The spirit of the Lord God is on me for Goad 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 preach in Morocco. However, his plans were thwarted by an illness and he remained in Italy where he soon established himself as an excellent preacher and teacher of Theology. 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 Word of the Lord. At a time when the people were being starved of the Word of God, St. Anthony alongside other great preachers stepped up to fill meet this need. He established himself as a great preacher because his preaching flowed from within himself. Anthony was preaching what he himself believed in, a life that he lived. 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 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.