Our Lady of the Lost and Found Read online

  And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

  In their learned attempts to explain the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (who, for the sake of abbreviation, is sometimes referred to as the BVM, an unfortunate practice which invariably brings to mind others like BMW, IBM, and, of course, BVDs), these authors, I found, most often end up explaining them away. Even those writers in this group who seem to have begun their research wanting to believe, apparently find, in the end, that they cannot.

  Paradoxically, I have also discovered that it is these more frequently chronicled apparitions that are hardest to get to the heart of. As the number of pages piles up, it becomes harder to ferret out the truth. It seems as though the more widely an apparition is known, the more versions of it there are likely to be: the more often a story is told, the more details will be added, altered, or taken away; the more extensively any given experience is written about, the more room there is for speculation, disagreement, error, and doubt.

  As a writer, I found this somewhat dismaying but hardly surprising. In my own work I have sometimes belabored a scene, an image, or even a single sentence so long and hard that in the end it fell apart altogether. This is something like making piecrust: if you handle or roll the dough too much, it will turn out too tough to eat.

  (Speaking of piecrust…I recently read that, although in most countries, virginity was historically considered the most important requirement for a young bride, in Hungary, a girl was not deemed eligible for marriage unless she could make strudel dough so thin that her betrothed could read the newspaper through it. I have already mentioned that although I like to cook, I am not much of a baker. I do not know about making piecrust from personal experience but only from what others have told me. Myself, I buy the frozen ones.)

  Having found in my own writing that thinking or talking about an idea too much or too soon can cause it to evaporate altogether, it occurs to me now that the same paradox applies to faith. Searching too hard for God can get in the way of finding him. Sometimes you just have to stop looking and let yourself be taken by surprise. Sometimes God is as plain as the nose on your face. And sometimes you just can’t see the forest for the trees.

  In several of the books I’ve read recently, the authors make it clear that this business of finding faith is not an intellectual exercise: you cannot think your way to faith.

  This strikes me as being in direct opposition to the philosophical school of Scholasticism that I studied at university. Prevalent throughout much of the Middle Ages, this theory of analysis held that the truth about anything, from the existence of God to the life cycle of the ladybug, could be discovered by thought alone. The Scholastics figured that if enough people thought about and discussed any given question long enough, eventually they were bound to come up with the right answer. Scholastic thinkers used impersonal formal reasoning, involving increasingly smaller logical components, based on repetitious formulas and divisions. They saw no need whatsoever for research based on experiment or experience. They were especially fond of what they called “speculative grammar,” a belief that language was the faithful mirror of all metaphysical and theological truths. It was the practice of Scholasticism that led to protracted disputes about such arcane issues as the number of angels in heaven and the nature of a butterfly’s soul.

  The Scholastics sounded to me like the original ivory-tower thinkers, completely immersed in the life of the mind. I must admit that I found their approach rather appealing. The world of the Scholastics sounded rational and tidy. It seemed to offer an elegant and intellectual way of life unsullied by the nagging chaos of everyday reality, rife as it is with contradictions, randomness, irrationality, and a general existential messiness engendered by the sheer muddle of human nature. Not to mention the necessity of remembering that seeing is believing and that there is an exception to every rule. I imagined the exalted Scholastics descending (or condescending) to dabble in daily life every once in a while, just because they wanted to, not because they had to. All the Scholastics, of course, were men.

  But Scholasticism was eventually debunked by the principle known as Ockham’s razor. William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century Franciscan philosopher and theologian. The word razor here is a double-edged metaphor referring to the fact that this principle effectively sliced down Scholasticism while simultaneously cutting to the heart of things. Also known as the principle of economy or, more pejoratively, as the law of parsimony, it states that “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” That is to say, the simplest theory is the best.

  Ockham held that all knowledge must start with the senses; that all reasoning must be inductive, moving from the particular to the general; and that all reality could be examined, measured, and experienced as a number of individual objective facts that were not part of any overall plan. In the world according to Ockham, there was no room for faith, theology, or revelation. Ockham’s razor was the precursor to the development of modern-day empiricism.

  As Ockham would have it, too much thinking leads to trouble. Having been often accused of thinking too much, I, in theory, am inclined to agree with him. But much as Ockham’s razor may have become a rule in both science and philosophy, for those of us who live largely inside our heads, it is still sometimes hard to put into practice.

  I can see now that, yes, in various circumstances, I have indeed tried to think my way to many things: self-confidence, peace of mind, patience, serenity, happiness, love. I have also tried to think myself out of all manner of things: misery, doubt, guilt, anger, despair, love. I can see now that, yes, they are right, those who say you cannot think your way to faith. And I suspect now that you cannot read or write your way to it either.

  It was Saint Augustine of Hippo who said, sixteen centuries ago: Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. Six centuries after Augustine, Saint Anselm of Canterbury offered his famous prayer: I yearn to understand some measure of thy truth which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to have faith, but I have faith in order to understand. For I believe even this: I shall not understand unless I have faith.

  Saint Anthony of Padua

  In January 1220, the headless and otherwise mutilated bodies of five men are brought for burial to the priory at Coîmbra, then the capital of Portugal. These men are missionaries who have been brutally murdered in Morocco. They are the first members of the Order of Friars Minor, also known as the Franciscans, to be martyred for their faith.

  Among the monks assembled to receive their remains is a young Portuguese man named Ferdinand Bulhom. Born into a noble and powerful Lisbon family in 1195, young Ferdinand joined the Augustinian Canons Regular at the age of fifteen, entering the monastery of Saint Vincent just outside the city. After two years, he asked to be transferred to Coîmbra where he would not be so distracted by the frequent visits of family and friends. By the time the bodies of the martyrs arrive, he has been praying and studying the scriptures there for eight years. Recently ordained to the priesthood, he is twenty-five years old, a short swarthy fellow who, much to his chagrin, tends to gain weight all too easily.

  —He was still young enough to be impressionable, Mary said, but old enough to realize that he was not likely to ever achieve that fine figure of the lean ascetic to which he had once aspired. Having quietly practiced the monastic life for ten years already, now Ferdinand longed to give his life to Jesus, to God, to me, in a more active and dramatic way. As he meditated on and prayed over the remains of those five martyrs, an idea began to take shape in his mind. The gore and the glory that martyrdom offered became more and more attractive.

  Ferdinand takes to fantasizing at length about fingernails pulled out (his), entrails scooped out (his), gentle hearts yanked out (his), juicy tongues ripped out by the roots (his!) and flung into the desert by the bare bloody hands of the Moors. He dreams about bodies: short bodies, p
lump bodies, soft bodies (his, his, his!) dragged behind camels, torn apart by dogs, devoured by lions, stretched on the rack, boiled in oil, burned or buried alive.

  —He prayed, Mary said, that when the fire was built to finish him off, he, like Saint Apollonia, would jump willingly into the flames, thus depriving his torturers of the pleasure of tossing him in. He had heard how the Roman Emperor Nero, in the first century, impaled live Christians on stakes and then set them on fire. They were carried through the streets like torches to light the city at night. The irony of this particular torture did not escape Ferdinand: those flaming Christians still shedding the light of God upon the pagan world. He could do it, too, given half a chance.

  Eventually the Franciscans are convinced of Ferdinand’s sincerity and in 1221 he is admitted to their order. He takes the name of Anthony, after Saint Anthony the Great of the fourth century, one of the original ascetic hermits, exemplar of the desert fathers, also called Anthony the Abbot or Anthony of Egypt.

  —These Christian solitaries, Mary said, were both men and women, desert fathers and mothers, abbas and ammas, who chose to live in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine because they believed that there they would encounter God and garner divine wisdom. They practiced various levels of ascetism, perhaps the most extreme of which was that of the stylites. These were men who lived standing on small platforms atop tall pillars in the desert. One of the most famous stylites was Saint Alypius. After standing upright on his pillar for fifty-three years, Alypius found that his legs would no longer support him. Instead of coming down, which certainly no one would have blamed him for, he lay on his side and stayed up there for another fourteen years.

  —This was not quite what Ferdinand, now Anthony, had in mind, Mary continued. Nor was he especially interested in becoming an anchorite, an increasingly popular ascetic practice during his time. These men and women, mostly women, were first laid out on a bier and given the rite of Extreme Unction to symbolize that they were dead to the world and risen with Christ. Then they entered the anchorhold, which was permanently bricked up behind them. Their only access to the outside world was through a small window that was opened to pass food in and refuse out. Anthony did not want to be shut away from the world. He was seeking a more active form of devotion.

  As soon as possible, he sets out for North Africa, but after several months there, he falls gravely ill and is forced to return to Europe. Caught in a bad storm, his boat is blown off course and travels east across the Mediterranean, landing some months later at Messina in Sicily.

  —Anthony had already put himself entirely at God’s disposal, Mary said, in spirit anyway, if not in body in quite the way he had intended. So now he took this unexpected change of plans as a sign of God taking charge of his life and so he remained in Italy.

  In May, Anthony travels north to Assisi to attend a great gathering of Franciscans. Saint Francis himself is present, seated humbly at the feet of the presiding vicar general, Brother Elias. Anthony is impressed and inspired. The gathering is remembered as the Pentecost Chapter of Mats, so called because there is not enough room for all the attendees and three thousand friars have to sleep on flimsy mats on the cold stone floor.

  Afterward, Anthony is appointed to the isolated hermitage of Montepaolo near the town of Forli southwest of Bologna. For nine months he is kept busy doing kitchen work and other menial jobs around the hermitage.

  In 1222, he goes with the other friars to an ordination of Franciscans and Dominicans held at the Minorite convent in Forli. When it comes time for the ceremonial address, it turns out that, due to a misunderstanding, no one has actually been assigned to preach. The local superior asks several of the friars present if they will take over the pulpit but each declines, being unprepared. When Anthony is asked, he, too, excuses himself humbly, protesting that he is but a menial worker, accustomed only to washing dishes and scrubbing floors. The superior, growing impatient, insists that Anthony must stand up and speak whatever God puts into his mouth. Anthony, compelled by his vow of obedience, goes to the pulpit.

  —He was very nervous at first, Mary said. His voice was shaky and he was mostly mumbling into his chest. The friars at the back kept calling out for him to speak louder. He was blushing and sweating and his voice was cracking. But soon he managed to master his stage fright, not by imagining the audience in their underwear as timid public speakers are now so often advised, but by turning to me and repeating my name over and over to himself. I was pleased to oblige. Soon he was speaking with eloquence and vigor. God was indeed putting words into his mouth and out they poured in a torrent. His explication of the scriptures was erudite, profound, and sublime. The assembly was collectively and completely astonished.

  News of Anthony’s stellar performance soon reaches Saint Francis himself who writes him a letter and bestows upon him the dual mission of preaching the gospel throughout the region and teaching theology to his fellow friars. Anthony thus becomes the first lector in theology of the Franciscan order.

  In the next five years he makes nearly four hundred trips throughout northern Italy and southern France. He is not an overnight success. The sinners are not especially interested in hearing his long sermons denouncing luxury, avarice, tyranny, and heresy. On one occasion, Anthony is so frustrated by their lack of interest that he goes to the water’s edge and preaches to the fishes who stand on their tails and listen.

  —In a world without mass media, Mary said, a world, for that matter, largely undiscovered, unexplored, unimagined, uninvented, still news traveled fast. Stories of Anthony’s charismatic preaching spread quickly, passing from mouth to mouth, town to town, like currents in the atmosphere. Soon enough, whenever he was scheduled to make an appearance, the shops of the town were closed and people lined up and waited all night to hear him.

  Anthony especially likes to travel to those places where the heretics are most deeply entrenched. His remarkable success rate in converting them earns him the nickname Malleus hereticorum, Hammer of the Heretics.

  —The key to his success, Mary said, was the relentless repetition of my holy names. I am not bragging, I am just telling you how he did it. To each and every heretic he met, he would chant the Litany of the Blessed Virgin as it had come to be ritualized near the time of his birth.

  Anthony begins quietly enough:

  —Holy Mother of God, pray for us. Holy Virgin of virgins, pray for us. Mother of Christ, pray for us. Mother of divine grace, pray for us. Mother most pure, pray for us. Mother most chaste, pray for us. Mother inviolate, pray for us. Mother undefiled, pray for us. Mother most amiable, pray for us.

  By the time he reaches the middle of the list of forty-nine titles, a murmuring ripples through the crowd of heretics as a few of them begin to pick up the recurring line:

  —Spiritual vessel, pray for us. Vessel of honor, pray for us. Singular vessel of devotion, pray for us. Mystical rose, pray for us. Tower of David, pray for us. Tower of ivory, pray for us. House of gold, pray for us. Ark of the covenant, pray for us.

  As the end of the litany approaches, each and every one of the heretics has flung his arms up to heaven and Anthony’s own seraphic voice is nearly drowned out by theirs:

  —Queen of angels, pray for us. Queen of patriarchs, pray for us. Queen of prophets, pray for us. Queen of apostles, pray for us. Queen of martyrs, pray for us. Queen of confessors, pray for us. Queen of virgins, pray for us. Queen of all saints, pray for us. Queen conceived without original sin, pray for us. Queen assumed into heaven, pray for us. Queen of the most holy Rosary, pray for us. Queen of peace, pray for us. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world; spare us, O Lord.

  The heretics, as if a single body, fall to the ground. Pressing their faces into the earth, they say the final prayer and their mouths fill with dirt:

  —Grant, we beg you, O Lord God, that we your servants may enjoy lasting health of mind and body, and by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, be delivered from present sorrow and enter into
the joy of eternal happiness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

  The crowds grow exponentially, soon numbering thirty thousand or more. No building is sufficient to hold them, so Anthony preaches in public squares, marketplaces, meadows, and vineyards. He has to hire a bodyguard to protect him from the faithful who show up with scissors, eager to snip off pieces of his habit for souvenirs.

  —Like the urban legends of modern times, Mary said, the stories of Anthony’s many miracles became common currency throughout Europe.

  In Toulouse, a heretic tells Anthony that he will not believe that the body and blood of Jesus reside in the Eucharist until his mule leaves its stable and kneels down before the sacramental bread and wine. A few days later when Anthony stands in front of the church with the Eucharist in his hands, the mule appears on the steps and goes down on its knees before him.

  On another occasion, Anthony is served a sumptuous but poisoned meal by a group of Italian heretics hoping to do away with him. Anthony makes the sign of the cross over the food and it becomes wholesome and delicious again.

  —At Padua, Mary said, a young man named Leonardo, remorseful and repentant, confessed to Anthony that he had kicked his mother in a fit of rage. Anthony told him that the foot of a man who kicks his own mother deserves to be cut off. So Leonardo ran home and chopped off his foot with an axe. Anthony came to the house, picked up the amputated foot, and miraculously rejoined it to Leonardo’s leg. There is no record of what Leonardo’s mother had to say about all this.

  Shortly after the death of Saint Francis in October 1226, Anthony is recalled to Italy. Suffering general ill health due to his years of strenuous traveling and frequent fasting, Anthony is happy now to settle down at the Santa Maria monastery in Padua, where he is much honored and beloved. He devotes himself to teaching theology, studying the scriptures, and composing sermons on the lives of the saints.