June 13, Solemnity of St. Anthony

Solemnity of St. Anthony  June 13-14 2026

A Decidedly Docile Doctor

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

Have you ever prayed: “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, come around. Something is lost and can’t be found?” or if you are on familiar terms with him: “Tony, Tony, come around!” People ask Saint Anthony’s help to find everything from lost keys to lost souls. Italians jealously claim him as their own, but in reality, he is Portuguese and lived in Padova only five years.  
 
How this 13^th century Franciscan priest became the director of heaven’s lost and found department goes back to when he prayed for the return of his stolen, richly annotated Book of Psalms. The sticky-fingered thief, a friar no less, overcome with remorse returned it. But the Church honors him for much more than helping us find lost things. Today I’d like to reflect on his docility, his ability to accept to all that God wanted of him.  
 
Studying St. Anthony’s life, we discover that the plans he envisioned for his life were mostly frustrated, unfulfilled. He might well have said: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans”  
 
At the age of 15, Ferdinand (this was his given name at baptism) joined the Augustinian Order where he immersed himself in the study of the Scriptures. There he found the strength to deal with all the twists and turns his life would take. Through it all, he was docile, he was receptive. Like Samuel, he could say, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” We often turn those words around, and pray, “Listen Lord, your servant is speaking.”  
 
When the bodies of 5 Franciscans, martyred in Morocco were brought to Lisbon, Ferdinand was so moved that he joined the Franciscans in order to offer his life to Christ in Africa. Taking the name Anthony, he did arrive in Morocco but soon fell ill. Martyrdom’s not for everyone! God’s plan was unfolding. Sent home, his storm-tossed ship veered way off course, landing in Sicily. There, he fell ill again—not because he was in Sicily—but because of his weak constitution!  
 
Nursing him back to health, the Friars sent him not to Morocco but to Assisi and then to the town of Forli. Not expecting much of Anthony, he was assigned kitchen duty. He accepted the task with docility, never revealing his scholarly and oratorial gifts. But when a speaker failed to appear at the celebration of an Ordination and no friar was willing to substitute, the Superior assigned Anthony the task. The greatness of Anthony was then revealed. His gifts of intellect and sanctity astonished his hearers who then realized they had underestimated and miscast this friar.  
 
Anthony was ordered to retire his apron and the Brillo pads and go from the kitchen into the classroom becoming the 1st teacher of theology to the Franciscans. But God was still at work. Eventually Anthony began a ministry of powerful preaching throughout northern Italy and into France.  
 
His word roused the indifferent, converted the hostile, and inspired the devout. The crowds were so enormous that services had to be held in the piazzas or the fields where Anthony would have to climb a tree and preach seated on a tree limb, a risky prospect since Anthony was not as his images portray him. He was short and (how shall we say) rather “plump.” Anthony’s continual health problems brought him to an untimely death at the age of 36, Amazingly he was canonized the following year! Centuries later, the Church bestow upon Anthony, the title of “Evangelical Doctor.”  
 
In art Anthony is depicted in many ways: holding a bible alluding to his preaching of the Word of God; a lily, a symbolizing his purity, innocence, and integrity, and a loaf of bread to recall his care for the poor. But did you ever wonder why is also often shown holding the infant Jesus? This recalls a mystical experience he had contemplating the Incarnation.  
 
 Anthony is so much more than the director of heaven’s “lost and found.” Today let us ask him to give us a little of his docility and trust when our plans are turned upside down, when life takes us in unexpected directions. May he remind us that God is always at work in our life and that “come what may” we can “keep it together: realizing that God holds us together and that we are completely safe in the divine embrace of the Lord.