The Last Volume

THE FOURTH and final volume of my translation of the Sermons of Saint Anthony is to be published by Edizioni Messaggero Padova later this month. Attentive readers may remember me breathing a sigh of relief some months ago, having just finished reading the proofs. This last volume contains the unfinished set of sermons for the Festivals of the Church. His work on the Sunday Gospels had been so well received that Cardinal Rinaldo (who had recently been named Bishop of Ostia) asked him to write a companion-work on the Saints. Anthony had by now given up his office of Minister Provincial, due to health problems, and retired to the Friary of Mary Mater Domini at Padua. He had been given a general licence to preach by the Minister General, but as the winter of 1220 approached he set about this final written work. As is well known, he suspended his writing in order to preach the Lent Mission to the city, resumed work during Eastertide, only to lay down his pen for the last time on June 13, 1221.





Like John the Baptist





When I first came across these Sunday and Festival sermons, many years ago, I had no idea that he had left written works. His fame was as a preacher. This is in fact how he himself, I think, would wish to be remembered. He was a preacher of the Gospel. Following the example of Francis, who announced himself as ‘the herald of the great King’, Anthony saw himself as one who was sent before the Lord, to prepare the way of His coming. How many miles he must have tramped, or ridden on mule-back, to bring the Good News to men and women! Like John the Baptist, he called for repentance, for a turning-back to the Lord, for renewal in the Spirit.



This is the key to his writings. The first followers of Francis were simple men (which does not mean unintelligent) who preached as much by their poverty and humility as by their words. But the Church was being attacked by clever men, who misrepresented the truth. They thought of themselves as very spiritual, teaching that the material world was evil, and that the ancient Scriptures were the work of the Evil One. The Pope saw in Francis and his movement a bulwark against such heresy, but he also saw that in order to combat it, preachers needed to be versed in the Scriptures, and confident in refuting error. Although Francis (as is well known) was somewhat suspicious of book-learning, he was prevailed upon to allow Anthony to give theological training to the brothers.





Teacher of teachers





Anthony’s writings are therefore directed to the training of preachers. As I have pointed out before, they are not so much the sermons he preached to the people, as text books drawing on his learning and experience, to guide young friars in the preparation of their own sermons. His own reading, while an Augustinian canon, had been extensive, in the Bible and in the Fathers of the Church. All this wisdom he, as it were, boiled down and digested, so as to make its fruit available to those without the opportunity to seek it out for themselves.



Because the Festival Sermons are concerned with particular occasions, rather than with the Gospel reading as such, Anthony adopts a slightly different approach. He does indeed take the Gospel reading first, divided into sections, but without directly correlating it with the other Mass and Office readings. Then he takes a second reading associated with the festival – often from the Old Testament – and expounds it in relation to the Saint or Festival. In fact he treats this second text in more than one way, according to the various senses of Scripture, allegorical, moral and so on.





Continuous formation





It is interesting to see how up-to-date Anthony was. In older Bibles, there was no clear division of the text into chapters and verses, as we are used to. But a new edition of the Scriptures had recently appeared in which this was done; so although Anthony’s Scripture references in the Sunday Sermons cite only the books of the Bible, in the Festival Sermons he notes the chapters as well. We know that he had visited Abbot Thomas Gallus (an Augustinian as Anthony had been), who had introduced him to the writings of the so-called ‘Denis the Areopagite’ (a Syrian monk who had used the pseudonym of an associate of Saint Paul). These influences also appear in the later writings, as do Richard of St Victor’s works. This shows that, amid all his work as a preacher, the Saint did not neglect to continue to read and learn.





Child of his times





There is much in Anthony’s writing that is of its own time, and could not be used unchanged today. After all, the world he lived in was very different from ours in its social, political and economic arrangements. We easily forget how much the world has changed even in our own times, with information flooding in from around the world, through television and the press, much of it presented according to the interests and agendas of various lobbies. Anthony’s was a smaller and slower world. But human nature does not change, and neither do the basic human needs to earn a living, bring up a family, and so on. Nor does the Gospel change, the Good News that God loves us, that He wants our welfare and happiness, that in Jesus Christ He has given Himself for our salvation.





Scripture & liturgy





Anthony’s preaching was based on Scripture and on the Liturgy. He read the Bible in order to find Christ in its pages. He profoundly believed in the unity and continuity of God’s revelation to Israel, in the Old Testament and in the New. He believed that the events, the personalities and the places of the Old Testament give us images, reflections and a foreshadowing of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. They also show us how we are to imitate Christ in our own lives, as well as offering us a hope of heaven to look forward to. Preachers today should follow the same method. Scripture should be the store-house out of which we bring things new and old. In several of my recent articles I have outlined how Anthony’s application of this method appears in this fourth volume.





Things haven’t changed





Anthony expected his immediate readers, the brothers he wrote for, to be men of prayer and men of the Church. He expected them to lead the people into a deeper understanding of their personal relationship with Christ through the Church’s public worship. Most ordinary believers (today as much as then) do not sit quietly reading their Bibles at home. Maybe they should, but in fact they don’t. Perhaps they lack the confidence and the background knowledge to do so. But they do hear the Scriptures read in Church, at Mass and sometimes at other services. Often the passages read are short, and not obviously connected with one another. I have often, on weekdays, wondered what my congregation may be making of the Old Testament reading or the Epistle, sometimes even the Gospel itself.





An apology





Anthony shows preachers how to open up these riches, how to make them accessible to the people. We should be familiar with the great themes that recur, ideas of Kingship, for instance, or of Priesthood and Temple. We should recognise in the figures of the past human beings like ourselves, often weak and sinful, being led into a greater understanding of what our Creator expects of us and desires for us. In reflecting on my own literary work, in translating Anthony’s words, I have become very conscious of my own defects and shortcomings. Sometimes I wish I could start the whole thing over again! But that too resembles our lives in general. On earth, we cannot simply erase the past and start from scratch; but God in Christ has the power to heal our wounds, make good our defects, and open to us the way to eternal life.



I make my own the words of Anthony at the conclusion of his Sunday Work: “I ask also, that if you find in this work anything edifying, comforting, well-expressed or well-composed: you will refer all praise, all glory and all honour to the same blessed Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And if you find anything badly put, dull, or less well-expressed: put it down to my weakness, blindness and lack of wisdom.”