Like many Catholics, my grandmother was especially devoted to Saint Anthony. In fact, she believed him to be one of the highest ranking saints in heaven. How she knew that, I still don’t know! He is, however, undoubtedly one of the Church’s most popular saints. Popular piety has assigned Saint Anthony in heaven the job of finding lost objects, but on earth his mission was more basically focused on his contemporaries many of whom may have seemed lost themselves.
Anthony was born Ferdinand de Bouillon in Lisbon, Portugal, on August 15, 1195. As a young man, he became a Canon Regular od Saint Augustine. But, after witnessing the burial of the five Franciscan martyrs of Morocco, in 1220 he joined the new Franciscan Order, receiving the name Anthony. For the next decade, Anthony traveled through Italy and southern France, preaching the kingdom of God with such zeal that he was called the “Hammer of Heretics,” while his knowledge of sacred scripture caused him to be called the “Living Ark of the Testament” by Pope Gregory IX. In preaching about baptism, he employed the image of fire and oil used to cook a meal. “The fire does not touch the food directly, and yet it warms, sterilizes, and cooks it. … Just as the food is cooked by means of the oil from the heat of the fire, so the baptismal water, ignited by the Holy Spirit, when it touches the body externally, interiorly purges the soul from all sins.”
He died at Padua, Italy, on June 13, 1231, and was canonized less than a year later on May 30, 1232. When his tomb was opened in 1263, his tongue was found incorrupt, which caused Saint Bonaventure, then the Minister General of the Franciscans to proclaim: “O blessed tongue that never cased to praise God and always taught others to bless him, now we plainly see how precious you are in his sight.”
Homily for the feast of Saint Anthony, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, Ny, June 13, 2025.
