St. Anthony Mary Claret
Born: December 23, 1807
Died: October 24, 1870
Canonized: May 7, 1950 by Pope Pius XII
Anthony was born in Salient in Spain, 1807. He was a son of a weaver and learned his father’s trade. Since his parents could not afford to send him to the seminary he went to Barcelona and learned to be an excellent weaver. The discovery of his rare talents and success total eclipsed his priestly vocation. Worse still, his mind was constantly busy with the challenges of the trade. He found their compelling interests becoming strong distractions even from an ordinary spiritual life. “True,” the saint lamented later, “I received the sacraments frequently during the year. I attended Mass on all feasts days and holy days of obligation, daily prayed the rosary to Mary and kept up my other devotions, but with none of my former fervor. I can’t overstate it. My obsession with my work approached delirium.”
But the Blessed Mother long ago had chosen Anthony Claret to serve in her holy labors. She was not about to leave the young man go far afield.
The extremely hot summer of 1826 and the tremendous strains of his work left the artisan severely debilitated. His only relief was to take walks along the seashore, where he could refresh himself. While he was wading one day, a huge wave suddenly engulfed Anthony and carried him, helpless, out to sea. Claret could not swim, yet strangely he was somehow kept afloat. His first reaction was to call out to the Blessed Virgin for help. And just as suddenly he found himself safely back on shore. He was calm until he realized what happened and then he began to shake. He started to understand the meaning of this remarkable incident. What was the importance of his attachment to his worldly goods if he lost his soul? This left a deep impression on him. “It was like an arrow that wounded me.” He thought about living the solitary life of a Carthusian monk , but God soon gave Anthony to know that he was called to become a missionary and so the saint obediently entered the seminary at Vich in Spain to continue his studies.
All during St. Anthony Mary Claret’s life Spain had been afflicted with political turmoil and the agonies of such strife were to remain present through his lifetime. Although he tried to avoid all conflict, none was to suffer the bitter consequences of this upheaval more than he. Some saw in St. Anthony’s persecution a living prophecy of the persecution of Holy MotherChurch and her Divine Faith that She would have to endure in latter times. For the enemy, who relentlessly persecuted Anthony Claret, while wrecking havoc on Spain and other countries, is that same demonic force which even now seeks the ruin of the church.
Because the increasing political upheaval spelled renewed suffering for the Church and possibly make ordinations difficult,Anthony Mary Claret’s Bishop had the foresight to have him ordained early. On June 13, 1835 he was ordained a priest and returned home to celebrate his first Mass. It was then that the government, forbidding any further ordinations, seized the seminary and converted it into a barracks. There was no doubt about it. There was something extraordinary about this twenty-seven year old man. Although young, he was a great preacher and the people thronged to hear him. He was named Parish Assistant in his home town.
But able administrator though he was, this deeply compassionate priest who from childhood had yearned to save all souls from hell’s eternity was restless to undertake apostolic labors. The passage of time only increased that ambition, for in reality it was divinely inspired. Mystically too, he was also given the instilled knowledge that he would have to suffer tremendous persecution as a missionary. Far from discouraging the saint, the anticipation of it only further inflamed his fervor with the desire to seal his faith with his blood. After completing his theology studies after years of parish work, “I, determined to go to Rome, to present myself to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith so that they could send me anywhere in the world.” Having been released by his Bishop, Fr. Claret set out for the EternalCity.
When Anthony arrived at Rome in August 1839, he learned that it would be several weeks before he could see the Prefect of Propaganda Fide. Deciding to utilize his time by making a retreat, he presented himself to the Jesuit Fathers for guidance in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola. Awed by the exceptional piety of Padre Claret, the retreat master urged the saint to enter the Society of Jesus to fulfill his apostolic ambitions. Thus it happened quite unexpectedly he found himself a Jesuit!
Our Saint had never been happier. Community life with the Jesuits provided sterling examples of sanctity, humility, obedience, asceticism and discipline. It gave him broader opportunity to catechize as well as to minister to hospital and prison inmates, work he lovingly performed back in his home town. He was making great spiritual progress as a Jesuit novice when, after only a few months, he suddenly developed a crippling leg ailment. The Father General of the Society understood the sign that the novice was not to be a Jesuit and advised him to return home. Saint Anthony obeyed and the leg pain disappeared.
His vocational detour to the Society of Jesus had not been without purpose. For among many things he learned from the Jesuits that would richly benefit his future life were the studied practices of devotion to the Immaculate Heart as learned from the recently discovered treatise ON TRUE DEVOTION by Saint Louis de Monfort. Fr. Claret offered his whole being to the Immaculate Mother. “You seek an instrument who will serve you in bringing a remedy to the great evils of the day. Here you have one, who, while he knows himself as most vile and despicable for the purpose, yet considers himself most useful in as much as by using me it is your power that shall shine and it will be plain to all that it is you who are accomplishing things and not I.”
Increasing he was asked to conduct “novenas.” That is what he called his missions so as not to invite the suspicion of civil authorities. As the demands, grew so did the crowds attending them. It was only to be expected that Anthony could not long escape the ire of the anticlericals. His sermons were eventually banned and the saint had to retire to a remote parish in the mountains.
By 1843, power shifts in the government led to a more lenient attitude toward the church and the Holy See named Anthony an apostolic missionary. At last he had become what he had prayed for… an apostle.
In his new assignment the holy priest was preaching ten, even twelve sermons a day. He would deliver some ten thousand sermons in his apostolic career, an effort that would have crushed the stamina of giants. Yet this little man slept no more than two hours a day and ate very little. After years of keeping up this grueling pace the saint explained, “I know God wants me to preach, because I feel as peaceful, rested and energetic as if I’d done nothing at all. Our Lord has done it. May He be blessed forever.” His missions included over one and a half million souls scattered over many remote parts of the Alps.
It was across this impossible terrain that Saint Anthony tramped. He would never allow himself the luxury of riding through the heavy snows of winter, the muddy mire of the rainy seasons and or the choking dust and heat of summer. “ Summer caused me the most suffering,” he revealed, “for I always wore a cassock and a winter cloak with sleeves, while the hard shoes and woolen stockings so wounded my feet that I frequently limped. The snow also gave me a chance to practice patience because when high snowdrifts covered the roads I couldn’t recognize the landscape and sometimes would get buried in snow-covered ditches.”
Sometimes the preacher needed a little supernatural help. In making one of his strenuous journeys, he confronted an impassable river. An Angel in the form of a young boy approached out of nowhere. “I will carry you across.” Fr. Claret smiled and asked how a child was going to get a big man across the river. The boy did just that, and then vanished. More than once it is recorded that Fr. Claret traveled considerable distances across snowinlittle time without leaving any trail. The mystery about these supernatural excursions was solved when a young man who worked with Fr. Claret actually saw an angel appear at Fr. Claret’s side to transport him over snow-covered land.
“I am driven,” Fr. Claret wrote in his autobiography, “to preach without ceasing by the sight of the throngs of souls who are falling into hell….Woe is me if I do not, for they could hold me responsible for their damnation.”
This explains the compulsion of the man widely spoken of in his time as “the greatest preacher of the day.” But it does not account for how he made moral conversions by the thousands wherever he went. When asked the secret of his missionary success, the saint answered, “I pray to Our Lady and demand results of her.” “But what if she does not give them?” “Then I take hold of the hem of her robe and refuse to let go until she has granted me what I want.”
When not preaching, Saint Anthony was in the confessional until he left for the day. And even then penitents frequently followed him to the rectory where he heard their confessions. Father Claret preached several long sermons every day to priests, nuns, to hospital and prison inmates and to the general public. Then he heard confessions another fifteen or more hours.
Satan so hated the work of this meek little priest that he seized every opportunity to try to stop or frustrate it. Taking hellish delight in attempting to terrify the saint’s audiences at open air missions, the fallen angels would bring on violent tempests or, at night, would raise powerful blasts of wind to extinguish all the lanterns.
One such an affliction was a gaping wound in the saint’s side that exposed several ribs. When he invoked the aid of the Blessed Mother the wound was instantly healed. “If hell’s persecution was great, “Saint Anthony said, “Heaven’s protection was greater. I experienced the visible protection of the Blessed Mother and of the angels and saints, who guided me through unknown paths, freed me from thieves and murderers, and brought me to a place of safety without my ever knowing how. Many times the word was sent out that I had been murdered, and good souls were already having Masses said for me.”
In 1849 Anthony gathered together five priests who formed the basis of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was struck with complete surprise when only weeks after founding this group he was nominated to become Archbishop of Santiago, Cuba, the now famous Fidel Castro’s island. His life in Cuba brought him almost to the martyrdom he desired. That is another important and lengthy story.
Even in his last days Father Anthony Mary Claret was concerned for the salvation of souls. He repeatedly said, “Souls, souls, give me souls.” He wanted his missionaries to go to the United States. He said, “America is a great and fertile field. In time more souls will enter heaven from America than from Europe. Europe is like an old vine that bears little fruit but America is a young vine.”
Just before 9:00 a.m. on the morning of October 24, 1870 the bell at the convent of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, in far off Tarragona, suddenly began to toll untouched by human hands. At that very moment the soul of Saint Anthony Mary Claret was summoned by Almighty God into glorious eternity. The inscription on his tombstone read, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile. The persecutions of the Masons forced him to live in exile in France where he was buried. Twenty-seven years after his death when his body was exhumed so he could be buried in Spain it was found to be incorrupt. Father Anthony Mary Claret was canonized on May 7th, 1950 by Pope Pius XII. It remains a mystery that this great saints who was known for his great preaching and the many books and articles he has published still remains relatively unknown.
Listen to what he says of his life and what he says to our life.
“For myself, I say this to you. The man who burns with the fire of divine love is a son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and wherever he goes, he enkindles that flame; he deserves and works with all this strength to inflame all men with the fire of God’s love. Nothing deters him: he rejoices in poverty; labors strenuously; he welcomes hardships; he laughs off false accusations; he rejoices in anguish. He thinks only of how he might follow Jesus /Christ and imitate him by his prayers, his labors, his sufferings, and by caring always and only for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.”
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