It is great to be Catholic. And fun too!
The Italian site of ZENIT informs us that on 8 April we celebrate the 750th anniversary of the finding of the incorrupt tongue of St. Anthony of Padua!
YES! It is!
On 8 April 1263, during the first recognitio of the mortal remains of St. Anthony, the brothers found, “con stupore”!, the saint’s intact tongue amidst the fragments of his body.
The tongue of the saint has been venerate ever since.
The site of the Basilica in Padua. HERE
I wonder what I’ll have for lunch on Monday…. hmmm….
In any event, I remember the huge stir in Italy some years ago when the relics of St. Anthony were stolen. Some similar thing happened in California a couple years back when a reliquary of St. Anthony was boosted from a church.
To which saint does St. Anthony pray, I wonder, to get himself back when he is lost?
In any event, happy endings in both cases. The reliquaries were recovered.
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I perhaps shouldn’t have decided to check your blog whilst eating a bologna sub.
Like my grandma used to say, bologna has everything in it but the squeal.
Fr. Z., of course, St. Anthony would never lose anything…..he always knew where his keys were.
St. Eligius, of course! While you may know him as a goldsmith, builder of churches and monasteries, ransomer of captives from the slave market and bishop, he also found the bodies of several saints.
St. Anthony of Lisbon, pray for us!
My stepfather’s take was that St. Anthony’s an Italian, so he’s getting his stuff back. And he’s not just good at *finding* random things, if you know what I mean.
Thief #1: Where are my keys?
Thief #2: I have no idea! I can’t find my glasses.
Thief #1: I thought I left them with my wallet, but that’s not here either.
Thief #2: Don’t look at me. I can’t see anything. I need you to take me to the mall to get new glasses.
Thief #1: Wait. Where’s the car?
Thief #2: I can’t find my left shoe.
And eventually, the reliquaries are returned because the thieves can’t deal with it anymore.
When I was 12 I lost my second pair of glasses in Lake Huron when I was visiting my aunt and uncle’s cabin. To my knowledge, they are still down there somewhere.
Someone gave me as a joke a very lovely gift — St. Anthony golf balls, and based on my golf game or lack thereof, they seem like an appropriate gift.
http://www.monasterygreetings.com/product/St_Anthony_Golf_Balls/Franciscan_Gifts
I learned to pray to St. Anthony as a child when things were lost. Back in 2007 my husband and I were preparing to travel to England for the first time since he immigrated in 2005. It was late the night before our flight and my husband realized we didn’t have his passport. We looked through every file folder multiple times, ripped our house apart, and my husband ultimately drove 30 miles to his office in a storm to see if it might be there. Nothing. He was beside himself. I thought we had wasted a couple thousand dollars on flights, and worse, my husband wouldn’t get to see his family. For some reason, in the very wee hours, I decided to check the stupid file cabinet one more time. And didn’t I find that darn passport very obviously sitting in a folder (though not one that particularly made sense) which I had looked through several times already! I had also prayed to St. Therese, which couldn’t have hurt–maybe she helped pester St. Anthony on my behalf.
Needless to say, he’s a favorite of mine, and I taught my son to ask for his help when he’s lost something.
Don’t mess with St Anthony. I lived in Padua when I was a liberal protestant student, clueless as to anything Catholic. I used to go to the Basilica of St Anthony and lay my hand on his tomb, only because I saw other people doing it and figured it was something I also should do. So I did, and years later I became a Catholic. Looking back, I think St Anthony helped one who was lost to find her way.
Do you suppose that St. Anthony could help people who have lost their minds ? ;)
In the mid-70s, I was a protestant, a contented one, and likely to remain one my whole life. I’d heard about “St. Anthony’ who found things, but never really considered it. Then, in the fulness of time, one day I lost something REALLY important. I have no memory now of what it was. After turning everything over, in a panic, and not intending any disrespect, I said, “St. Anthony, help!” Of course, I found it in about one minute. I remember the astonishment, the stop-the-world, overwhelming astonishment, as if it were today. I said, “WHO ARE YOU?” and then, ‘WHY DO YOU CARE?” It was the first crack in the wall, and soon other light came in and there was nowhere to go but to the Catholic Church, the source of the light.
…had the good fortune last year to visit Padua on pilgrimage; the Basilica of St. Anthony with his tomb is stunningly beautiful. Also located in Padua is the tomb and shrine of St. Leopold Mandic, a twentieth-century saint known as the apostle of the confessional, whose arm is incorrupt and displayed there…
I LOVE St. Anthony! We owe him big. (shoes, schoolwork, keys, phones etc.) In a large, Catholic family devotion to him seems imperative :)
Started praying to St. Anthony when hubby lost a contact lens back in the ’80’s. I have had many dramatic rescues since.
I lost my wallet with all my ID. Searched the car, head to toe. Searched the house. Finally went into St. Thomas Aquinas, 9th Street, Brooklyn and lit a candle. Walked out of work a few days later. There was my wallet, sitting in the driver’ s seat in the car in plain sight…. With everything in tact.
Recently, dropped my wallet, full of cash, at BB Kings. Rushed back from the parking garage and found it, with cash inside, on the floor of the elevator. Thank you, St. Anthony!
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I love St. Anthony. When I first met my husband, at his Italian home, his mother kept a statue of St. Anthony on her dresser. It had been her mother’s (at LEAST) and maybe her grandmother’s, so it goes back a ways. It is a beautiful statue, with the expected patina of age, some damage (the hand of the Child Jesus), but it is so wonderful. I was 14 when I first went into that home, and all those years in that home, growing up really, there was St. Anthony standing sentry on the dresser, holding his flowers and a little Jesus. My mother-in-law and father-in-law, changed my life because they were Catholic and attended Mass regularly. I envied the regularity of it, the family-oriented expectation of it. It was who they WERE, and I wanted it. At 27, I became a Catholic, was baptized, received Confirmation, and first Holy Communion all on the same day, but the Monsignor at the church where my husband’s family attended. My father-in-law was my sponsor.
They are in Heaven now. God rest their beautiful souls. St. Anthony sits on our piano, much loved and cherished.
I have lots of confidence in St. Anthony, because I can’t tell you how many times prayers have been answered after praying to him!
One note about St. Anthony. I remember Mother Angelica (God bless HER) saying that St. Anthony is represented as a rather “thin” man, but he was actually quite a big guy! I wonder if that is true? Mother must have had some reason to say that.
“by the Monsignor”. ….sigh…..
AHA That explains it.
As a cradle Catholic I had been taught my catechism.
1+1=2/2+2=4 etc. Ok so I knew my catechism. That was it.
Then in my 20’s praying (not to St. Anthony but in front of his statue) it was like somebody suddenly turned on the lights. AHA so THAT’s what they’ve been trying to teach me all these years.
My Catholicism suddenly came to light and took on real meaning.
Lost and found?
I didn’t even know I’d lost it, or rather just never found it.
I always remembered that it was in front of his statue but this really explains just why.
I will now give credit where credit is due.
Fr, Z, thank you for this!
Readers might want to commemorate the occasion in part by listening to Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto “Per la Solemnita della S. Lingua di S. Antonio in Padua”, RV 212 (and at least some of the versions of which loaded at You Tube are presumably ‘legal’ in virtue of having been loaded by their performers…)
(I have a note to myself that Vivaldi wrote this for the celebration of the 1350 Translatio (15 February in the Fransciscan calendar), but not where I found this information… Is it certainly known after which St. Anthony he was named (presumably…?!), when he was baptized immediately as a precaution at birth by his midwife on 4 March?
There is of course also Mahler’s setting of the Knaben Wunderhorn poem about St. Anthony preaching to the fish – for those who do not find its conclusion too bitter…)