St. Anthony Zaccaria

 

Today, we celebrate the memorial of Anthony Mary Zaccaria, who was a priest and as a founder of a religious community of priests.

Anthony started a new order called the Clerics Regular, who today are called the Barnabites. He was born in 1502 of a noble family at Cremona, Italy and even in childhood gave signs of his future sanctity. Very early he was distinguished for his virtues, piety towards God, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and especially mercy towards the poor.

He studied philosophy at Parvia and then studied medicine at Padua. After gaining his degree in medicine, he returned home, where he came to know God had called him to the heal souls, rather than to heal bodies. He immediately began to study to become a priest.

While offering his first Mass after his ordination, the congregation saw him in a blaze of heavenly light and surrounded by angels. He then made it his chief care to labor for the salvation of souls. He received strangers, the poor and afflicted, with paternal charity, and consoled them with holy words and material assistance, so that his house was known as the refuge of the afflicted and he himself was called by his fellow-citizens an angel and the father of his country.

Thinking he would be able to do more for the Christian religion, if he had fellow men to start a religious order, two saintly men, Bartholomew Ferrari and James Morigia, helped him found at Milan a society of Clerks Regular, which he named after St. Paul because of his great love for the apostle.

His new religious order was approved by Clement VII, confirmed by Paul III, and soon spread through many lands. But he thought so humbly of himself that he would never be Superior of his own Order. So great was his patience that he endured with steadfastness the most terrible opposition to his religious order.

Such was his charity that he never ceased to exhort religious men to love God and priests to live after the manner of the apostles, and he organized many confraternities of married men and began a religious order of sisters called the Angelic Sisters.

He often carried the cross through the streets and public squares, together with his religious, and by his fervent prayers and exhortations brought wicked men back to the way of salvation.

It is noteworthy that out of love for Jesus crucified he would have the mystery of the cross brought to the mind of all by the ringing of a bell on Friday afternoons about vesper time.

The holy name of Jesus was ever on his lips, and in his writings, and as a true disciple of St Paul, he ever bore the mortification of Christ in his body.

He had a singular devotion to the Holy Eucharist, restored the custom of frequent communions, and is said to have introduced public Eucharistic Adoration of Forty Hours.

He was also enriched with the heavenly gifts of ecstasy, the gift of tears, the gift of knowledge of future things, and the secrets of hearts and power over the enemy of mankind. At length, after many labors, he fell grievously sick. He was taken to Cremona, and died there amid the tears of his religious brothers and in the embrace of his pious mother, whose approaching death he foretold.

At the hour of his death he was consoled by a vision of the apostles, and prophesied the future growth of his Society. The people began immediately to show their devotion to this saint on account of his great holiness and of his numerous miracles. He was canonized by Leo XIII, on Ascension Day, 1897.

St. Anthony was a powerful preacher and preached to some religious nuns who were not very faithful to their vocation. He courageously rebuked them in one of his sermons. Here is a portion of what he said to some religious sisters with regard to the first Commandment: “Moreover, my dear Sisters, you make idols when you conform yourselves to worldly people's way of life: you are fastidious, vegetables make you sick, fasting causes you headaches, early rising spoils your appetite. There is nothing, in fact, that suits you. O you wretches! Do you not know that "those who wear soft raiment are in kings' houses?" [Matt 11:8] Do you not know that the worldly are those who give free rein to every comfort of the body, and hate to suffer any discomfort?

Religious life is a cross to be carried a step at a time and in a steady fashion, "for your sake we face death all day long" [Ps 44:22], as the Apostles used to say [Rom 8:36]; and the Lord told us to take up our cross daily [Luke 9:23]. Are you disciples of Christ? Then, carry your cross, mortify your bodies with fasting and toiling, watch in prayer, spend your time helping your neighbor, nail yourselves to holy obedience never withdrawing from it. So, for Christ's sake, do not make any more idols.”

Today, let us give beseech the prayers of St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria. May we imitate his love and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to Jesus Crucified and to Our Lord’s true presence in the Eucharist and so enter the glory of heaven, when at last our day has come to be with Jesus forever in heaven.