Today’s gospel calls us to follow the commandments. Jesus said to those who do not and teach such disobedience are least in the Kingdom. Seems pretty clear to me and I sometimes wonder why people live as if they can pick and choose which ones they follow, like not going to church on Sunday. The challenge is to be firm in following and teaching all the commandments. But my thoughts drift to tomorrow’s feast as he is so popular with so many people. I will happily celebrate St. Anthony of Padua. He is known to be a tremendous preacher and when Pope Gregory IX heard him, he declared him to be the Ark of the Testament. Anthony’s Franciscan contemporaries said he memorized the entire Bible.
Many people pray to St. Anthony because he is the one who will help find what was lost. Story goes that St. Anthony had a hand-written Psalter that he wrote and it disappeared. He prayed and prayed and it was found and returned. Maybe the pic is not him preaching to the world but helping find anything out there.