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ETA:
Neil O, you are such a blessing.
I am very devoted to St. Anthony, and often pray novenas to him found here:
http://catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/St.%20Anthony.html
You'll note the Ubi Caritas is the background music playing. But I didn' t know that. Just tonight I was hoping I could identify the music, then your post.
I will include your intentions and welfare in my current novena.
(I started a thread about it last Tuesday re: a novena of 13 Tuesdays before his feast day)
God bless you and thank you, as usual.
You're welcome!
I went to the linked website and heard the recording. That sounds a lot like Paul Salamunovich's choir, in tone, but not in dynamics or phrasing. He did not have the singers get so quiet in so many places nor to slow down and take a coffee break in the middle of anything. But it is a nice recording just the same. I'd like to know who the choir is, perhaps Robert Shaw?
Thanks for the prayers, too. I'd like to request prayers for the Collegial Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as Our Lady asked for it. These days so many Catholics are giving up on that for any one of several reasons. So the number of prayers are dwindling, it seems.
St. Anthony is a favorite saint of mine. I have a 700-year anniversary album from 1931, produced in Padua, Italy. It's not in very good condition. Apparently there were various language versions, and mine is in English, with a few translation errors!
In Lisbon, Portugal, he is known as St. Anthony of Lisbon. That is where he was born. He had become a monk in another order, and sailed to Africa (Morocco) to become a martyr, because he had seen the procession of the 4 martyrs carried through the streets of Lisbon, when they had been killed in Morocco by the Moors. He arrived there in Africa and got sick, being so severely disabled that he tried to sail back home to Portugal having been unable to fulfill his dream of martyrdom. But God had other plans, and he was blown off course by a storm, sending him inland to the coast of Italy -- a distance of about 600 miles! The Storehouse of Sacred Scripture and Doctor of Mystic Theology almost died in shipwreck, before anyone knew who he was. There, he came ashore and was discovered lying there on the sand by some Franciscan Friars, who carried him to their monastery and nursed him back to health. Then Anthony became a Franciscan. He lived in a monastery there, doing menial chores, scrubbing floors, cleaning washrooms, and doing laundry, and all in silent prayer. He looked on it all as God's will for him, instead of his hoped-for martyrdom, so he was suffering the deprivation of martyrdom, and doing so with joy and humility.
He is one of the few saints in history to have had so many official titles. He was known as the Storehouse of Sacred Scripture, the Doctor of Mystic Theology (long before he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church!), Hammer of Heretics, Patron of Expectant Mothers, Patron of Lost Articles, and several other titles.
He had memorized the entire Latin Vulgate, in Latin, by the time he was 10 (ten) years old. Can you imagine being his parents?? Actually, it seems they didn't know he was memorizing Scripture. Nobody knew until as a teenager, in Italy, he was asked to preach to a crowd of 10,000 people, when no one else was available to preach to them. After a bumpy start, the grace of God touched him and he came alive with his knowledge of Scripture, making the crowd demand that he would not stop.
The rest is history. He was contemporary with St. Francis of Assisi, who was present that day when he gave his first sermon, but Brother Francis was too old and frail to preach himself. Some say it was his idea to have the young Anthony speak to the crowd, when he had not yet been ordained a priest.
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