Father Anthony
St. Anthony the Frail (Fiction)
The following is a short story I wrote for my students at Crown of Thorns Academy.
Father Anthony
(Anthony II)
St. Anthony the Frail
1.
Anthony the second was born to Margaret Appletree, granddaughter of Anthony and Anna. From the time Margaret was young her life was chaotic. Her parents didn’t understand how a person could produce so much chaos, and knew not what to do with her. One thing led to the next, and when she dropped out of college at 21 to take care of her one year old child, Anthony’s older half sister, Miriam Johnson, who took the last name of her father, the next phase of chaos began. She was in and out of relationships over the next decade, always seeking to find her identity in a man, but telling everyone in the world on the internet that a man could never fulfil her, and all she needed was herself, and that she had been taken through every hardship in her life so she could get to where she’d gotten. But where she’d gotten was misery. She was unhappy, desperate, addicted to shopping, over medicated, and given to fast relationships that ended as soon as they started. When she was thirty five, mostly out of desperation, she had Anthony, hoping that the child would make her boyfriend stay around, but it didn’t. She had no idea what to name the boy, but the father’s favorite football player was named Anthony and suggested that, to which she said yes for no other reason than she wanted to do anything to please the father so that he’d stay around. It was only a coincidence the boy ended up with the same first name as his great-grandfather. By the time little Anthony was born the father was gone from her life, but little Anthony was now in it, 15 years younger than his older half sister, and alone with his mother most of the days of his early life. His mother’s life continued to go downhill from there—she drank more, took more medication, was constantly tired, had more destructive and even faster relationships, and had little to give to little Anthony. He grew up a small boy, mostly because he was underfed, and was often ill. His greatgrandfather, Anthony the first, lived in the same town and would come by every day to check on Anthony the second. Anthony the first was Anthony the second’s favorite man in the whole world. The elder Anthony would tell the younger Anthony about his great grandmother, Anna, and Anthony would feel the love of God in every fiber of his being. He saw his great-grandfather as the greatest man he’d ever known—and would see him as so throughout his entire life. Elder Anthony taught little Anthony how to pray. He would take him with him to Church a few times a week, where sometimes the elder Anthony would altar serve, even as a 90 year old. Elder Anthony was fit and active through the end of his life. Little Anthony always assumed he was named after his great-grandfather, and he saw it as the greatest honor anyone could ever have given him. When little Anthony was diagnosed with stage four Leukemia at the age of 8, his great-grandfather showed up to the hospital with the same glow he had whether he was taking his great-grandson to a baseball game or sitting with him in Church or playing around in the backyard with him. For his mother, Anthony’s cancer only became a reason for his mother to post endlessly about him online. She loved to show the world how sad and difficult her life had been, and Anthony’s cancer was one more reason to garner attention and sympathy from those who didn’t know her. She wanted to be saved, and this made her look like someone who needed saving. Little Anthony only appreciated that his mother cared about him, and from a young age he saw her heart, with all its flaws, and knew that every flaw in her was only accidentally there in her, and felt her love despite all those flaws as if it was the only thing there.
When the doctor gave Margaret the news that little Anthony had only a few months to live, it broke her. She couldn’t look at little Anthony, and a few days later she was so out of her mind that she needed around the clock care, which she’d need for the rest of her short life. The day the news of his coming death was delivered, Elder Anthony was there, with his grandparents as well, but the only person little Anthony truly wanted to see and be around was his great-grandfather. So after all the others left, and Anthony the first hung around, he finally got to spend time with his great-grandfather, who stayed the whole night with him in the hospital, and every night he was there without fail. Little Anthony looked forward to it because whenever he asked his great-grandfather questions, his great-grandfather answered him as best he knew. He didn’t hesitate or change what he said because the lessen was hard to process for a person—he said the truth, and he saw the perfect love of God in every truth, so it always came off to little Anthony as the most loving explanation he could find anywhere. Little Anthony was always comforted and consoled by the answers his great-grandfather gave, though most people thought his great-grandfather was too harsh with his answers because they weren’t always warm and fuzzy and easy answers.
Little Anthony looked at elder Anthony, and without sadness, but only curiosity, asked him why some people die young, and others old, and what was in the mind of God when He did this. Elder Anthony, without skipping a beat, told the little boy that God takes one person at one time, and another at another; we think that a child should die after their parents, and their children after them, but God doesn’t always do it this way, because God sees all things from eternity, and he works marvels with some people in 8 years that another, in 80 years, does something else with. When elder Anthony said all this, there was no pain on his voice—he didn’t look at little Anthony with any tears or sadness in his heart, he was just happy to be there.
“Will I die, pop-pop?” Little Anthony asked.
Elder Anthony, without flinching, told him that we all die, and that the question isn’t whether or even when we die, but whether we’re ready to go meet the Lord when He desires for us to come to Him, who knew from before all time exactly when and how He’d call us back to Himself.
“And how can I be sure that I’m ready, Pop-pop?”
Elder Anthony told him that he should be neither scared of death, nor forget to think about it, because it brings out of us what is most important in this life and in others.
“Have you thought about me dying, Pop-pop?” Little Anthony asked.
His great-grandfather told him that he often thought of it, because his love for him is so great. He said that whenever he loves someone much, he thinks about their death even more so that he can appreciate them while they’re with him, and see the Lord’s working in every aspect of their life. “For only when we reflect on a person’s death,” he said, “do we notice how every challenge and set back and joy and success is part of the Lord’s perfect plan for their life.”
Little Anthony felt the love of God in every fiber of his being that day, and he trusted Him too. The Lord gave little Anthony an even greater measure of faith from that day on than He had given Anthony the first, and it would stay with him for the rest of his life. Sometimes the Lord does just that: he takes someone with great faith, let’s another see it with great clarity, so that they can receive an even greater ammount of faith from God through them.
A month later little Anthony was released from the hospital, healthy as a lamb. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but they also knew statitstics, and knew that sometimes things happen in unexpected ways, and they concluded that this was one of those times.
A month after that elder Anthony passed away, but when he passed away little Anthony did not cry, but only smiled, because he saw in his death the whole of his great-grandfather’s life, and he knew exactly where his great-grandfather was, and how he had went ahead so he could help little Anthony more perfectly from heaven than he ever could from Earth.
For the next ten years, as Anthony’s mother went in-and-out of full in-patient care homes, he lived with his half sister, who though young, never failed to provide for the basic needs Anthony had. Anthony the first had left money for Anthony’s sister to take care of him and herself far beyond their childhood years, and when the rest of their extended family learned of the proportion Anthony the first had set aside for them, it made them jealous, and they began to hate little Anthony and Miriam.
Miriam struggled with many of the same things her mother did, but still Anthony saw her heart as if the love she did have for him was the only thing on it, and everything else was just an accident and a consequence of her trying to love him more perfectly but failing because it’s not easy, because she did not know the Lord in the hardest moments of her life, and for this he always had compassion for her.
The years went by and, though still sickly and small in frame, Anthony grew in wisdom, intelligence, and mortification with each passing year. In high school the school superstar sat next to him in two of his general ed classes, because their last names were right next to each other, and the superstar liked Anthony. The superstar’s whole life was a rollercoaster, but Anthony was steady, and for some unknown reason, which always boils down to an intentional plan of the Lord, the superstar saw that and recognized it, and appreciated it.
The superstar’s life was chaotic. He was the top football recruit in the state and committed to play football in the SEC. He loved cute girls and he loved to party, and though he was still young, drugs became a central part of his life. One day, forgetting that he’d still had some drugs on him from the night before, he came to school with them, and it was the same day that the school was having police and police dogs come do a random drug search—something that happened once every three months in the school, and it was that day. When the superstar got wind of it, he hid his backpack in Anthony’s locker—which was next to his, because their last names were right next to each others—, asking Anthony if he could throw it in there because he’d already shut his own and he’d get it later today, which Anthony obliged to, not knowing there were drugs, but happy to help him out, because he saw his heart and appreciated him, despite his flaws and the chaos in the young prodigy’s life. The superstar was only thinking about himself, and his future, and in that moment he didn’t care what happened to anyone else, much less Anthony, because all he could think about was avoiding any punishment he might face.
When the drug dogs got to Anthony’s locker and identified the drugs for the police, the assistant to the assistant dean of students had Anthony’s locker identified, opened, and took out the bag with the drugs in it. Since they went to a school with over 3,000 kids, the deans didn’t know Anthony at all, and while a handful of his teachers knew him, and couldn’t believe Anthony would ever do anything like this, they knew that students loved to party, and they suspected that it was just a hidden problem he, like many other students, struggled with. No one came to his defense. But no one needed to, because Anthony was not scared, for perfect love casts out all fear.
When Anthony was pulled out of his classroom by police and taken to his locker, he knew God had a plan, though he didn’t know what.
“Is this your bag, sir?” The hulky police officer asked him.
Noticing it was the superstar’s, but knowing that if the superstar was caught that his life and his future would be over, and knowing how that can break a person, like it did his mother, and knowing how fragile hearts and souls are, and how fragile the heart and soul of the superstar’s was at that phase in his life, and knowing that the Lord had a plan for both their lives, whatever it was, he took the fall for the superstar and said the backpack was his own.
The next thing that happened was he was put into handcuffs, and because the new attorney general of their state campaigned on cleaning up the city for their youth, slapped the maximum juvenile sentence on little Anthony, and he was given three years in jail for possession of a grade one controlled substance, a felony in the state.
Walking out of high school in handcuffs that day the superstar saw him, along with every other student, and began to weep. Prior to that moment he had only been thinking about how he was glad it wasn’t him being walked out in handcuffs, but when he saw Anthony, who was neither mad nor sad nor flustered nor bothered, the Lord pricked the superstar’s conscience, and he crumbled. Over the coming days the superstar grew to hate Anthony for how seeing him walk out had exposed his own fragility and wickedness to himself, so he said to himself that Anthony was actually the evil one in the situation, and that he did it to make the superstar feel guilty, because Anthony was a self-righteous man that would expect him, the superstar, to pay him back one day. “He did this so that he’d have something in his pathetic life that he could hold over me for years to come,” the superstar said to himself with anger on his heart. What it was that most bothered him, in truth, was that Anthony, in looking at the superstar, recognized all that had happened, and had united his will to the whole situation, and the superstar saw how inferior he was to Anthony in truth, and how he could never bring himself of his own will to do such a sacrificial act, and so he convinced himself it was not noble or heroic, but dumb, desperate, and a plot to take advantage of him, the superstar…
So walking out, seeing the superstar in tears, broken, and knowing that it was not the beginning of the superstar’s struggle, because the Lord showed this to Anthony in that moment with perfect clarity, Anthony said to the superstar “God has a great plan for your life.” There was a peaceful feeling that the Lord gave to Anthony in that moment, and the superstar, regardless of how mad he was at Anthony in the days afterward, would reflect on this for the rest of his life. It wasn’t the words that stuck with him, but the look and feeling of peace on Anthony’s soul amidst the hardest trial a seventeen year old could face—being innocently thrown in jail and having your life ruined.
Anthony never had the chance to finish high school, but he got his GED from jail, and when two years in, his cellmate, whom Anthony knew the heart of, and saw that it was good, only mixed with evil beyond the man’s intention because life was hard, Anthony again took the fall when drug dogs came into their cell and found his cellmates stash of drugs. This time Anthony’s sentence was extended 9 years, and so it was that Anthony was in jail from the time he was 17 until he was released on good behavior at 27.
By that time his whole extended family assumed he was a drug addict and a troubled man, like his mother and sister, chalking it up to a side effect of growing up in a broken home, and him being just like those that had always been around him. At the news of Anthony’s second offense, and his additional nine years he’d have to spend in adult jail, his mother passed away, without any illness, broken in spirit by this life.
2.
When Anthony had been in jail he was known for his generosity toward all. He would tutor other cell mates so they could earn their high school degrees and some, who were taking college classes, he also tutored. He had a quick grasp of even the deepest concepts across a broad range of subjects, and he enjoyed helping others come to understand what they didn’t previously understand. Every day he read his Bible, or a work of moral philosophy from a great saint, or a story from the lives of the saints, and at the end of each night he’d give thanks to the Lord for all He had done for him. “Lord, you know my heart, you see every movement of it, and you see the flaws I plague it with. My spirit wants one thing, but my flesh another, and my flesh wars against my spirit. If the worst punishment in my life is having to go to jail for something someone else did, I know that I am not here because of that but because of the wickedness that dwells within me, and I can never forget all the offenses of my own you already forgave. This punishment is generous and light of you, O Lord, and I’m so grateful for your exceeding kindness to me. How good and merciful You are, and how grateful I am that You, in Your infinite wisdom, placed me with these great men, that I might be of service to them in their lives.”
There was never a day that Anthony hated jail, or hated that he had to be there. He liked all the people there, and he knew the loneliness of his home, and in jail he felt like he was never lonely. Plus, he had the opportunity to study the Word of God, the philosophy of the saints, and the lives of the saints, uninterrupted, day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-after-year. He received the nickname “Friar” while in jail because one of the inmates said he looked like one of those dudes that would’ve worn a brown outfit tied with a rope, with a hair cut in the shape of a halo. He laughed and said to the man, “Oh, you mean a Friar?” And the man responded that that’s exactly what he meant, and from that day on he was known as “Friar” throughout the jail.
“I’m not worthy of such a dignified name,” he thought to himself each day, though it was only a joke to everyone else, and carried on with a joy that few could ever understand in the moment, but that was recognized by all, everywhere, and stuck with them for the rest of their lives.
By the time he was leaving jail there were not a few guards that were convinced that Anthony had never done an ill deed in his life, much less drugs, and had no idea why he was there, though Anthony would always say, “this punishment was the most generous mercy the Lord ever had on him,” and they assumed it must’ve been something really bad that he’d done.
Now out of jail, Anthony took a job at the local convenience store, run by a elderly foreigner with a big family who just needed someone that would reliably show up to work, to which Anthony never missed a day in the next 6 years. Anthony moved into the local low-income housing, though he had a trust he could now accesss, left behind by his great-grandfather, that made him the wealthiest 27 year old in the entire city. The first thing Anthony did after getting out was get everything in order to anonymously donate all his money to his local Church and the homeless shelter they ran and operated. When the parish secretary saw the check come through she nearly fainted, and the old priest, stoic from his decades of honest commitment to the Lord, deposited it into the Church’s account, never knowing who it came from, changed little in what he did or how he operated the parish, other than rewarding his staff with a 100% raise to each of their salaries, and carried on. “The Lord will reveal whosever work this is in due time,” said the old priest.
Every day the elderly priest would see Anthony at mass, and in time he introduced himself to Anthony because he recognized the spirit of God hovering over the the young man, who was no longer so sickly looking, and was actually quite naturally strong, very handsome, but shone with a steadiness and calm that even those with no spiritual insight could recognize the glory of, but that the old priest saw with peculiar accuracy.
“Oh no,” Anthony the second said, “I am not what you think; a two time convict, guilty before the Lord, you honor me by introducing yourself. I pray for you every day, Father.” He told the old priest, and the old priest knew it was true.
“Tell me, do you sense a calling to the priesthood?” The old priest asked.
Anthony told the priest how such a calling would be a blessing too far beyond what he deserved, but that it would be the greatest gift he could ever receive to give his life totally to the Lord, and His Church, in service.
“Would you like to go to seminary?”
Anthony answered simply: “I want what the Lord wants, and if that’s to become a priest, I would be the luckiest man ever to live.”
But when he applied to join the seminary at the Priest’s insistence, they denied him. He had only been out of jail for two years at that point, and they weren’t particularly eager to add a two-time convict to their next class of priests. When Anthony heard the news he only smiled, “the plans of the mind belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” The elderly priest, for his part, was irate—how could they turn away a man who had repented of his wrongs and wants to give his life to the Lord?? “Judases!” He screamed in frustration. “They would’ve turned away Peter, himself!”
But Anthony only looked at him and told him of how the Lord is even better than he thinks, because Anthony was now able to continue on the work he was already doing, and help in the lives of those who the Lord wanted him to help here first.
3.
Anthony had been living among the homeless for over a year, ministering to their needs, dressing wounds, providing basic over-the-counter medicines to those in need, and hearing the stories of their lives with optimism and gratitude. In his time, more than half the people in the homeless encampment had begun to pick their lives back up, and put the pieces together. Anthony had a special way of encouraging all those he came into contact with, and it moved them in ways they, nor anyone else around them, could explain.
One day, he was walking between tents when his friend from high school, the superstar, came out of one of the tents, having just finished using drugs, and dressed with the same misery and fatigue he had once seen on his mother.
“Anthony…?” the former superstar said, confused at what he was seeing, and forgetting his misery, or even the guilt he’d felt that Anthony went to jail on his behalf, because of him. In that moment the superstar was only glad to see him. Anthony had been sent to jail, but lived a life a freedom; the superstar lived a life of freedom, but was in a worse jail than any prison that has ever existed on the face of this planet.
After that incident in high school, the guilt consumed the superstar, and unwilling to repent, his life went from one mistake to the next. By his second year in college he was kicked off the team, and having neither the grades, nor the money, to stay around, transfered to a smaller school, where he was no longer the player he once was, because he lacked the discipline and self-possession to be effective against players that were no longer young boys, but budding men, and out of pride, not wanting to be beat by them, “retired” from football with a “chronic injury”, after hitting his head, which was actually only the depression he already had. From there he moved back home, started using drugs more frequently, and 8 years later, came to where he was right now, periodically homeless and addicted to hard drugs.
In the next moment the superstar realized all the wrongs he did to Anthony, how his life had only crumbled, and how here was Anthony, who, though they were in the same place, was evidently not in the same place as him, and the superstar was ashamed. Again he began to hate Anthony in that moment for being at peace despite the worst thing the superstar could ever imagine happening to someone—taking a harsh punishment for something they didn’t do.
The superstar had no idea that all his life’s troubles after Anthony’s arrest stemmed from his unwillingness to repent of his wrongs, and the only thing he could do was hate Anthony because everything in his life fell apart, seemingly immediately, after the incident in high school where Anthony was arrested for his crime.
“All my life I’ve done everything I could to avoid jail. I lied when I faced getting in trouble. I pleaded with others for mercy when I faced punishment. And here’s a man that has won peace after going to jail for doing nothing that was his fault. Even worse, he looked at me with such gentleness and understanding that day when he was being walked out of the school in handcuffs. What a devilish trick that was! That look has messed with me my entire life since, as if he knew by looking at me in that way that he would punish me even worse than if he had looked at me with anger. At least if he had had anger I would’ve known that I should feel pity on him—but he only had pity on me. And what an insult—to pity me of all people. I was going to be someone great. I was going to climb to the heights of the world of football… I was already experiencing fame but I was only going to experience more, and get richer, and inspire thousands, if not millions, of young boys to follow in my same footsteps! I wasn’t going to be a miserable nobody like him… And yet he had pity on me!… Can you believe this man!? I hate him with a perfect hatred.”
The superstar turned and walked away in disgust. “You’re a fraud, Anthony,” he shouted back at him, and though no one else in the surrounding area heard any noise in response, Anthony’s voice traveled to the superstar’s heart and said only, “you’re right,” in response, with further humility. The superstar tried for many years to get that voice he’d heard out of his head and off his heart, but it never left.
4.
Three years later, after expending every connection and every effort to have the Bishop hear his case, the elderly priest was able to convince the Bishop to do what he needed to do to get Anthony into seminary. The Bishop, knowing nothing about Anthony, but seeing how persistently the elderly priest fought for him, let the old priest’s wishes be granted, only so that it would stop the elderly priest from pestering him so incessantly. That year, at the age of 32, Anthony entered the seminary. He now had a single cot, a warm place to stay every night, but the rector struggled to know what to do about Anthony when, after only two weeks there, it became known that Anthony almost never slept in his room.
“He’s disobeyed curfew every night this week,” the lay supervisor relayed to the rector. “We have to dismiss him. He’s a felon and he’s not given up his old lifestyle.” “Lord have mercy on him,” the lay supervisor of the dorms added with spiritual sentiment he learned to attach to every deed, whether it was him unjustly plotting against a person or not, like he was in this case.
So the rector, planning to expel Anthony from the seminary, went to the Bishop, and told him what he was going to do. The Bishop responded in desperation, “no, wait. Don’t do anything.” And before he said any more, assuming Anthony was guilty, the Bishop reached out to the elderly priest to reprimand him for pleading to him to let Anthony be admitted into the seminary. Though in secret he only rebuked the old priest to make sure the elderly priest knew why he, the Bishop, was doing what he was doing before the action was carried out so he, the Bishop, wouldn’t be pestered every day for the rest of his life by the hot headed, and untiring, elderly priest.
“Now you can no longer come to me with anything, much less your self-righteous judgement. I am your superior and you ought to learn before you meet the Lord what is owed to your superiors,” the Bishop said with pride and arrogance.
The elderly priest scoffed over the phone.
“You idiots!” The elderly priest shouted back even more angry than he’d been all the years he’d pleaded for Anthony to be admitted to seminary. “Anthony goes and spends all night at the homeless encampments helping the poor. And THIS, of all people, is the one you want kicked out of seminary?!” The elderly priest was fuming with righteous anger, “I can’t wait to see your judgement scrolled across your forehead in the next life! I will be praying that you make abundant reparations, because if you don’t, you’ll be in hell!” And the elderly priest hung up the phone.
The bishop, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, called back the rector.
“No! Don’t expel the man. My orders. That’s final.”
When the rector put down the phone he was more confused than he’d ever been. Why on earth did the bishop not want the man expelled from the seminary? What happened between the time he told him of his plan and now? The bishop was so enthusiastic to kick the man out of seminary, only to hear this response… The rector imagined someone higher up must really have a vested interest in Anthony being there. But the person higher up was the Lord, and the Bishop didn’t do it because of Him, but because he feared the righteous scorn of the elderly priest—above all, because he feared that the elderly priest might have justice on his side, and that scared him to no end.
So Anthony, never knowing that they’d considered expelling him from seminary, but only encountering hostility from the rector and his fellow priests at every turn, worked even harder to be obedient in all that he did, and make greater reparations for his wrongs and for the wrongs of the whole world. When the rector sternly reminded all the seminarians that they have curfew, and that they are required, by direct order under their authority, to remain in their rooms after curfew until the early morning, Anthony followed the rule he was given perfectly, and from that day forward, went to bed in his cot, slept for a few hours, and would wake up at 2:30am every day to leave and go minister to the homeless down by the river until he had to be back for morning prayer and breakfast.
Over the next 7 years the impact of Anthony was felt in more and more places. The rector had moved on and been appointed bishop of a small diocese on the other side of the country, a new rector came in, and the new rector saw in Anthony a holiness he had never seen before, and scarcely had even conceived of being possible in actual reality. In all his classes at seminary, Anthony had a grasp of the material that led not a few of the seminary professors to seek his advice in how to address a given topic. Anthony had a more profound grasp of philosophy, and moral philosophy in particular, than anyone they’d ever been around. He wasn’t just gentle and kind—he possessed a knowledge that cut through all things at all times, and he could explain it with ease and clarity to anyone who asked. When the professors would come to Anthony, he would simply smile and thank them for how much they had taught him, and then without them noticing it he’d bring up something seemingly unrelated that helped the professor see the whole problem of the question they were wrestling with with profound clarity.
After his ordination, in addition to continuing to minister to the poor, now as a minister of the sacraments along with ministering in every other capacity, Father Anthony would spend hours every day in the confessional, hearing peoples confessions and offering insight and correction that would set souls right in a way that no one knew was even possible.
“You must go to confession with Fr. Anthony over at St. Innocent’s on 4th street.” One person would say. “It’s hard to even explain. He’ll show you every contour of your soul with a clarity you couldn’t imagine.”
It was not rare that a single person’s confession would last for well over an hour on any given day, as Fr. Anthony sat with them and helped them see every impulse and habit driving whatever sin they were most struggling with, and he would answer as many questions as they had until they knew with certainty what they needed to do. As the days went by, out of demand, he remained in his confessional longer and longer, until it preoccupied nearly every waking minute of his day that he was not saying mass, or praying his breviary, or, now only scarcely, ministering to the homeless.
“I am at a different phase in my life,” Fr. Anthony would say to himself. “It’s no longer my calling to primarily carry out the corporal works of mercy; now the Lord has called me to carry out the spiritual works of mercy.”
Another person would say to someone else: “You have to go to confession with Fr. Anthony over at St. Innocent’s on 4th Street, downtown. He showed me my whole life and I haven’t struggled with my sins since. It’s like they’ve been totally washed and uprooted from my soul. It’s unbelievable.”
Once a week, for the second half of Sunday, he’d have no confessions available because he’d still go down to the river, often in street clothes, to be with the homeless. It was there, 7 years into his ministry, at the age of 46, that his life would come to an end… It went like this:
A man, not well in his mind, was threatening a girl with a gun that was also there who the man had relations with. Fr. Anthony, being called by one of the other people in the encampment, came out.
Everyone respected Fr. Anthony and looked at him to see what he would do when he came out. The man, not well in his mind, noticed the esteem Fr. Anthony had from everyone there, and began to hate him with a perfect hatred.
“Who’s this? A cop? Your protector?” The angry man said sarcastically, mocking Fr. Anthony.
Fr. Anthony said nothing. He knew the moment he saw the man that his time had come, that there was nothing else the Lord had in store for him in this life, and that his life would end there that night, and he surrended his soul over to the Lord in that moment. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” he said, and, “Lord, do not hold this sin against him.”
The man turned the gun on Fr. Anthony and mocked him further, “what are you going to do?? You think I’m playin’ with you?” “This girl—you care about this girl? You should’ve seen what she was doing to me last night. But you want to cape up for her?” The man laughed at him with mockery. “How bout I do you in… What are you gunna do about it.”
Father only looked at him silently, with compassion.
In the next moment the man pulled the trigger. There were shrieks heard from every corner of the encampment. Screaming and wailing began—for nearly all of them knew Fr. Anthony and they couldn’t believe what just happened. The woman began crying and hitting the man. “How could you? How could you!” The man, paranoid, looking every which way, turned and ran away, and it was as if no one saw him leave because they were all focused on Father Anthony, laying there dead on the sidewalk, lifeless.
The tears continued through that night, and the next night, and every night thereafter for the next year, with vigils for Fr. Anthony spontaneously happening without fail. The first cop called to the scene, two blocks away doing patrol, was the superstar. He collapsed under the weight of his own soul when he saw Fr. Anthony. He had begun the process of reforming his life a decade prior, but it was in that moment that all his struggles with selfishness and pride faded completely away, never to return again for the remainder of his life.
Every regular in the homeless encampment was healed of their diseases, mental and physical, and across the whole city there was hardly a homeless person left—for all were cared for, and there were none homeless on account of moral disease in that city for centuries to come. They built a hospital and a church on the grounds where Father Anthony died, and they were both the most beautiful and well respected institutions the city ever knew.
After Fr. Anthony’s death, his personal room revealed volumes of notes and commentaries on different works—works he’d studied in seminary, classic works of great saints, confessional manuals from the scholastic period up to present day, the Bible, and the lives of his saints. The books he had with him in jail were all marked up with insight and wisdom that people would study for centuries after his death. His scholarship was unmatched, though few people in the broader world knew of him for his intelligence while he lived, while those professors and fellow preists he went through seminary with knew it all too well.
At the front of every book in Fr. Anthony’s personal library was a note of dedication to his great-grandfather, Anthony the first, recalling to mind the lesson he’d learned from him when he was young and a dying boy in the hospital: “when you love someone, think about their death more often, for then you will see the plan of the Lord in everything that happens in their life.”
Fr. Anthony prayed that he would receive the death the Lord had in store for him with gratitude, and the night he died, the Lord gave him what he’d asked for. The man who killed him was arrested and taken to jail, but even there, Anthony, though passed from this life, did not abandon him. After the first ten years in jail, where the man was in a perpetual frenzy, Anthony began to come to him each night, and for the next 17 years Anthony was with him every night in jail, until the man was set free on good behavior. The killer, after he was released, joined a monastery, and became a monastic brother—a friar, actually—and spent his life in contemplation of the Lord and perpetual penance.
The number of souls moved by the encounter and life of Fr. Anthony exceeds man’s ability to count and track, but the Lord knows every one. He did not influence thousands or millions, as the superstar once said in his pride that he would influence; he inspired tens and hundreds of millions for years and decades and centuries to come.
None of it was Fr. Anthony whom they saw, but the image of the Lord shining through him and working in him, and his example and witness to the Lord transformed their lives. +