To: Starting on a Saint's Day
Miles today: 0.0

St. Anthony of PaduaI am starting this illustrious journey on Sunday June 13, the Feast Day of St. Anthony of Padua. For those of you who are not Catholic, feast days are an early Christian custom that remember the martyrs of the early Church on the day of their death on earth and the day of new life in heaven. Feast days are part of our liturgical year, the calendar by which the Catholic Church follows, the various seasons such as Advent, Lent, Easter and the quiet season of summer, Ordinary Time.She knows all this how, you may ask? Well, this one worked for several years with her brother, a Catholic Priest to help build a new community in the Four Corners area of Orlando. A warm hug to all of my peeps at St. Faustina¢s Parish.So, back to Anthony. The reason why this date is so important is because of the way in just fell in my lap. I was actually planning on an earlier departure but was asked to attend the graduation of someone very close to me. Hence, Mary Lee graduates on Friday, her party is Saturday and I leave Sunday morning. It just so happens to be June 13th. And how fortuitous that it is this particular Saint. Fernando Martins de Bulhoes was born in Lisbon, Portugal to a highly wealthy and noble family. It was the desire of his parents that he receive a formal education but the heart of Fernando pointed him to the Augustian Abbey of St. Vincent where he was assigned as porter or one who greets those at the gate. He studied Latin and Scripture while attending his duties. But it was the meeting of five Franciscan¢s in 1219 that would change the course of his life.These five men were on their way to Morocco to preach to the Muslim population. One year later, it was learned that all five died as martyrs and this grieved Fernando so much that he requested to be admitted into the Franciscan Order and took the name of Antonio.His poor health required him to be assigned light kitchen duty in a hospice. One day, he was asked to be a homilist at an ordination with no preparation. His humble and eloquent homily amazed his elders and he was asked to preach the Gospel throughout Italy. He died in 1231.So revered was Anthony that he was canonized only one year after his death by Pope Gregory IX, the quickest Saint in Catholic history. You would recognize a picture of St. Anthony as a young man in the simple brown cloak of a Franciscan holding an infant Jesus, his hair cut in tonsure.Ah, what is a tonsure, you ask? Just the fancy name for the ¢Friar Tuck¢ look, a baldhead ringed by hair that gives the world notice that this is a holy person. Also used by mystics, Buddhist novices and monks, it is an outwardly symbol to renounce worldly fashion, surely a hairstyle you won¢t see much of today.On a side note (and those who know me know that I am the walking encyclopedia of minutia), when you order a Cappuccino, that lovely, frothy Italian coffee of espresso, hot milk and hot milk foam, you order a drink that was invented by Capuchin friars. Notice that the foam covers the cup, except for the dark ring of coffee surround the edge. Hence, you are gazing on the head of a holy man. We drink tonsures every day and are not even aware ~~~So, those of you who are still reading are asking yourself, What does ANY of this have to do with the AT? I can only say that this hike is very personal to me, that it will be many things but one of those is a spiritual journey to rid myself of my own personal demons. My life is cloaked in my Catholic faith and I thought it just wonderful that I am starting on this journey, which will be the ¢touch stone¢ of my life, the one thing uniquely my own that I can use as a comparison point, on the day of the Saint that is the Patron Saint of lost articles, oppressed people, starvation and amputees. Does not that sum up an AT hiker?Quick last story about St. Anthony. One night, when St. Anthony was staying with a friend in the city of Padua, his host saw brilliant rays streaming under the door of his room, and on looking through a keyhole, he beheld a small Child of wonderous beauty standing on a book which lay open on the table, His arms wrapped around the Saint. It was a moment of tender sweetness. It was from this vision that the image of St. Anthony and the child Jesus was conceived and reproduced so that we, 779 years later, can still call out to him to find our missing items, pray for extra food and open our hearts to God.