A reflection on St Anthony of Padua

The reflection below was written after praying the Office of Readings for the memorial of St Anthony of Padua. The second reading can be found here, (though I quote from the translation in my copy of the Divine Office, so there are some differences) and provides the context.

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St Anthony of Padua has some hard words for the one who would preach the Gospel.

Some of what he says is all but expected from a Franciscan saint: "the preacher... should practice what he preaches" is almost a cliché. "Enough of talking; let action speak. We are bloated with words and empty of works." These are real challenges the preacher must face, to be sure, but still nothing surprising in a rebuke to those who preach unworthily.

But this is not the extent, or even the core, of what St Anthony has to say. The core is that the preacher must speak "under the influence of the Holy Spirit and not as his human spirit suggests" and this has some deeper implications for the work of preaching.

When we think of a false prophet, so often condemned in Scripture, we might think of "those who prophesy lying dreams" in an obvious sense. That is, those who say what God has not said, and attribute their own words to the Lord. But St Anthony (and, in the passage taken from Jeremiah, the Lord Himself) is concerned about more than this. "I am against the prophets who steal my words from one another... who use their tongues and say 'says the Lord'". The false prophets are stealing the Lord's words: that is, it seems, they really are saying (by repeating from other sources) what God has said.

So what makes these prophets false? Not that they use their own words, but they "use their tongues and say 'says the Lord'", that they prophesy although the Lord "did not send them or charge them". That is, they may speak words that, in some way, do come from God - but their speaking does not come from God, and so "they do not profit this people at all".

It is so easy for us to fall into this trap. To unwittingly "pilfer the words of others and pass them off as [our] own, taking the credit". Not by deliberate plagiarism (we may cite our sources with great pleasure, to draw attention to our learnedness) but by thinking that our knowledge of the Scriptures - or the Fathers, or the Catechism, or St Thomas Aquinas - grants us the authority to speak on behalf of God whenever we see an opportunity to rattle off what we have learned. But to speak "from [our] own spirit" is to steal the Lord's words, to use our tongues and say "says the Lord". I am as guilty of this as anyone, and probably more so.

"Let us speak then as the Holy Spirit gives us utterance", and not be too quick to speak on God's behalf simply because we know the words of Scripture or the dogmas of the Church. When and where, how and to whom we speak, is just as vital as what we say, and must be directed by the Lord.

As St Anthony advises us, all the would-be preacher can do is pray that the Holy Spirit will "bestow his grace on us, so that we may fulfil the day of Pentecost". Not only by "fiery tongues" but by speaking the "several languages" of the Spirit which are "the various ways of witnessing to Christ... with which we speak when we practice them towards our neighbour". Then, in charity and humility, our language "comes alive", and the fig tree bears nourishing fruit, not just leaves.