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St. Anthony Mary Claret Before Very Rev. Fr. Alphonsus Maria Duran founded Miles Jesu, he was ordained a priest of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, better known as the Claretians. Their founder was St. Anthony Mary Claret. From the beginning, members of Miles Jesu took on the ideals and spirit of St. Anthony Mary Claret and asked his patronage as their spiritual father. Therefore, he is a source of great spiritual strength for the Institute. St. Anthony Mary Claret was born at Sallent in Spain, of pious and respectable parents. As a youth he practiced the weaver’s trade, but later became a priest. After some time in the parochial ministry, he went to Rome, hoping that the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith would send him to the foreign missions. But God disposed otherwise, and he returned to Spain, where he traveled throughout Catalonia and the Canary Islands as an apostolic missionary. Besides writing many worthwhile books, he founded the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Having been appointed archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, he was conspicuous for the virtues of a zealous shepherd. He restored the seminary, promoted the teaching and the discipline of the clergy, started projects for social welfare, and founded the Teaching Sisters of Mary Immaculate for the Christian education of girls. At length, having been summoned to Madrid to become confessor to the Queen of Spain and her advisor in the most serious affairs of the Church, he gave an outstanding example of austerity and of all the virtues. At the Vatican Council he strenuously defended the infallibility of the Pope. He was responsible for a remarkable spread of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to The Immaculate Heart of Mary and her Rosary. Finally he died in exile at Fontfroide in France in the year 1870. Renowned for his miracles, he was beatified by Pope Pius XI and canonized by Pius XII. Saints are not born saints, but become saints after many hard fought battles. In this excerpt from his autobiography, St. Anthony Mary Claret found himself quite occupied with things of this world, and was saved from death by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “During those first three years in Barcelona, the fervor that I had had at home began to cool. True, I received the sacraments frequently during the year. I attended Mass on all feasts and holy days of obligation and daily prayed the rosary to Mary and kept up my other devotions, but with none of my former fervor. My only goal and all my anxieties were about manufacturing. I can’t overstate it – my obsession approached delirium. Who can say? Perhaps the very intensity of my inclination was the the means God used to take away my love for manufacturing. Toward the end of my third year in Barcelona, obsessed as I was, whenever I was at Mass on holy days, I experienced the greatest difficulty in overcoming the thoughts that came to me. It is true that I loved to think and dwell on my projects, but during the Mass and my other devotions I did not want to and I tried to put them out of my mind. I told myself that I’d think about them later but that for the present I only wanted to think on what I was doing and pray. My efforts seemed useless, like trying to bring a swiftly rotating wheel to a sudden stop. I was tormented during Mass with new ideas, discoveries, etc. There seemed to be more machines in my head than saints on the altar. In the midst of this whirligig of ideas, while I was at Mass one day, I remembered as a small boy those words of the Gospel: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” This phrase impressed me deeply and went like an arrow to my heart. …The warmth of piety and devotion reawakened in me. I opened my eyes and recognized the dangers to soul and body that I had been passing through. I shall briefly relate [one] of them. That last summer, the Blessed Virgin saved me from drowning in the sea. Because I had been working so hard, I didn’t feel very well during the summer. I began to lose all appetite, and the only relief I could find was to go down to the sea, wade in it, and drink a few drops of the salt water. One day as I was walking along the beach on my way to the “old sea” on the other side of La Barceloneta, a huge wave suddenly engulfed me and carried me out to sea. I saw in a moment that I was far from the shore, and I was amazed to see that I was floating on the surface, although I didn’t know how to swim. I called out to the Blessed Virgin and found myself on shore without having swallowed even a drop of water. While I was in the water, I had felt exceedingly calm, but afterwards, on shore, I was horrified at the thought of the danger I had escaped through the help of the Blessed Virgin. My God, how good and wonderful you have been to me! You surely used strange means to uproot me from the world and an odd kind of aloes to wean me from Babylon. And you, my mother: what proper thanks can I show you for saving me from death in the sea? If I had drowned, as by all rights I should have in that condition, where would I be now? You know quite well, my Mother. I would be in the lower depths of hell because of my ingratitude. With David I should say: ‘Your love for me has been so great, you have rescued me from the depths of Sheol.’” (Ps. 86:13) 7 |