St. Antony of Padua.
(1195-1231.)
By C. KEGAN PAUL.
AINT ANTONY of Padua, is the
Franciscan Friar whose name is, perhaps, better known throughout the
world than any other member of that
Order, save only St. Francis himself.
We dare not say that he is greatest
among them, bearing in mind the
words of Thomas a Kempis:
"Inquire thou not,
Nor dispute concerning the merits of the Saints;
Which of them is more holy than the other,
Or which the greater in the kingdom of heaven.
These things often times breed strifes and unprofitable contentions;
And nourish pride and vainglory, whence arise envy and
dissensions:
Whilst one man seeks to exalt this saint;
And another man another."
But we cannot ignore facts, and it is plain as the sun in heaven that Almighty God singled out St. Antony to manifest His power to the world, and called him be the especial wonder-worker of the Order which was his final choice, and in which he died.
The ways of God are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, and it might be that when they are strange and unusual our duty were simply to admire and adore. But since order would appear to be a necessary part of Himself, we find a law running through those of His most unusual, and, in the strict sense of the word, most eccentric manifestations.
Miracle forms part of the life of a Saint, and the Church has, at least for many centuries, required proof of miracles as one of the conditions of canonizations, so that miraculous power and sanctity invariably accompany each other. But in the vast majority of the Saints we dwell on the sanctity and forget the miracle; we remember St. Augustine for his Confessions, St. Ignatius for his Spiritual Exercises, St. Francis de Sales for his Counsels to those living in the world. In some cases, as in that of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order, in that of the Japanese Martyrs, and in that of the English who suffered under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, those who were so lovely in their lives in death were not divided, it is not always possible to ascribe this or that miracle to a definite name; the deeds and the invocations are alike collective.
There are again others not necessarily less, nor necessarily more, holy than they, in whose case miracle is forced upon us, who have passed through life attended by a storm of miracles, being in very fact like the fable of the poet:
"Where'er you walk cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade."
Wonder clings to them, as, in the natural order, some men have gifts of healing, others of statesmanship, others of command, of eloquence, or of literature; and we not unreasonably ask whether there be any law for such a gift.
We find that God has given a special and preeminent wonder-worker once at least to each of the great Orders of Religious whom He has called to serve Him, and that in each case He has attached the gift not so much to the Founder, as to one who came near him and had caught much of his spirit.
Thus among the Benedictines, St. Maurus was distinguished alike for his miracles and his holiness, through sixty years of his life of seventy-four years. Thus St. Nicholas of Tolentino showed forth in an especial manner the power of God in the austere order of the Hermits of St. Augustine. Thus St. Vincent Ferrer sealed by his wondrous works the power of God on the sons of St. Dominic. So too St. Peregrine Laziosi among the Servites, St. Francis Xavier among the Jesuits, and in the eighteenth century B. Gerard Majella among the more recent Redemptorists, as St. Antony among the Franciscans, were evidence of God's approbation on the Orders to which they severally belonged.
