Saint Anthony of Padua was the twenty ninth saint to
be declared a doctor of the church. He was a great theologian and became the most typical of the popular Italian creatures
of the Franciscan tradition. God's providence disposed that he preached to simple souls; his pulpit was not a university church
or a seminary chapel but the market places and the humble shrines of the poor. He even preached to the fishes in the sea.
Some details of his life are familiar to us. He was born
at Lisbon, Portugal. His parentage was noble and nature was lavish in her gifts to him. A young man of brilliant intellect,
prosperous and imposing, he chose to abandon all inheritance, all prospects of worldly success, all the allurements o the
legitimate ambition and the consolations of courtier's life instead he chose to follow the life of sanctity marked by the
evangelical counsels. He joined the canons regular of St. Augustine. The monastery into which he was admitted was a celebrated
center of learning and of prestige. Here he speedily found his place among the most promising of the monks.
The lifelong characteristics of St. Anthony were manifest
even in the spring time of his religious life. St. Francis of Assisi was later to call him "My Bishop", in gentle mockery
of the great learning and natural dignity in this most humble of priests. Yet even in the early days of his Augustinian vocation,
St. Anthony manifested that blend of the natural gifts of intellect with the supernatural spirit of wisdom which differentiates
the doctors of the church from the wise men of the world.
The Eternal Word of God comes to us through two principal
channels: the Incarnation and the Revelation. Incarnate, the Word comes to us in flesh fashion from the body of the Immaculate
Queen to whom St. Anthony from childhood devote his most prayerful thought. Revealed, Eternal Word was and is transmitted
to the faithful of all times through the Sacred Scriptures, and to the repository of the Word. Devotion to Mary and the Sacred
Scriptures were the constituent principles of the piety and learning of the young Augustinian monk who was destined to live
his Order and native land in obedience to the call of Christ whom he loved.