I will also be spending a couple of days in Singapore, where Anthony has many followers, and where I will celebrate a Holy Mass in the Franciscan Church of St. Mary’s of the Angels (see box on page 5).
June is Saint Anthony’s special month, and the 13th in particular, the day of his death, represents the highpoint of the celebrations in his honour. Although it may seem strange to celebrate the sad occurrence with a feast, we must keep in mind that for Anthony, the end of his earthly life represented the beginning of his everlasting life in heaven. However, besides being his heavenly birthday, June 13, 1231, marks the beginning of a devotion that has not faded in time, and which has enriched the whole of Christianity.
Even though nowadays we live amid many contradictions, and our outlook on life may often be obscured by clouds of ephemeral considerations, we keep feeling a strong desire for what is holy, a longing which, if cultivated, can produce a few changes within us.
First of all, it can hopefully deflate all those myths based on the appeal of outward appearances, money and power.
Together with this action of cleansing us of these impurities, this longing for the spirit can also have formative aspects: it gives us a new and wider awareness of the limits of human ambition, of the importance of faith in the afterlife, and of our duty to understand the sufferings of others. In short, love for the spiritual leads to sainthood, but not that type of sainthood often associated with prodigious events that are passed off as ‘miracles’. The sainthood I am referring to could be called ‘everyday holiness’, that holiness that prompted Pope John Paul II to formally canonise 483 people who actually spent their whole lives pursuing obscurity. Humility and silence, generosity and compassion are the true miracles of our times, rather than impressive feats that provoke curiosity. The month of Saint Anthony and his Feast on June 13 should encourage us to reflect on these truths.
Anthony is an extremely popular saint with a great number of devotees all over the world. However, his biography, which, along with his writings, are the only means at our disposal through which we can glean into his inner life, was spent in search of those modern miracles I have just mentioned: humility, silence, generosity and compassion.
Anthony belonged to the nobility, but chose to join a mendicant order, that is, a religious order which depends directly on charity. He was extremely learned on biblical and theological matters, but chose to hide his knowledge in his hermit lifestyle; he gave whatever he could to those lacking in material and spiritual wealth, and played an important role in the history of his time by defending the poor and downtrodden. These aspects of our Saint’s life and personality have been well-documented by various biographers, and have been confirmed by modern scholarship. These facts alone demonstrate a sanctity which is implicit in the hearts of all those who truly follow the evangelical message. It is only this message that makes life more bearable for everyone, and which renders death, that great and frightening spectre of all times, easier to face because it enables us to overcome the illusion of an eternal physical life. For us, therefore, the death of Saint Anthony, and our own as well when the fateful hour comes, take on an entirely different, and more spiritual, significance.
Death is not an event to be feared above all others, nor is it the end of everything. It is a fact of life, or rather, a rite of passage from one existence to another. For Anthony, in particular, it was a joyful passage. “Happy Servant of God, who while still flesh and blood, received the gift of a vision of Our Lord,” wrote one of Anthony’s biographers a few years after his death, “and thanks to that vision could say ‘Now I am content, for I have seen Your face’”.
Updated on October 06 2016