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! :)
Updated in 2013 to add Fr. Anthony's very inspirational homily.
