Being a Pupil of St. Anthony of Padua

 

Today, June 13th, we celebrate the feast of St Anthony of Padua, Confessor and Doctor of the Church. 

"While we admire the graces and extraordinary gifts with which God was pleased to glorify his servant, we must not forget that he was raised so high, only because, by divine grace, through the paths of self-denial and humility, he had learned perfectly to die to himself, and to be nothing in his own eyes. Pride makes our hearts an abomination to God, and puts him at the greatest distance from us. This is the deep wound of our souls, the main-spring of all our passions, the deadly poison of virtue, the fortress of the devil, and the source of all disorders. If we perfectly root out this evil, then will divine grace begin to establish its reign, and display its treasures in our souls."

[From Butler's Lives of the Saints, 1903]