Of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our Lord said to his disciples, you have heard the commandment, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But what I say to you is this, offer no resistance to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the left. If anyone wants to go to law over your shirt, hand him over your coat as well.
Should anyone press you into service for a mile, go with him two miles. Give to the man who begs from you. Do not turn your back on the borrower. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise you lord The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
First of all, I would urge you to read Monsignor Awolt's letter in the latest edition of the washing the Catholic Standard. It's in regard to Marjorie Hyer's article of misinformation about the cardinal designate, Archbishop Hickey. It's well worth your reading, because whether we like it or not, the Washington Post is a very illustrious paper. It's one of the two most important papers on the Eastern Coast, at least I can say that. And she is their religious editor.
That's a funny use of the word, the adjective religious there, I guess. Anyway, I recommend it to you. It's in the letter section of the latest edition of the Catholic Standard. What it amounts to is she completely trivializes the cardinalate. And having said that, we can go to something less important, Saint Anthony of Padua.
The one thought I want to leave with you about our dear Saint Anthony of Padua isn't the way he finds the lost keys in your baggage. The point is this, the worst thing that happened to him as he saw it when it was happening was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. Now this is not an uncommon occurrence. The difficulty with this truth of life is that the truth of it hits us between the eyes only in retrospect. When we're in the very midst of what looks like the utmost in tragedies, all it looks like is the utmost in tragedies.
It just looks as if there's absolutely nowhere to turn. The world has come to an end. What can I do? It's hopeless. That's the way it looks at the time.
And and yet, from a retrospect of a life, it can well appear it often it's I mean, it's happened so often that you might say it's the norm, That when we look back at this great tragedy, we can say it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Now take our dear friend Saint Anthony of Padua. As you all know, he's most famous for the way he finds lost articles. Or he used to be, scarcely ever hear his name anymore. That's not what he was The point I want to make in his life was his shipwreck.
Here's a man that was born over in Portugal and a very young a born about November, something like that, call it 1200. He gets a vocation to be a religious and he wants to be a good religious, not a half baked one, not a lukewarm, what a good one. He doesn't find it in Portugal. He then passes on into Spain and there meets the newfounded Franciscans. Saint Francis is still living over in Italy.
So he hears about the this this upstart group of of beggar beggar religious, mendicants. Sounds so much better when you say mendicants rather than beggar. But that's what when they called them mendicants, they were talking about beggars. And let me tell you, they weren't at the highest ladder, the rung of the ladder of respectability, believe me. So he gets the he gets on fire with being a Franciscan and he wants to go to Morocco because that's where some Franciscans have been martyred.
So he manages to get to Morocco, and his health fails. So they ship they they ship they wanna ship him back to Spain, but en route they they have a a storm, and he winds up shipwrecked in Sicily. It looked like the end of the world. But that's what brought him in direct into direct contact with Saint Francis of Assisi. And it was Saint Francis of Assisi who made him his first theologian for the Franciscans.
And it was Saint Francis of Saint Anthony of Padua that introduced the theology of Saint Augustine to the Franciscans. And it's still there. It's not a dead letter by no means. And this is what changed the man's life. He died only 35 years of age, 1,230.
He only he only lived about thirty five years. Now, the point I wanna make is just that one little point. Here's a man who wanted to give his life to God. He moves to do it, and what happens? God fails him.
His health fails. So, they shut the the next thing what else what more could happen than losing your health? We've seen this plastered all over God's earth. When you lose your health, you've lost everything. What an absurd thing to say.
That's like talking about dogs and cats. But you remember, you don't hear it much anymore. When you've lost your health, you've lost everything. That was publicized all over the place. Anyway, now the poor guy gets shipwrecked and winds up with nothing down in Sicily, the lowest part of Italy.
And he wanders up and meets Saint Francis of Assisi, becomes part of the group there. So his whole life was changed, first by his sickness and then above all by his shipwreck, which nearly cost him his life. Now, this is a concrete treat, I could give you several examples right out of the present tense. But these things happen. And this is why I say to good, honest, religious, Christian, Catholic people who get clobbered.
Remember, we all get clobbered. It's just a matter of how much. Just hold everything. Hold it. Wait until you can see what's actually happening.
Wait until you can see it in the whole picture of your life. And you can't see that till the end of your life. As somebody said, don't count your poker chips till you're home in bed. That's one of my principles. And it's so true.
We get so confused. We get so mixed up. We get we get we we we are tugging so strongly at the anchor of our faith that God is a good God and running the show. That we're just we're just teetering on the edge of being hopeless. And all and I don't say inevitable, of course not.
But in many instances, in a few years from when that crisis and tragedy hits, people look back and say, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm not exaggerating. Most of you can give instances of this from other people's lives and maybe from your own. But as I say, don't count your poker chips to your home in bed. In other words, don't start evaluating things until you have a perspective, till you have it in the palm of your hand.
And so whatever Saint Anthony of Padua can teach us, I think this illustration is wonderful. That a man who seemed to have lost everything, his health, and then almost his life, that that became the really the turning point of his life that made him the great saint and great doctor of the church, a great Franciscan, who knew Saint Francis of Assisi. In the name of the father, of the son, and of the holy spirit, amen.