As you all have seen, I am not writing about the Doctors of the Church in a chronological order. One can find the lists on line. I am also emphasizing the spirituality of these great saints that fit into the discussion of the stages of perfection.
The next three Doctors of the Church I shall look at the Franciscans who are Doctors.
These three are SS. Anthony, Bonaventure, and Lawrence Brindisi. First of these is Anthony. St. Anthony of Padua, perhaps, is the most known and favourite of all the doctors. He usually is asked to find keys or rosaries. However, this saint has many more attributes, which help us understand the way to perfection.
St. Anthony, he is called the Doctor Evangelicus – the “Evangelical Doctor”, was not made a Doctor of the Church until 1946, which is a long time after he died, in the year 1231, at the age of thirty-six. How one sees the life of perfection in St. Anthony is most obvious in his intense spirit of purity. Purity of heart is given as a gift to some and created through suffering for most of us and reveals that a person has come to the stage of Illumination and most likely Unity.
The writings of St. Anthony are copious, so I shall look at three small sections only today. The first is on prayer.
"Prayer is an outpouring of affection towards God, ....talk with Him, rest of the enlightened mind...Prayer is also urging the temporal goods needed for the present life, but those which apply to the Lord with true Christian spirit, always make his own will, but urges them to pray only to the (present) need: only Heavenly Father knows what we really need in the temporal . Prayer is finally giving thanks, that recognize the benefits received and offered in return to God all our works, so that our prayer is continuous".
One of the points here is that prayer is love. If we love someone, we want to be with them and we desire more than anything to be with that person. We know, do we not, that someone does not love us, if that person does not want to spend time with us. "He is just not into you," we say to someone who is wondering whether someone loves them.
The reference to the enlightened mind in the above short passage refers to those who are living in sanctifying grace and have made a commitment to follow Christ in suffering to the stages of perfection. The enlightened mind comes when one decides to put on the mind of Christ, to think like Christ, and to think with the mind of the Church.
Purity of heart and purity of mind go together. This idea that there is a heart and mind dichotomy is simply not true. The stages of prayer reflect common everyday prayers, praise in love, asking for our temporal needs, and giving thanks. The psalms frequently reflect this order. This order appeals to the heart and the mind.
What is significant in this passage is that prayer is continuous. How we do this depends on our vocation, as continually being in prayer takes practice and confidence. Even at work, if one can be silent, one can be in an attitude of prayer. Of course, noise is hard to fight in these days.
Many people think this is impossible, but the earlier in life one begins this, the easier it is to be in prayer. Remember that St. Anthony died at the age of 36 and managed to cooperate with grace in prayer.
Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, reaches everywhere; satisfying the angels in
heaven with his vision, mercifully encouraging sinners on earth to repentance, and punishing in
hell the demons and sinners who have passed beyond hope. He reaches everywhere by reason
of his purity, because he is light, and in him there is no darkness [1Jn 1.5]. He is a vapour that
warms the chill of our faithlessness, and that exists by the same power as God the Father. He is
an emanation, the splendour of a consubstantial, equal and co-eternal glory, which proceeds
somehow from the brightness of the Almighty, which exists in a single brightness with the
Almighty. He is pure, because no evil can approach the supreme Good, and therefore no defiled
thing comes into her, because Good is always simple. She is the brightness of eternal light, and
a mirror in which the Father is seen: whence, He who sees me sees also my Father[Jn 14.9].
Unspotted, because He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth [1Pt 2.22]. The image of
his goodness, the full representation which exists with him in the same goodness; and being but
one (with the Father) he can do all things (because he is almighty), and remaining
unchangeable, he renews all things by ruling and ordering them. No wonder that he cast out
from the temple those who sold and bought, and that the priests and Levites could not withstand him!
The point of this long section for us today is that Christ is pure and we must become pure to meet Him, either here on earth or in Purgatory. St. Anthony is frequently seen holding the Child Christ, Who appeared to him. That Christ appeared to him as a Child emphasizes Anthony's child-life purity.
The simplicity of Christ is His goodness and His purity. So, too, Anthony, in becoming a Franciscan, chose poverty and simplicity of lifestyle in following Christ.
The Wisdom of the Father was a warming vapour by his Incarnation, when the winter of infidelity was past, the rain of demonic persecution was over and gone, and the flowers of eternal promise appeared in our land [cf. Cant 2.11-12]. Wisdom was an emanation of glory in the working of miracles, and the brightness of the eternal light in his resurrection. He will be to us an unspotted mirror in eternal blessedness, where we shall see him as he is [cf. 1Jn 3.2], and his wisdom will be reflected in us. St Augustine asks, "What will that love be, when each of us will see our own faces reflected in each other’s, as clearly as we now see each other’s faces?"
This passage is mysterious in some ways, but the idea of the Incarnation being Wisdom is also said eloquently in the Gospel of St. John. The Logos, the Eternal Word, is Wisdom.
To be continued....