Finder of Lost Things
June 13th, is the feast of St, Anthony of Padua. He is the Patron Saint of amputees, animals, mail, horses, expectant mothers, fishermen, harvests, lost articles, boatmen, and travelers, as well as the elderly, oppressed, the poor, and starving. It always intrigues me how some saints are patrons of so many things while others have no particular assignments. The reasons, I suppose are the miracles attributed to them during their lives or after their deaths as prayers are said to them for intercession.
In St. Anthony’s case, miracles during his life include the re-attaching of a severed foot, his preaching to the fish after townspeople refused to listen to him. They were so amazed at the attentiveness of the fish that they converted. His patronage of horses, travelers and boatman stem from his many travels over his short life as does his association to mail and packages as a messenger of the Gospel. Living among rural famers led to prayers to him for a good harvest, miracles attributed to him after his death by women asking for a safe pregnancy helped to give him charge over expectant mothers. His preaching to moneylenders made him an advocate for the poor and hungry.
He is most famous as the finder of lost things because of an incident during his life when a friar stole a handwritten book of psalms from him. After St. Anthony prayed for its return the friar returned it to him. As a child, we were encouraged to pray to St. Anthony whenever we lost anything.
“Mom! I can’t find my homework!”
“Pray to St. Anthony.”
“I think I left my wallet at the restaurant.”
“Pray to St. Anthony.”
It got to the point that I might run around the house intoning “St. Anthony, help me find my car keys. I’m late for a meeting.” But I have proof of St. Anthony’s ability to work miracles through an incident that happened with my grandma.
When I was a kid, I spent part of the summer with my mother’s mother in Springer, New Mexico about a half day’s drive north of home. It’s a little town about 50 miles south of the Colorado border. Back then, the town might have had 1000 people living there and everybody knew everyone else. In fact. Most were cousins of mine. There were few strangers in town save for the few hitchhikers heading north through the town on U.S. 85, the predecessor of Interstate 40.
Grandma was poor and lived in a two-room house. My gramps, an alcoholic man who had abandoned his family long ago leaving her with eight kids, my aunts and uncles now all grown, never sent her a nickel. My mom, along with some of grandma’s other kids would send money to help take care of her and during the summer, mom would send money with us to pay our way while we were there. Grandma also received a small amount of money from the state on the first of every month. Taken together, it was enough to help her keep body and soul together. Barely.
When grandma received her check, she would walk down to the post office and then to Citizens State Bank on main street to cash her check and pick up some groceries from Macaron’s drug and grocery store. One particular summer day, my younger sisters traipsed along with her on her run to the post office, bank and drug store where we grandma bought us each a soda from the soda bar while she shopped. Once she was done, we helped her carry the groceries back to the house.
Once we got into the house and unloaded the groceries, grandma became frantic.
“Where’s my pocketbook!?” We all stood mute. “Did anyone see my pocketbook!?” We all shrugged our shoulders and looked around the room. “Help me look!” grandma implored.
We all spread out and began to look around the room that doubled as a kitchen and dining room. Grandma threw the door open and searched in vain for her pocketbook. She took off down the road looking left and right and disappeared around the corner, retracing her steps back to the grocery store. After a little while, we gave up looking for the pocketbook and went outside to wait for grandma. After a bit, she came back around the corner and down the street, breathless and frantic.
“All of my money was in my pocketbook. Almost a hundred dollars.”
She began to sweep through the house again, searching the grocery bag, under the wood burning stove, inside the icebox and anywhere else she could think to look. She even went into the bedroom and took apart the bed and searched every drawer thinking she might have left her pocketbook at home and taken only cash with her. After exhausting every possibility, she turned to us.
“We need to pray to St, Anthony.” She knelt down at the foot of the bed and she began to pray, describing what happened and imploring the help of St. Anthony. We prayed along with her saying an Our Father and Hail Mary when there was a knock at the door. Grandma stood up and rushed into the other room. We got off of our knees and peered through the bedroom door into the kitchen. There, standing outside was a young man talking to my grandma. He handed her the pocketbook and she let out a prayer of thanks to God and quickly closed the door. She opened her pocketbook to find her money there, pulled it out and counted it. She praised God once again and added her thanks to St. Anthony.
It suddenly dawned on her that she should give the young man a couple of dollars as a reward and threw the door open only to find him gone. She stepped out of the house and looked left and right down the street, No one was there. We came back into the house and resumed our prayers, giving thanks to God and to the young man whom grandma was sure was St. Anthony.
As Catholics, we catch a lot of grief from other Christians for praying to the saints and to the Blessed Mother, saying that the only one deserving of our veneration is the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. No explanation that we go to the saints asking for intervention on our behalf to God seems to make any difference.
I will always remember that summer morning and the way my grandma’s faith was rewarded with the smallest of miracles.
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce