Patron Saint of Lost Things

The story of the book told above is set in Bologna, where Anthony was teaching, and the psalter is said to be kept at the Franciscan friary there. It is a story handed down, not a document, and it is worth saying so. But notice what it is about. The book came back, and so did the man. From the start the patronage covered both the thing and the person.

Catholics also ask St. Anthony for a child who has stopped practising the faith, a friend who has disappeared from their life, a sense of God that seems to have gone. The Gospel gives three parables of lost things in a row, a sheep, a coin and a son, and ends on the father’s words: “He was lost and is found” (Luke 15:24). “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

St. Anthony’s Bread belongs here too. The Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua tells how a young mother, whose little son Tommasino had been healed through the saint’s intercession, promised the Basilica the child’s weight in bread for other mothers in need. Blessing and sharing bread on his feast, June 13, and giving to the poor in thanks for something found, both come from that promise. What is found is meant to be shared.

The Gospel has a method, and it is not magic. “What woman, if she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn’t light a lamp, sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it?” (Luke 15:8). Light, a broom, and patience.

So: stop, and ask. Breathe, because panic hides things. Retrace the last place you are sure you had it. Look properly, one room at a time, as if you were sweeping it. Ask someone else to look, since other eyes see what yours skip. The Catechism is plain that treating a prayer as if its mere repetition did the work is superstition (CCC 2111). The prayer is to be done by someone who is also looking.

For a son or daughter who has drifted from the faith or from the family, a friend you have lost touch with, or anyone who has gone missing from someone’s life. For a child in particular, there are longer prayers for a son and for a daughter. If a person is missing in fact and may be in danger, contact the police first, and pray as well.

Three things circulate under his name. The rhyme, “Tony, Tony, look around” (or “turn around”), “something’s lost and must be found”, and the couplet on this page, are family folklore, loved and harmless, of no particular age. The Si quaeris, whose opening words mean “If you seek miracles”, is a responsory sung in his honour. And the “unfailing prayer to St. Anthony” is sometimes printed with a promise that it cannot fail.

The Church makes no such promise about any prayer, and a prayer printed with a guarantee has stopped being a prayer and become a technique. The Catechism asks the question those promises avoid: “What is the image of God that motivates our prayer: an instrument to be used? or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?” (CCC 2735). Ask St. Anthony as you would ask a friend who is good at finding things, and leave the answer to God.

St. Anthony died at the Poor Clare convent at Arcella, now part of Padua, on June 13, 1231, at about thirty-five. Pope Gregory IX canonised him on May 30, 1232, less than a year later, one of the fastest canonisations the Church has ever made. Pius XII named him a Doctor of the Church on January 16, 1946, with the title Doctor evangelicus, the evangelical doctor, for the Gospel that runs through his sermons. June 13 is his memorial in the General Roman Calendar.

Two customs cluster around the number. In Padua the Tredicina, the “thirteen”, is the thirteen days of preparation before June 13, and also a prayer of thirteen short invocations on his life. Other shrines keep thirteen Tuesdays: the Shrine Church of St. Anthony in New York’s Greenwich Village, for one, prays a novena on the thirteen Tuesdays before his feast, and many people keep thirteen Tuesdays of their own whenever a need arises.