By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
Dear family, June 13 is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua. The St. Anthony to whom we pray for intercession to help us find things we lost. He was born 822 years ago, on August 15, 1195 and died on June 13, 1231, at the age of just 35.
St. Anthony is one of God’s all-time greatest saints. He is one of only 35 doctors of the Church. He is known as the Evangelical Doctor because of his knowledge and wisdom of the Gospels. He also is known as a Hammer of Heretics. You can see why I like him a lot! He also is the patron saint of finding lost things.
So let us ask ourselves a key question: Why do we trouble one of the greatest saints of all time with our petty little “I can’t find it” problems? Is that all he is good for? Think about it. Why is it we say, implicitly, “St. Anthony, asking for a little help here. I know there are over seven billion people on the planet, each with an eternal soul in need of the Gospels, but I can’t find my car keys.”
St. Anthony began his religious life as an Augustinian monk. Not long after, several Franciscans were martyred, beheaded by Islamists in Morocco. St. Anthony was moved to join the Franciscan Order and was highly regarded by St. Francis himself. He actually tried to travel to Morocco to spread God’s truth, but became extremely sick and was returned to Portugal to recover. The return voyage was blown off-course and the party arrived in Sicily, from where they traveled to Tuscany. He was assigned to the hermitage of San Paolo after local friars considered his health. As he recovered, he spent his time praying and studying.
Soon, news of his eloquence reached Francis of Assisi. St. Francis entrusted to Anthony his friars’ theological studies. In case you did not know — I myself did not — whence came this “help me find what I’ve lost” fame — a former novice left the hermitage, and took with him St. Anthony’s personal book of Psalms that contained his teaching notes and comments. To be blunt, he knowingly stole it. And remember, this was before the printing press, copiers, and scanners. When Anthony discovered it was missing, he prayed it would be found or returned to him. The thief did return the book and returned to the Order as well!
Here is a true story I sort of remembered. It, too, is instructive for us in our day. Once, when he attempted to preach the true Gospel of the Catholic Church to heretics who would not listen to him, St. Anthony went out and preached his message to the fish. This was not, as liberals and naturalists have tried to say, for the instruction of the fish, but rather for the glory of God, the delight of the angels, and the easing of his own heart. When critics saw the fish begin to gather, they realized they should also listen to what Anthony had to say.
Upon exhumation some 336 years after Anthony’s death, his body was found to be corrupted, yet his tongue was totally incorrupt, so perfect were the teachings that had been formed upon it. He truly is one of the greatest saints in the history of Jesus’ Catholic Church.
So I wasn’t kidding when proposing that we start praying to him for some real and significant issues on lost things, like those who have lost their minds to modern culture. Here is just one example.
Several years ago, by sheer Providence, I stumbled upon a YouTube video in which General Mad Dog Mattis was in the hot-seat for his confirmation hearing. He had to sit and be interrogated by New York Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. She repeatedly and relentlessly tried to grill this decorated Marine with questions regarding whether women could serve in combat roles, and about LGBT serving in combat roles, and if these undermined what he called the “lethality” of the services.
General Mattis shut her down by responding: “Frankly, Senator, I’ve never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with. My concern is on the readiness of the force to fight and to make certain it’s at the top of its game so when we go up against an enemy, the criteria for everything we do in the military up until that point our young men and women cross the line of departure, is they will be at their most lethal stance. That’s my obligation, as I move into this job.”
Now you and I know God made two genders. One gender has gifts and talents to be a hunter-gatherer, the other a child-bearer. Each gender has its own specific created body and special parts and special genetic code that best serves those functions. For example, women have the majesty of bearing a child.
Those people who deny this fact have — truly — lost their minds. Even an atheist can figure this out. Men are different from women — different bodies, different minds, different talents, different functions. Period.
Men can “compartmentalize” better than women, which makes it far more possible for men to engage in the brutality of war and then, upon returning, pack it away into a compartment. A woman’s brain and psyche cannot do that.
This is not some mere anecdotal experience, though that is proof enough. Anyone who has been a lawyer and dealt with male and female clients — any priest who has sat within the Seal of the Confessional — knows this truth from experience. But the fact is that it is a physiological and psychological reality.
And you do not have to be Catholic to understand this God-created difference between the physiology and psychology of a man versus the physiology and psychology of a woman. An atheist with a brain can figure this one out. Those people who deny this fact have lost their mind.
So as I recall the that one day I stumbled upon that YouTube video where Kirsten Gillibrand revealed for all the world to see that she had effectively lost her mind, as had those who voted for her, how providential it is that we approach the Feast of St. Anthony, finder of lost things. So maybe we should start asking St. Anthony for a little help with those who have lost something really important — like their minds.
Another very providential thing happened about the time I discovered this video. I had seen a headline previously about someone publicly using foul language in reference to Trump, but did not pay too much attention. We seriously cannot dwell on the fact that the 2016 election of Trump did not create the left’s hate. It revealed it. It revealed it in every color of every one of those Birds of a Feather. If we dwelt too long on it, we would lose our minds like they have lost theirs. Just this past week, CNN’s lemon of a fake-newscaster, Don Lemon, proclaimed that the media have to quit focusing on Trump. Yet, it was something like seven times in seven straight days he began his “show” directly referencing Trump!
Getting back to that providential thing that happened — it turned out that the person who very publicly used foul language in reference to Trump was one and the same U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. She used foul and vulgar language in her own political speech! Seriously, all I keep hearing from left-wingers is that they don’t like Trump’s manner and tone, yet it is their manner and tone that is so filled with hateful rhetoric and fake news. Gillibrand has lost any semblance of the very decorum and dignity she complains is lacking in others.
Wrapping up the issue of Gillibrand’s mindless interrogation of Mattis, Gillibrand kept peppering General Mattis with questions about whether he thought women and LGBT essentially were equal to the men of the armed forces when it comes to lethality.
It long has been recognized that a profound approach to just war was the spirit of the soldier who knew the quicker he went forward and conquered the enemy the quicker he would get home to his wife and children. The fighting men were not fighting side-by-side with someone who could be a spouse; they were fighting to go home to be with a spouse. Gillibrand, and her birds of a feather, cannot figure out something Almighty God ordained when He created them, male and female. They have lost their minds.
How much and how many people have lost their minds in this country? What mortal danger do they pose to us? If only that were our greatest concern. But, as Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” That is why the last thoughts herein are so eternally important.
The Usual Suspects
As I mentioned in last week’s column, we have some notorious miters in the Church who openly and notoriously espouse Godless agendas. So it was with that Godless letter they signed and sent to Archbishop Gomez to postpone any dialogue and discussion on the issue of Godless fake-Catholic politicians waltzing up to commit open and notorious sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion without publicly recanting their Godless ideology on slaughtering innocent babies in the womb. Maybe you, like me, wondered who all signed that document. Just this morning I found the list. It was indeed a list of the “usual suspects.”
So this day, I will not ask you to pray for the four cardinals, 42 bishops, and 21 auxiliary bishops who clearly have lost their minds. Instead, let us appeal to St. Anthony to help every actually faithful Catholic — every faithful Catholic who has been so beaten down by the political correctness over the last 50 years, and who fears the Cancel Culture just for speaking the Truth — let us appeal to St. Anthony to help them find — their voice of courage. St. Anthony, we pray, help them find their voice of courage so that they finally stand up against Godless fake clergy, Catholics or Christians, and in the case of the Catholic Church, those 67 false shepherds.
We are not divisive, in asserting this, they are divisive in promoting their Godless agenda. We will not be ineffective anymore as we call for their resignation — they are the ineffective “leaders” of which real Catholics no longer follow. As one bishop put it recently, even the politicians know that they are generals without armies.
Dear family, Almighty God gave us a brain. He expects us to use it. May St. Michael protect us against the snares of the Devil — snares set by those leaders outside the Church, but more importantly inside the Church, who have lost their minds.
St. Anthony of Padua, finder of lost things, pray for us.
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