13 June 2023 - homily for Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time - Anthony of Padua - Matthew 5:13-16

      On our trip to Rome a couple of weeks ago, we visited a house where St Francis of Assisi lived when he visited Rome.  Faithful to the simplicity and austerity of St Francis, he slept on a stone bed with a stone pillow.  Our guide for the week called St Francis a fulcrum that linked the Church of the ancient world to the Church that emerged toward the end of the medieval period and that entered the modern world.  St Francis was a light shining in the darkness of the world of that era, echoing the message of today’s Gospel that calls us to be a light in the reality of our world. 

      Today, we commemorate St Anthony of Padua, a renowned Franciscan preacher from the 13th century.  Although St Anthony is known to most modern Catholics as the saint who helps us find lost things, he was better known in his own era for his powerful preaching against heresies.  I remember a couple of months ago, I went to enter the prison for our ministry one Friday evening and could not find my ID tag in the car.  I knew I had not taken it out - I try keep it there in reach to show the guards each time I enter.  I prayed to St Anthony and could not find it after searching the car several times.  A couple of weeks later, I looked down at the side of the seat where I saw the ID tag caught in a tight crevice.  St Anthony had done his job.  Anthony was originally born in Lisbon, Portugal where he entered a monastery of Augustinian monks during his youth.  He felt that the Augustinian order was not a right fit for him. After meeting some visiting Franciscans, he joined that relatively newly formed order.  After trying to travel it to Africa, inspired by some Franciscan who had been martyred there, he got sick aboard the ship. After trying to go to Spain for medical treatment, he was diverted to Italy due to a storm, where he met St Francis of Assisi himself.  After his skills in theology and teaching were discovered, he spent a lot of his life preaching in Spain, Italy, and France, teaching an authentic love of God. In declining health, he went to a Franciscan monastery in Padua, where he died at the young age of 36.  He was canonized by Pope Gregory IX one year after his death.  St Anthony of Padua, pray for us.