Saturday, June 13, 2009

My Friend Tony

And yep, I mean St. Anthony of Padua, whose Feast is today!
How many times have people prayed some version of the prayer:
"Tony, Tony, come around.
Something's lost and must be found"?
I know St. Anthony is ALWAYS helping me find stuff.
Years ago, when I had just recently converted to Catholicism, I called
Mom at work (It was her usual break time.)
Mom said, "I can't talk right now. We're missing an important file and
we've looked all over for it."
"Okay," I said, "call me back when it turns up."
Well, within five minutes she called me. The file had been found.
"Aren't you going to thank me?" I asked.
"Thank you? What for? You're not even here."
"I know," I said, "but who do you think prayed to St. Anthony?"
More recently, I was chatting with a couple of my online friends, and
one of them was going slightly nuts because she had misplaced something, and couldn't find it anywhere. I said a prayer to St. Anthony, and then typed,
"Try looking again."
She didn't want to, but I persuaded her. And then she typed, in caps
"I FOUND IT!!!!!!"
I wasn't a bit surprised!
Does St. Anthony ALWAYS get lost articles back for me? Well, almost! One morning I couldn't find my Rosary. I looked. I prayed. To my surprise, I still did
not find it. But later that morning, I received a brand-new, beautiful Rosary from a Catholic organization. I'm almost SURE I heard St. Anthony chuckling.
BTW, the lost Rosary did turn up eventually.
Of course, there's much more to St. Anthony than just running the Lost and Found! :)

Monday, June 8, 2009

AWESOME!!!!

Sometimes I get overwhelmed, blown away, by the thought that since Our Lord instituted the Holy Eucharist, more than 2000 years ago He has been received by more people than we could ever possibly imagine. More than that, He is present, fully, totally present, in the Blessed Sacrament in countless Tabernacles in countless Churches and Chapels all over the world right now and at every moment. AWESOME!!!! Moreover,
every day, at every Mass, the priest breaks the Consecrated Host. Every day, at every Mass, Communion is distributed to the faithful. And yet, Christ is not divided, not multiplied, not diminished, not increased.
Side note: More than once, people have said to me that all this is mathematically impossible. My usual, highly theological reply :) is:
"Mathematics, schmathematics!"