Born to preach

A look at the life of St Anthony of Padua

St Anthony, whose baptismal name was Ferdinand, was born in Lisbon in 1195, the eldest son of an influential family. His parents had great plans for him, perhaps a bureaucratic career, but Ferdinand disappointed them by choosing a life more directly dedicated to the service of God.

Ferdinand’s pious intentions brought him into more and more conflict with his family. They wanted him to be successful and to further the good fortunes of his family. Ferdinand only wanted to respond to God’s call.

When he was 15, after much prayer and reflection, he left his rich home and went to live in the Augustinian Abbey of St Vincent on the outskirts of Lisbon. The Canons Regular of St Augustine, the religious order which he joined, have always been famous for their dedication to scholarly pursuits. It is to the Augustinians that the saint is indebted for his intellectual formation, which made him one of the most learned clerics in Europe at the beginning of the 13th Century.

Peace

Ferdinand thought he would find the peace that he sought by fleeing the world and joining a religious order. Unfortunately, St Vincent was too near to his home. Friends and relatives were always visiting him, bringing him gifts which embarrassed him and news of what was happening in their social world which disturbed him.

He simply could not find any peace there, and his studies were suffering. Finally, Ferdinand begged his superiors for a transfer to another abbey, and they sent him to the Augustinian Abbey of the Holy Cross in Coimbra (which at that time was the capital of Portugal). There he continued his studies and was ordained to the priesthood when he was 25 years old.

After his ordination, Ferdinand was placed in charge of hospitality in his abbey. It was in this responsibility that he first came into contact with the Franciscans. In 1219 he met five followers of St Francis who were on their way to Morocco to preach to the Muslims. He was strongly attracted by their simple Gospel life style.

Then in February 1220, news arrived that his five Franciscan friends had been martyred in Morocco. Their remains had been sent to Portugal, where they were being venerated as relics of martyrs of the faith. The king ordered them to be placed in the Church of the Holy Cross in Coimbra.

Ferdinand meditated upon the heroic response of these Franciscans to the call to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a call that brought them, too, to their cross. He felt embarrassed, for he considered his own life to be mediocre and filled with compromise. He longed to embrace the heroic life style of the early Friars Minor. He wanted the freedom of a charismatic and joy-filled response to God’s call to leave everything and follow Him.

Ferdinand eventually obtained permission from his superiors to join the Franciscans. He was invested with the Franciscan habit and began to learn the teachings of their holy founder St Francis. With this new life style, he also took on a new name. He called himself Anthony, after the hermit St Anthony of the desert to whom the Franciscan hermitage was dedicated.

Preaching

Shortly after, Anthony set off with a fellow friar, intending to die preaching the Gospel in Morocco. He had barely arrived when he contracted a severe fever which left him semiconscious for weeks.

He didn’t even have the strength to stand up, let alone go into the market place to preach. Anthony’s dream of serving God with his words and his life had been crushed. And so Anthony said farewell to Africa and set sail for Portugal. But even this choice would be challenged. The ship encountered a terrible storm which blew it off course.

Finally, it was forced ashore on the island of Sicily. Weak and confused as to the direction that God intended for him, Anthony travelled to Assisi, where there was to be a great assembly of the friars. On the feast of Pentecost in 1221 thousands of friars gathered in Assisi from all over Europe in what has come to be known as the Chapter of Mats.

There Anthony listened to the teachings of St Francis, and he was greatly consoled. As the friars dispersed to go to their home friaries, Anthony waited for someone to give him a sign of where he should go.

Finally, the provincial of Bologna, Friar Graziano, invited Anthony to follow him. Graziano sent Anthony to a small hermitage in the mountains in the town of Montepaolo near Forlì, to serve as a priest for the community of brother hermits living there.

In only a short time, Anthony had travelled from Coimbra in Portugal to the shores of Morocco, then to Sicily, then to Assisi, and finally to a small hermitage in Montepaolo.

There, at last, Anthony found the peace which he had sought for so long. He immersed himself in his priestly service to the community as well as in the household tasks of cooking and cleaning.

One day he was asked to attend the celebration of an ordination to the priesthood in the city of Forlì. The preacher failed to arrive, and Graziano, Anthony’s provincial, ordered him to preach whatever might come to mind. His preaching astounded everyone and so his peaceful period of retreat in the hermitage came to an end. From then onwards he would be called upon to preach near and far.

Anthony travelled throughout northern Italy and southern France, preaching especially in the areas that had been plagued by heresy. He combated both abuses in the Church such as political intrigues and moral decadence which had caused many to lose their faith, as well as the heretical positions such as rejection of Church authority and the sacraments which confused the faithful.

 His most powerful weapon against these enemies was his Gospel lifestyle, for by living what he preached he was able to confound heretics and enlighten Catholics.

Due to his talent, Anthony was assigned the post of Minister Provincial (or guide of Franciscan fraternities) in northern Italy, probably during the years 1227-1230.

The task involved visiting several monasteries in northern Italy. Anthony, however, had a preference for the city of Padua and the small Franciscan community at the simple church of Santa Maria Mater Domini (later extended and transformed into the current Basilica of St Anthony).

In Padua, Anthony concluded a couple of relatively short stays: the first, between 1229 and 1230; the second, between 1230 and 1231. Although the time he spent in Padua was short, Anthony established a very strong bond with the city.

On June 13, 1231, Anthony came down from his tree house to eat the noon meal with the friars. They had barely begun when he collapsed into their arms. As the friars supported him, he whispered to them that he wished to be taken to Padua so that he might die there.

He wanted to spend his last hours in the friary which he loved so much near the Church of Santa Maria.

Monastery

The friars put him on a cart and travelled toward Padua, but Anthony was already too weak to make it. As they approached a Poor Clare monastery in Arcella, a town close to Padua, they decided that it would be best to take him there.

The friars noticed that he was gazing attentively at something, and so they asked him what he saw. He responded: “I see my Lord.” Shortly after that he passed away. He was only 36 years old, but he had travelled thousands of kilometres in his missions and he had preached to tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of the faithful.

The friars tried to keep Anthony’s death a secret, fearing his body would be stolen, but almost immediately children were seen running through the streets of Padua calling out: “The saint is dead. Friar Anthony is dead.”

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