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9.
A Special Witness to the Assumption
IN THE
HOME of Martin and Teresa de Bouillon, on August 15, 1195, an infant could
be heard trying out a voice that none of the neighbors particularly
heeded. They had heard hundreds like it in Lisbon. It sounded no
different. Just another birth with the usual cries of the baby, is what
they would have said.
They could not know of the latent power in that
feeble voice, which only needed development to make history. The same
voice, grown to robust maturity, would pack the churches with people
hungry for its eloquence; would indeed fill public squares with as many as
thirty thousand listeners at a time; would even, on one occasion, draw to
the surface of the River Brenta an audience of gaping fishes. But nobody
in Lisbon could have guessed that now.
Nor could the neighbors who knew the child by
his baptismal name of Fernand foresee, through seven and a half centuries,
that the very Pope who would enroll Anthony of Padua among the Doctors of
the Church would also define the doctrine which has stamped its beauty
like a trademark on his writings, his sermons, his piety. Lisbon was
indeed to be proud of young Ferdinand before he had done with it, as Padua
was to be proud of its Anthony, but neither could monopolize a devotion
that was meant to spread around the world and leave his statue on
pedestals everywhere. Before going on to that, however, suppose for the
curiosity of it we recall the date of the saint's birth and ask ourselves,
whose feast and what feast occurs on the fifteenth day of August. Little
Fernando, baptized in Lisbon's Cathedral of Our Lady, would later as an
altar boy there take pride in serving her Mass of the Assumption on his
birthday.
History, for all its appreciation of Anthony as
a wonder-worker and a saint, had quite overlooked the value of his written
word. Then came Pope Pius XII who took up the scanty publication of his
select sermons and commentary on the Psalms, read them through, and under
the popular style discovered (especially in the Marian discourses it would
seem) "a remarkable theologian in dogmatic investigations." The quoted
words catch the eye like a sparkle from the papal citation conferring upon
the saint the title Evangelical Doctor of the Universal Church.
The citation bears the date of January 16, 1946, and what follows next
would indicate that the Holy Father had found in St. Anthony an incentive
to action.
Within months of the day the saint had received
his doctorate, the hierarchy were all receiving from the same pontiff his
proposal to define the Assumption a dogma and his inquiry whether they
would consent to it. If they did, and he had no doubt they would, he
would have a new doctor to quote for his purpose. His Holiness had not
made Anthony one for nothing. Nor did he fail to acknowledge as much,
when the time came. His definitional document, giving a history of the
doctrine, admits that in that history the Evangelical Doctor "holds a
special place."
St. Anthony cannot compare with Duns Scotus in
arguments for the Immaculate Conception; nor with Cyril of Alexandria for
sheer force of logic in proving Mary's right to be called the Mother of
God; but when it comes to appreciating the death-defiant Queen whom the
angels took to heaven, he is unsurpassed. Once St. Anthony touches on the
Assumption, he pursues the subject with the zest of a boy. His words
glow. His admiration reminds one of nothing so much as those cherubs in
Titian's picture following with wonder-filled eyes the Madonna's ascent
into the sky.
From which it does not follow that Anthony
betrayed an unbalanced partiality in favor of one against her other
prerogatives. Loving her, he loved them all. This saint who worked more
wonders in the name of the Lord than history has been able to catch up
with, never spoke of Mary on earth, or in heaven, without a warmth of
superlatives which he considered a letdown of the truth. Every audience
who ever heard Anthony preach knew what to expect when he sounded her
praises who is, in any of her prerogatives, above the beauty of angels.
He slighted none of her glories—her divine maternity, her sinlessness, her
intermediary power, her inviolate virginity—none of them. Still, with all
that granted, St. Anthony remains uniquely identified with the
Assumption. The reason is solid. Not a doctor prior to him spent so much
time on it, or was so rapturously affected by it.
A foremost news weekly covering the ceremony
which attended the definition of the dogma on All Saints Day, 1950,
illustrated its account with a picture that represents the Madonna
appearing to brown-robed Anthony. Why was this picture chosen over a more
obviously pertinent one, such as Titian's? Why was St. Anthony brought
into the report? Because, the answer is, when a journalist has his pick
of arguments in favor of the traditional strength of a doctrine, he
naturally will play his trump card. His first duty in this case, as an
honest reporter, would be to establish the fact that what Pope Pius XII
proclaimed to a rejoicing throng was not a novelty to the Church.
The faithful had from centuries ago believed
that the Mother from whom our Savior had drawn every drop of his Precious
Blood was fittingly taken into heaven, body and soul, upon the termination
of her mortal life. It has made her known throughout the Catholic world
as St. Mary of the Angels. It has informed frescoes, canvasses,
stained-glass windows, with the glory of her beauty rising skyward in a
tumult of wings and voices. It has turned August the 15th,
wherever the liturgy prevails, into a day of holy joy. But in the long
continuity of the belief, no other witness to her triumph so sharply
appeals to the healthy instinct of faith as Anthony of Padua.
That is why Time magazine included in
its report the vision commonly ascribed to the saint: an apparition of,
and reassuring message from, the Heavenly Queen who escaped the tomb.
Whether the apparition be considered a mere legend, when in reality the
documents prove it true, is beside the point. What matters is that people
then and since this day have found it credible of St. Anthony and revere
him for it, which at once accentuates the popularity of the dogma.
It is a beautiful story. Anthony, whose daily
delight it was to attend chapel exercises, pondered one night in his cell
whether to appear in the morning for Prime. It would be August the 14th,
the vigil of a cherished feast, but in the martyrology to be read would
occur words he detested: "As yet the Church has given no decision upon the
bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, showing a prudent reserve as to
trivial or apocryphal legends." As if a truth so firmly embedded in
tradition were a questionable extravagance! Rather than hear the odious
statement, he thought seriously of absenting himself from an appointed
devotion he had never before desired to miss.
In his trial, there appeared to him the radiant
vision of Mary. She spoke to him. And her words, so different from those
others, lifted him out of his sorrow. "Be assured, my son," he was told
in a voice too heavenly to be doubted, "that this body of mine has been
preserved from the corruption of the grave. Be equally assured that,
three days after my death, it was carried upon the wings of angels to the
right hand of the Son of God, where I reign as Queen." The words were an
echo of his own silent conviction—but oh, the music of that echo! Anthony
was in ecstasy.
The incident took place in the Franciscan
Friary at Toulouse; just when the morning bell was calling the community
to chapel, where the Usuard version of the martyrology was then in use.
The apparition, it is interesting to note, supports the common theological
opinion that Mary actually died but like her Son did not long remain
dead. Feeling that the apparition was not intended for his advantage
alone, and that Providence wanted it known, Anthony let the secret out and
from then on became associated with the Assumption. It obviously inspired
Jacopo di Torrita to include the saint in his famous mosaic of Mary's
Coronation. Anthony is depicted there, with heaven's newly arrived Queen,
as the enraptured witness to her Assumption. The mosaic, thank God, is
not hidden away in some neglected museum. It awaits, as a prominent
attraction in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, the daily gaze of
tourists.
Another apparition, which this favorite of
heaven enjoyed, he did not have the same impulse to publicize. But to his
chagrin, it had an eyewitness. Staying overnight at the home of a friend
and benefactor, the Lord of Chateauneuf, Anthony had retired to his room
and was at prayer when all of a sudden the door opened and his host stood
there watching. As the count was later to report, the room glowed with a
strange light. And at the center of that emanation, which had the
soothing effect of a melody, the rapt friar held in his caress an adorable
Infant: none other, it could be seen at a glance, than the Christ Child.
The next morning the saint implored his hospitable intruder to say nothing
of the vision until after he, Anthony of Padua, was dead and buried.
The secret, once out, endeared the saint the
more to his posthumous clientele. It created a great demand for the
statue of the boyish-looking Franciscan with the Infant in his arms. I
once knew of a pastor who, after he had had his church newly frescoed,
decided against returning such a statue to the sanctuary. He kept it in
the basement. But not for long! Wave after wave of protest came from the
parishioners, and by Easter the statue was back on its pedestal, though
off to a corner in the rear of the Church. The people were winning, and
they intended to press on. They succeeded. By the thirteenth day of June
they had the satisfaction of hearing the pastor preach a sermon on the
saint of the day, with the statue of the saint up there in the sanctuary
with him. It was admitted, with a twinkle of the eye, that if the saint
was good enough in his lifetime to have been allowed to handle the divine
Child, then a statue of the two ought to rate a place even in this
sanctuary where the decorative scheme did not exactly call for it.
A third mystical vision ascribed to Anthony,
his revered Mediatrix of Grace seems to have brought about. As the saint
lay dying, at the age of thirty-six, he raised his voice in song for the
last time on earth to the Mother of God. It was one of his favorite
hymns, known from childhood on, O Gloriosa Domina. No sooner had
he finished the refrain, excelsa super sidera (exalted above the
stars), than his voice went silent, his face lighted up, and he softly
exclaimed, "I see my Lord!" Then he closed his eyes to this world as his
soul carried the Vision into eternity. Our Lady, who during his lifetime
had got Anthony a wealth of favors from her Child, did not fail him at the
end.
She who took the initiative to obtain from her
Son the miracle at Cana has exerted her influence on behalf of St. Anthony
so often that no sane chronicler would dare pretend he knows the count.
Certainly his body was not a year in the grave when, on account of the
public miracles wrought there, he was canonized. A person of faith, aware
of Anthony's heroic devotion to his Lady of the Angels, will not be
tempted to explain away the wonders of this wonder-worker. Whenever Mary
has a personal interest in the matter we have sufficient warrant from
history to expect wonders, as at Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, La Salette,
Carmel, Assisi, Tre Fontaine: in such mighty esteem does Christ hold his
mother. It is upon her especial clients that he has particularly lavished
his attentions.
Not that the marvels credited to St. Anthony
are an article of faith: but that doesn't render them incredible. Common
sense in its own right demands that, after an honest and competent
research has sifted the evidence, what it finds authentic deserves
respect. To sneer off every bit of testimony concerning a reputed wonder
too wonderful for nature to explain is to make oneself, if nothing worse,
a cheap sophisticate. It is to fall prey to the temptation of our day to
be an intellectual snob.
"What a strange distance, like a stellar space,
cold and incomprehensible," writes Graham Greene in Life magazine
at the time, "separates the child Bernadette or the boy Francisco from
indignant theologians who deplore the dogma of the Assumption as 'an
additional difficulty to reunion' of all Christian churches. . . . But
these children have seen the glorified body, and you will not
persuade them to suppress their vision because it is tactless, because it
may offend a few dignitaries of an alien faith."
The children have a sanction upon their claims
too widely attested to be reasonably denied. Seventy thousand, including
the police who had tried to stop the crowd from being there, beheld the
unprecedented behavior of the sun at Fatima: and at Lourdes skeptics full
of derisive confidence—such as Zola—had their confidence jolted by
phenomena undreamed of in their philosophy. They may not have remained to
pray, though of a truth they walked away in no mood to scoff. These were
cures that could not happen, but did. Obviously, the Mother of God does
not have to constrain her supernatural powers in order to accommodate any
snug little system of naturalistic thought.
Did the Mother of God appear to Anthony, as she
could easily have done and did appear to Bernadette, Lucia, Francisco,
Jacinta? He always said she did, he who did not tell lies, and his word
has been reliably recorded.
The original biography of St. Anthony, an
unsigned Latin parchment now known to have been authored by Friar John
Peckham of England after St. Bonaventure had turned over its material to
him, bore the official approval of the Franciscan General Chapter at
Verona in 1316 and accordingly satisfied the rigid demands of the
Bollandists for accuracy. "John of Peckham," a chronicler pays him this
compliment, "was charged by Jerome of Ascoli, then Minister General, to
write the Life of St. Anthony of Padua, which he did in a style of
remarkable elegance." And well he might. He studied at Paris under St.
Bonaventure, lectured in theology at Oxford, commanded respect for his
piety quite as much as for his learning, and ended his career as the
Archbishop of Canterbury. He is that John Peckman whose Latin hymns
Ronald Knox has translated into a flawless English. But to revert to the
point: the renowned biographer not only stresses the fact that Anthony had
openly avowed his Marian apparition, but adds the reason why. The saint
felt it had been granted to him not as a personal favor. It was meant to
further the cause of the Assumption.
Possibly no other saint has given the
Bollandists in their study of such phenomena a busier time of it. During
one of his sermons, in a public square, the rain which fell all around did
not touch Anthony nor the crowd who stood listening: as if a huge
invisible umbrella had been opened over their heads. Preaching again, in
church, he forewarned his audience that the devil would make the pulpit
collapse, and when it began to creak and give and finally went down, the
prophet instead of crowing "I told you so!" accepted the ordeal with holy
indifference. To be sure, the devil would stop at nothing within his
power to silence a voice that was winning away from him droves of
sinners. Did he not attempt to choke the saint? But as Anthony confided
to a confrere: "After I had invoked the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and made the sign of the cross on my forehead, I was freed from his
power."
Always it was she, the mediatrix of all
blessings, the porta gratiarum, as he called her, whom Anthony
entreated. And in his sermons he pleaded with his audiences to do the
same. Is it too wonderful, then, that these people who knew him from his
words and his deeds should accept the report of his having seen in person,
that early morning at his prayers, the radiant Woman of the Assumption?
His was a life totally dedicated to Mary; a life in which the marvelous
became routine occurrence; a life so marked with open miracles that it
puts little or no strain on credulity to accept one more, however
private.
His French biographer of a century ago, having
read with a sharp eye and a sharp mind the Marian sermons of the
Evangelical Doctor, made a prediction. "On that day," writes Léopold de
Cherance of the Assumption, "when the Church defines this truth, . . . she
will cite amongst her foremost witnesses St. Anthony of Padua." And so in
the event she did. The Church, through her supreme Magisterium, carried
out to the letter the prediction.
The saint in whose life the supernatural
abounded had for his favorite Miracle a reverential love. He derived his
heroic sanctity from it. He adored it. And he revered his Gloriosa
Domina Angelorum because she had a mother's share in it: the
Incarnation of the Son of God. That was what Anthony meant when he wrote
of Mary that she is the paradise of humanity. It was through her that
the Infinite became one of our flesh, and heaven was reopened to our
hopes. Without the Mother, there would have been no Infant Savior for
Anthony to hold in his dreams—and in his arms.
This Miracle of his strongest devotion is now
his eternal enrichment. It puts a touch of human pride into his ecstasy:
the human thrill of recognizing in the splendor of the Beatific Vision the
Familiar form of Christ the King, and in a lower supremacy above that of
the angels the glorified womanhood of their Queen, the Mother of the
everlasting Miracle. They, the two of them, who so gloriously show off
our humanity to all those pure spirits enable the blessed from the earth
to feel perfectly at home in heaven. Ask St. Anthony in prayer if that
isn't so. And the confident joy that comes of the asking is already his
answer.
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