plans. Illness forced him to leave Africa, and his ship was blown off course to Italy, where he lived quietly and unnoticed in a small hermitage. His hidden gifts came to light by accident: at an ordination where no one had prepared a sermon, Anthony was told to speak, and astonished everyone with his learning and eloquence. From that moment his life as a preacher began.

He became one of the most powerful preachers of the age, drawing enormous crowds across Italy and France, preaching against heresy with such effect that he was called the 'Hammer of Heretics,' and recalling careless Christians to repentance and to justice for the poor. So thorough was his knowledge of the Bible that a later pope called him the 'Ark of the Testament.'

Worn out by his labors, he died near Padua in 1231 at only thirty-six, and was canonized within a year — one of the fastest canonizations in history. When his tomb was opened, his tongue was found incorrupt, taken as a sign of his gift of preaching. Patron of the poor and, from a story of a lost book restored to him, the saint invoked the world over for finding what is lost, he was named a Doctor of the Church in 1946.

He's invoked for lost things because a novice stole his psalter and, after Anthony prayed, hastily returned it.

“Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.”
— St. Anthony of Padua

Image: Francisco de Zurbarán (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01556a.htm