June 13 is the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua. He’s got a few surprises hidden in his story. In the first place he’s Portuguese and Padua is in Italy. In the second place, he died in 1231 after only ten years as a Franciscan, and after the first two years of his preaching as a Franciscan, had been somewhat unsuccessful. From those first two years we get the story of his preaching to the birds and the fish who did listen!

The Franciscan order was approved verbally by Pope Innocent in 1209 but Anthony, then known as Fernando, actually joined the Augustinians in Lisbon, was trained by them, and was ordained by them.

After the martyrdom of some Franciscans in Morocco Fernando wanted to leave the Augustinians and join the Franciscans, go to Morocco and be martyred, himself. When he had arranged all this, around the year 1221, and gotten to Morocco, he became so ill that he was sent back to Europe and his boat wrecked on the coast of Sicily. He never got back to Portugal or Morocco, for that matter.

The Atonement Friars have a great write-up about Saint Anthony and, in light of our new pope, I was charmed to discover that Saint Anthony has deep Augustinian roots. I always did wonder how he became such a great preacher.
https://www.atonementfriars.org/life-st-anthony-padua/

Speaking of great preaching, I heard an amazing sermon last Saturday. At the ordination of twelve new priests, the presiding bishop included this spine-tingling bit. He said that everyone teased this particular class of ordinandi about having twelve candidates. The number twelve of course has lots of references attached: twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles, twelve gates in the heavenly city. But the bishop said God did not call these guys as a group. He called them as individuals, one by one. He called them by name. And the bishop named each of them — John, John, Christian, Timothy, Jordan, Andrew, Michael, Alfredo, Emmanuelle, Joseph, Richard, Ray.

Spectacular!

For pictures go to http://www.arlingtondiocese.org Search for Ordinations to the priesthood on the first page. I can’t embed a link!