My Ring Was Found

As a young girl I often heard my Nana talk about her devotion to St. Anthony and how, through prayer, he had helped her in difficult times and how she turned to him whenever she had lost something. Last week, I realized I had misplaced my beautiful engagement ring. I have a young baby and often remove it when playing/caring for her. She is fascinated with the diamond and I often tell her that one day the ring will be hers! I didn't panic at first and my husband and I started to search the house. For a few days we searched high and low and I began to get upset and anxious as it looked like my ring was gone. I found myself turning to St. Anthony and googled prayers and novenas in his name. The days that followed involved prayers, tears and reminiscing over memories of my husbands proposal. It felt devastating to have lost such a precious item and as I progressed through the 9 day novena the only comfort I found was in reciting the prayers to Saint Anthony.

On day 4 of the novena, a Tuesday evening, my husband decided to empty the outside bin which had the past 2 weeks of rubbish in it and was to be emptied the next morning. He bravely put on rubber gloves and raked through our old rubbish- not a pleasant job. I was upstairs rocking the baby to sleep and found myself softly singing hymns and reciting "St. Anthony please come around, something is lost and must be found." After the baby drifted to sleep I went downstairs and my husband was holding my precious ring which he had found inside an old make up bag and the very bottom of one of the bags of rubbish! We were amazed and delighted. St. Anthony's intercession meant that my ring was found and just in time before the bin was emptied and my ring would have been gone forever. My Nana's devotion to this special saint will now be carried on through another generation as I tell the story of my miracle. Thanks be to God!

Thank you blog reader L.M. for your beautiful story of how you are carrying on the family tradition of turning to St. Anthony in times of need~

Sermons of St. Anthony - Easter

"It was appropriate that He lay in the tomb for one day and two nights, because He joined the light of His simple death to the darkness of our twofold death. We were held in the death of both our animal and our spiritual life; He brought His single death, of the flesh, to us and released both of ours. He brought together His simple death and our double death, and in dying He took away our double death."
Taken from 'Sermons of Saint Anthony of Padua', translated by Paul Spilsbury

I Should Pray The Novena To St. Anthony

My 9 year old son thought he lost his new prescription sports glasses last week at our first baseball game. After my wife and I got home and searched in all the obvious places, we realized that they were missing so I drove back to the ball park to look for them. While looking in the dugout a nice man help by graciously providing a flashlight and assisting with his time by not watching his own son and helping me look all around the dugout, trash cans, and parking lot area. When we were departing ways he asked if I were Roman Catholic, to which I said I was. He proceed to tell me that I should pray the Novena to St. Anthony to help find the glasses. He was passionate about how successful his past prayers to St. Anthony had been. I know this may sound corny, but he was so sincere and almost insistent with praying to St. Anthony that I found myself thinking on the way home about how nice he had been, his kindness to help, and passion for prayer. So when I got home I made it a point to follow through with looking up the Novena of St. Anthony and in my son's nightly prayers for the next 2 nights we prayed the Novena. On the 3rd. day the glasses turned up in a place my wife and I had already looked.

At church today I remind my son that we needed to give to the poor for thanks to St. Anthony for helping us find his glasses. I also wanted to find the Prayer To St. Anthony For Thanksgiving which we read tonight with our nightly prayers.

As I get older I begin to appreciate and cherish the relationship that we have with God and all of his Divine Servants and Saints in Heaven. It is truly great to be Catholic and know that God's love is always with us in no matter what crosses we face.

Thank you T.B. for this beautiful story. If you have a story of St. Anthony's help that you would like to share, please email us your story and we will post it on our blog~

Video On The Life Of Saint Anthony

Here is a short video presentation on the life of St. Anthony of Padua, presented by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement from Garrison, New York.