What
a wonderful scripture reading we have from the First book of Kings today. We
often expect to see God in a profound, momentous experience in our lives, such
as Elijah’s experience with a great wind, a powerful earthquake, or ferocious
flames of fire. Yet, these powerful
scenes of nature did not accompany the divine presence, but rather God was
found in that quiet, soft whisper. When
I was on pilgrimage in Spain, one of the men who accompanied us kept on saying:
“Father Lincoln, I just don’t feel like a pilgrim.” I guess he expect some profound insight or
some rich, eventful experience from God to make his pilgrimage trip complete. Instead, our days were filled with achy feet, rain and sleet, snoring that kept
us up at night. Yet,
in some of the experiences we had on the pilgrimage trail really validated the
experience of God that was with us.
However, some of those experiences were like that little whisper.
Anthony of Padua is the saint we celebrate today. He was born just 13 years after Francis of
Assisi at the end of the 12th century. He started his ministry as an Augustinian
monk, but later became a Franciscan Friar. We
know that St Anthony of the patron saint of find lost things. That patronage is rooted in a story from his
life as a monk. Anthony
had a book of psalms that was very important to him. Besides
being a hand scribed book before the era of the printing press, Anthony had
many notes and commentary written in the book that help him in his teaching of
novices to the Franciscan order. One
of those novices decided to leave the order before taking his vows, taking
Anthony’s psalter with him when he fled. Anthony prayer for its return, and not only got the psalter back, but the
novice returned to the order as well! Not
only is Anthony of Padua the patron saint of things lost we lose by Catholics
and non-Catholics alike, but Pope Pius XII named him as a Doctor of the Church
in 1947, one of only 35 men and women to be named to such a high honor.
God
is there with us. He is there with us in
so many different ways. Are we looking
for him in a grand gesture, only to miss out on the subtle and quiet ways he is
with us?
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