Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
St. Anthony's feast day is on Sunday and so will not be celebrated liturgically and there
is a custom among Franciscans to celebrate the nine Tuesdays before his feast day as
a novena which has been extended to 13 Tuesdays because of the 13th day of June.
On which St. Anthony's feast is placed.
So this is the last Tuesday before his feast day which will be suppressed this year and
therefore we're celebrating a vote of mass in his honor.
Our Lord says that we should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
That we
should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
That we should be like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden or a candle in a home that
should be put on a candlestick to enlighten the whole house.
This text is particularly applied to St. Anthony who if he didn't coin the phrase in the 13th
century at least he...
he used it which is actions speak louder than words.
He used this phrase in one of his homilies but more than that he lived it.
It's a very Franciscan idea the idea that we are to preach but are to do it primarily
by the way we live.
Franciscan life rejuvenated the world.
St. Francis brought light.
Into a world that was growing cold according to St. Bonaventure not so much by what he said
although he said many things and did so very effectively but more so by the way he lived.
St. Anthony himself was learned in the scriptures and was a canon of St. Augustine in I believe
Coimbra or thereabouts in Portugal.
And was dedicated to the preaching of the word but when the relics of the first Franciscan
martyrs St. Berard and companions whose relics are in our altar were brought back from Morocco
and he saw the bodies of these five simple men whose one desire was to go among the Saracens
and give their life for Christ.
Saint Anthony was immediately struck with the desire to do likewise.
To go among those who did not know Christ and who rejected Christ and to offer his life
for Christ and for their conversion.
And so he obtained permission to leave the Augustinians and to go and to join the Franciscans.
When his desire remained unfulfilled, he tried to get to Morocco and was prevented by divine
providence and remained in a kind of obscure and insignificant position for some time until
finally he was more or less arbitrarily assigned to preach because the preacher at a very large
event didn't show up and nobody else was prepared. So the superior sort of just threw the
responsibility on Saint Anthony knowing or thinking that he was no more prepared than anyone
else but at least, you know, wouldn't be the superior that was embarrassed. And then Saint
Anthony got up and preached and everyone was stunned by his eloquence, learning, and ability.
We can see how
you can see how
you can see how
you can see how nowadays people tend to promote themselves and often people with talent want
others to know that they have it and if they can speak well or can accomplish many things,
they are engaged in a project of self-promotion. Saint Anthony, who was learned, able, and holy,
had no desire to promote himself but to serve Christ and his real desire,
was ultimately to give his life for our Lord. His desire, his burning desire, was not to be recognized
as a preacher or as a miracle worker which, of course, later on he became and still is today
known as the great miracle worker of the Franciscan order. His desire was to give his life for Christ
and he would have been completely content as a Franciscan to live in obscurity had it not been
for his superiors and ultimately ultimately for Saint Francis. Saint Anthony, who was a Christian,
would have been able to teach theology to his brothers. Saint Anthony would have remained
relatively unknown but divine providence dictated otherwise but in any case Saint Anthony was able
to fulfill in his own life what he what he preached which is that actions speak louder than words.
And so when our Lord says to us that we are
to let our light shine before the world it should be before anything else by our manner of life
and we should look to the saints for that for that example. We may not be able or generally
we shouldn't even aspire to be able to follow them in their extraordinary works or in their
miracles.
But we can follow them in that wholehearted dedication by which they lived what they believed
and preached what they believed before anything else by their manner of life.
That is in a particular way our vocation as friars and our vocation by virtue of the Marian vow
which is you know our particular dedication to Our Lady and our consecration to her which in the
spirituality of Saint Maximilian very much directs us to promote that consecration
among our brothers and sisters as Saint Francis was to promote penance within the church.
But of course that is first of all by by living it as Saint Francis lived the life of penance. So we
live a life of consecration. If we do that everything else will fall into place just as
it was truly God's will that Saint Anthony should preach. But it wasn't Saint Anthony who put
himself in that position. It was God's providence that arranged it so that he would be known
as this great and very effective preacher. Let us then all of us put first things first
the kingdom of God for everything else and he shall take care of the rest because in the end
as Saint Anthony says actions speak louder than words.
This victory is to be
about