The spirit of the Lord God is on me for God has anointed and sent me as a preacher of the Good News. The Church today commemorates St. Anthony of Padua, an early Franciscan friar and contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. Originally an Augustinian monk, St. Anthony joined the friars after hearing the news of some friars who had been martyred in Morocco. Perhaps out of a desire to imitate the Franciscan martyrs who had given their lives for Christ or in response to Christ’s mandate to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth, St. Anthony set out to go preach in Morocco. But as he got himself ready to go, he was stricken by an illness and was forced to remain in Italy where he soon established himself as an excellent preacher and teacher of Theology. He is known as the ‘Evangelical Doctor.’ St. Anthony is the patron saint of Portugal, of the poor, and of lost articles.
St. Anthony sought to follow closely in the footsteps of Jesus. As an Augustinian monk, he responded to Jesus’ invitation of leaving everything behind in order to perfectly follow Christ. As a Franciscan friar, he came to realize that he was also called to quench the people’s thirst for the Lord by preaching to them the Word of God. At a time when the people were being starved of the Word of God, St. Anthony, alongside other great preachers of the time, stepped up to meet this need. He established himself as a great preacher because his preaching flowed from within himself. St. Anthony succeeded in his preaching ministry because he preached what he himself believed in. The life that he lived was the content of his preaching. The good news of God involving the self with our earthly affairs was something Anthony had experienced in his being. 
While not all of us will feel called to follow Christ as a monk or as a friar as St. Anthony did, we have all been called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. The only qualification that we need to have is having experienced that good news ourselves. All of us are recipients of God’s goodness and love. We have all experienced the merciful forgiveness of God. It is our experience that becomes the substance of our preaching. And if we all do that, we will become great preachers of the good news as St. Anthony was.