Day 8: The Doctor of the Church

The eighth day of the Saint Anthony Novena turns to the highest title bestowed on him by the Catholic Church: he is a Doctor of the Universal Church. Pope Pius XII, in the apostolic letter Exsulta Lusitania Felix of 16 January 1946, declared Saint Anthony a Doctor of the Catholic Church under the title Doctor Evangelicus (the Evangelical Doctor) for the depth and orthodoxy of his sermons on the Gospel.

Today's invocation

O glorious Saint Anthony of Padua... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

The Catholic title Doctor of the Church is given to saints whose teaching the Catholic Church has formally recognized as having particular universal value for the formation of the Christian soul. Anthony was the twenty-third Doctor of the Church declared by the Catholic Church (in chronological order of declaration; he is forty-third in canonical order). His title Doctor Evangelicus honors the principal subject of his preaching: the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The principal extant work of Saint Anthony is his Sermones Dominicales et Festivi (Sermons for Sundays and Feasts), a collection of sermon notes and outlines preserved in medieval manuscripts and now available in modern critical editions. The Sermones are not the actual oral sermons that Anthony delivered to crowds (those were not transcribed) but his prepared notes and reflections, intended for use by other Franciscan preachers. The work is a treasure of medieval Catholic biblical exegesis, with deep meditation on the liturgical readings of the Sunday Mass, the principal feasts of the Catholic year, and the great themes of the Catholic faith (the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Eucharist, the moral life, the four last things).

The proclamation of Saint Anthony as a Doctor of the Church in 1946 was the Catholic recognition that his Sermones, after seven hundred years of preservation in the Catholic theological tradition, deserved formal magisterial honor. The Catholic Church has consistently treated him as one of the great preachers of medieval Catholicism, alongside Saints Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas.¹

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask Saint Anthony to obtain for you the gift of a deeper understanding of the Catholic faith. Saint Anthony, Doctor of the Church, you preached the Gospel with such depth that the Catholic Church has honored your teaching for eight centuries. Obtain for me the gift of understanding the Catholic faith more fully. Where I have been content with a shallow grasp of the doctrines, give me your depth.

A practical Catholic discipline that flows from this meditation: consider undertaking, in the months following the close of the novena, a course of Catholic theological reading. The Catholic tradition is vast: the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the standard reference for the doctrine), the Confessions of Saint Augustine and the Story of a Soul of Saint Therese (for spiritual classics), the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (the most-read Catholic spiritual book after the Bible), and the writings of Saint Anthony himself in modern critical editions. The Catholic faithful in our own age have unprecedented access to the Catholic theological inheritance; the gift is to use it.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the gift of theological understanding is itself a fruit of Catholic prayer. The soul that prays the Catholic prayers regularly, that attends Mass with attention, that receives the sacraments faithfully, is gradually formed in the understanding of the Catholic faith in a way that no merely intellectual study can produce. The Catholic theology of the Saint Anthony Novena, prayed faithfully through these eight days, is itself a Catholic theological education in the saint's particular charism.

For the Catholic faithful who do undertake formal Catholic theological reading, Saint Anthony is a particularly fitting patron. The Doctor of the Gospel intercedes for those who study the Gospel; the saint who preached with such effectiveness intercedes for those who learn to articulate the Catholic faith in their own ordinary lives.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Gospel, pray for us. Obtain for us the gift of understanding the Catholic faith.

Footnotes

1. Pope Pius XII, Exsulta Lusitania Felix (apostolic letter, 16 January 1946), declaring Saint Anthony of Padua a Doctor of the Universal Church under the title Doctor Evangelicus. Available at vatican.va. Saint Anthony of Padua, Sermones Dominicales et Festivi, modern critical edition by Beniamino Costa, OFM Conv., et al. (3 volumes, 1979). ↩