Readings from the Sermons of St. Anthony
Alas, how many disturbing thoughts go through the heart. As a result, we lack the leisure to enjoy the bread of heavenly delights and to taste the joys of interior contemplation. For that reason, the good Master invites us: Come apart from the restless throng into a desert place, into solitude of mind and body, where we withdraw from the turbulence of the world, and rest in quiet and solitude, tasting the bread of tears as we think over our sins. Then does the Lord make himself known to us.
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The sinner who has recovered the grace which he has lost has three reasons for being full of joy. He should rejoice that he did not die in his sins and face everlasting punishment. He should be glad because he has been restored to God’s favor though he merited it not. He should rejoice that he will be brought to glory if he perseveres in his new-found friendship. Let him sing then with Isaiah: “I will exult for joy in the Lord; in my God is the joy of my soul.”
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The sinner must unhesitatingly put all works squarely before his mind’s eye and regard them often and attentively with sorrow of heart. In this way he will be able to produce from them the fruit of penance. Were one courageously to set his inner self before his eyes, he would find nothing there but reason for true sorrow of heart and the desire to return to the ways of God.
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The spirit of penance and contrition of heart, which as a breath of new life God breathes into the sinful soul of man, his image and likeness defiled by sin, becomes in turn a sacrifice the humbled sinner may offer to God to obtain pardon and reconciliation. For God will not spurn a heart contrite and humbled.
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St Anthony wrote the Sermons with the specific purpose of providing his fellow friars with an instrument for the formation of the Christian life. They are usually based on subjects relating to faith and good morals. The Saint offers preachers the tools with which to teach the faithful the doctrine of the Gospel and a means to render the Sacraments effective, especially those of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. They could be defined as a treaty of sacred doctrine in the form of a sermon collection with which the Saint sought to expose the whole of Scripture from the Sunday and Festival liturgical readings of his times.
THE SERMONS OF SAINT ANTONY OF PADUA - Full ( Paul Spilsbury’s translation)
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Quotes from St. Anthony of Padua
1. The breadth of charity widens the narrow heart of the sinner.
2. O Father, in your Truth (that is to say, in your Son, humbled, needy and homeless) you have humbled me. He was humbled in the womb of the Virgin, needy in the manger of the sheep, and homeless on the wood of the Cross. Nothing so humbles the proud sinner as the humility of Jesus Christ’s humanity.
3. Alas, alas! He who is the liberty of captives is made a prisoner. He who is the Glory of the angels is mocked. The God of all is scourged. The spotless mirror of the eternal Light is spat upon. The Life of mortals is killed. What is there left for us poor wretches to do but go and die with him? Draw us forth from the mire, Lord Jesus, with the hook of your Cross; so that we may run, not to your sweetness, but to the bitterness of your Passion.
4. The wisdom of God is reflected in the face of the soul: she will see God as he is, and she will know as she is known.
5. So the religious soul finds in the heart of Jesus a secure refuge against the wiles and attacks of Satan, and a delightful retreat. But we must not rest merely at the entrance to the hole in the rock, we must penetrate its depths. At the mouth of the deep hollow, at the mouth of the wound in his side we shall, indeed, find the precious blood which has redeemed us. This blood pleads for us and demands mercy for us. But the religious soul must not stay at the entrance. When she has heard, and understood, the voice of the divine blood, she must hasten to the very source from which it springs, into the very innermost sanctuary of the heart of Jesus. There she will find light, peace, and ineffable consolations.
6. Look upon the rainbow: that is, consider the beauty, holiness and dignity of blessed Mary; and bless with heart and mouth and deed her Son, who made her thus. In the brightness of her holiness she is very beautiful, beyond all daughters of God. She has encompassed the heaven about (that is, she has enclosed the divinity) within the circle of her glory, her glorious humanity.
7. Do you want to have God always in your mind? Be just as he made you to be. Do not go seeking another “you”. Do not make yourself otherwise than he made you. Then you will always have God in mind.
8. The Lord breathes the breath of life, contrition of heart, into the face of the soul when he impresses upon it his own image and likeness, which has been soiled by sin, and renews it.
9. The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is Christ.
10. How great is the kindness of God! How great is the dignity of the penitent! He who lives in eternity dwells in the heart of the humble and in the soul of the penitent! It is the mark of a truly contrite heart that it humbles itself in everything, reckoning itself no more than a dead dog and a mere flea.