By Mgr John Devine OBE

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I recently took part in a retreat for Liverpool priests in Padua, a beautiful medieval city. 

Prior to my retirement, I had been parish priest at the Onchan church of Saint Anthony of Padua in the Isle of Man. I’d prayed to St Anthony when I lost things – usually my car keys, an increasing problem with advancing age. 

This visit to Padua filled me in on the real St Anthony. He wasn’t Italian. Rather, he was born in Lisbon and his name was Fernando. And he was originally an Augustinian. Inspired by the martyrdom of five Franciscans in Morocco, he became a Franciscan, taking the name Anthony. He set out for Morocco, but illness on the journey forced his return. Bad weather caused his ship to be diverted to Sicily. He ended up in northern Italy where, standing in as a last-minute substitute preacher at an ordination ceremony, he surprised the congregation with his eloquence and profound knowledge of scripture.

 
Francis of Assisi had a suspicion of theologians, but in Anthony he found a user-friendly academic theologian able to connect with the realities of everyday living. Francis gave Anthony responsibility for the theological formation of the friars. Although he held academic posts in several universities, he was recognised above all for his popular preaching. Appointed Franciscan superior in northern Italy, he was based in Padua. His reputation reached as far as Rome and led to an invitation from Pope Gregory IX to preach at the papal court.

I had dismissed images of St Anthony of Padua with the child Jesus in his arms as sentimental devotion. Yet there’s a moving story behind them. A fellow friar was passing Anthony’s cell and observed a light shining under the door. On entering the cell, he found Anthony with an open copy of the scriptures on his lap. The child Jesus was sitting on the open pages. Such was Anthony’s devotion that his reading of the Word of God caused the person of Jesus to emerge from the pages of his Bible. 

There are many statues and pictures of St Anthony in the churches of Padua. There’s a significant difference between them and the image of St Anthony with which I was familiar. In Padua, the child Jesus is not merely held in Anthony’s arms but is sitting on the pages of his open Bible. This is more than pious sentimentality. We’re accustomed to the practice of ‘lectio divina’, but for Anthony, the living Word of God took visible form. 

And why do we pray to St Anthony when we lose things? One day, a brother friar ‘borrowed’ Anthony’s Bible without his consent. Anthony prayed, and the book was returned.