The travels, detours, and miracles of Saint Anthony Mary Claret

Amazing supernatural events sometimes occur during the lives of the saints. But it is rare for miracles to be so frequent in an individual saint’s life that one could write a book simply about those miracles. Anthony Mary Claret (1807-1870), whose feast day is October 24th, is one such saint.

Anthony was born in Sallent, Spain. When he was five years old, he lay in bed late one night, thinking about the serious topics of God, judgment, Heaven, and Hell, which he had learned about from his good Catholic parents. As he was trying to imagine eternity, a terrible thought occurred to him. What would it be like to suffer eternal punishment? As he imagined the pain of those who suffer “forever and ever,”¹ far away from our loving God, the compassionate boy was moved profoundly. He never forgot that experience, and the phrase “forever and ever” not only stuck in his head, but the sad thought of people being separated from God directed the entire course of his life.

Despite that devout beginning, Anthony’s life was full of detours. Although he was devout as a boy, during his teenage years, he became deeply absorbed in the challenge of working in his father’s manufacturing business. His ability to create complicated weaving patterns and his leadership abilities caused his father’s business to prosper. But when Anthony realized that a desire for financial profit had started to dominate his life, he set aside that way of life.

After praying about it, he decided to give his life to Jesus Christ and pursue the priesthood. During his years in the seminary, he was almost certain that God was calling him to become a Carthusian monk. But by the time he was ready for ordination, he realized that his vocation lay outside a monastery, not inside one.

Throughout his life, Anthony received visions of our Lord and the Blessed Mother. He rarely shared these experiences except when it would help others. For example, in his autobiography, he relates an event that occurred when he was a young man. He had been wading with friends near the beach when a great wave pulled him into the water. Anthony could not swim and almost drowned. But when he remembered to pray for the help of the Blessed Mother, he instantly and inexplicably found himself on the shore. The lesson, he later explained to others, was to trust in Mary’s love for us and to remember to ask for her maternal intercession when we are in trouble.

At first, Anthony served as a priest in Spain and became known as a great preacher. However, the crowds he attracted included many people seeking cures and exorcisms. Since he saw himself primarily as a preacher, not a healer, he found these sorts of requests to be something of a distraction. When people came to him just to be healed, he gave them simple medicines, insisted that they not drink alcohol (which he suspected was the real problem in some cases), and told them to pray and go to confession. Many people returned to him later and claimed to be cured, earning him a reputation as a healer and exorcist all the same.

Next, Anthony began to wonder if God was calling him to become a Jesuit priest. He obediently traveled to Rome (solely on foot), where he enjoyed a few rigorous, demanding years as a Jesuit novice. However, once again, he discerned that his vocation was not what he had thought. God did not want him to become a Jesuit priest serving in faraway missionary lands, but in his native Spain.

Of course, the detours in Anthony’s life—as a weaver, a Carthusian, and a Jesuit novice—weren’t detours at all. The years he spent studying theology, philosophy, and languages, learning to live a life of penance and obedience, and finding silence, whether in a monastery and in the hubbub of professional life—all of these experiences helped him become exactly what the people of Spain needed at the time: a great missionary.

Anthony’s preaching at parish missions attracted huge crowds and inspired thousands of Catholics to come back to the Mass and the confessional. His retreats, which were centered on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, helped active Catholics grow deeper in prayer. Anthony even made use of the latest technology to evangelize the laity: mass-produced rosaries, medals, and thousands of Catholic books and pamphlets, which he distributed for free. He personally wrote an astonishing 144 books, most of them aimed at evangelizing ordinary Catholics.

In his sermons, Anthony frequently emphasized the importance of living a virtuous life. But he was practical in his advice and shared some of his own struggles. For example, he wrote about his experience of intense temptations against the faith and against chastity when he was a young man.

But, unknown to others, his astonishing success as a missionary came at a price. To make himself completely available to the needs of the people, Anthony made many personal sacrifices. He uncomplainingly traveled throughout the countryside in any weather, often without food, never asking for personal comforts, and wearing patched clothing. How could he worry about being comfortable, he asked himself, when souls could be lost forever? He personally required very little sleep, so he spent his nights in prayer, writing, and planning. Any money he was given was poured back into the printing of more books and pamphlets.

Just as Anthony was able to gather like-minded priests to form a new order, the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, commonly called the Claretians after him, he was named the new archbishop of Cuba. Out of obedience, Anthony accepted this position, although he was concerned that his fledgling religious order would be unable to survive without his presence to guide it.

Anthony had already faced persecution in Spain from anti-Catholic groups, but the situation in Cuba was far more difficult. In addition to the suffering caused by devastating earthquakes and plagues, which occurred soon after his arrival, the faithful in Cuba were far from faithful. Many Catholics didn’t practice the sacraments, and mistresses were more common than marriages. Not only were the local clergy poorly educated, but they too often had concubines and illegitimate children. It seemed to be an impossible situation, which is why Anthony’s predecessor had only visited Cuba once and then only briefly.

Anthony did not tolerate excuses from those who were failing to live a Christian life. He first started a diocesan-wide cleanup of his own clergy. He required his priests to pass an examination to prove they could celebrate Mass and dismissed them if they couldn’t, saying that it was better for the people to have no priest in their village than to have a bad one. He wrote against the practice of slavery, directed funds toward the support of the poor, and preached against adultery and fornication.

Although he brought about a dramatic improvement in the practice of the faith in Cuba, he also made many enemies. One of them attacked Anthony with a knife while he was walking down a street. The blade sliced deeply into Anthony’s face and should have killed him from blood loss alone. Yet, miraculously, Anthony survived with minimal long-term effects.

After several years of successfully reforming his seemingly irreformable archdiocese, Anthony was recalled to Spain. The queen of Spain, Isabella II, was facing complicated problems, such as a weak husband, unscrupulous advisors, and a chaotic political situation, and she insisted that Anthony serve as her personal confessor and spiritual advisor. Anthony begged to be permitted some other assignment, but he was eventually forced to accept.

Throughout his life, Anthony carefully avoided becoming involved in political matters. He considered the salvation of souls, not politics, to be his primary concern as a priest. While he regularly provided spiritual guidance to the queen, he scrupulously avoided political schemes and alliances within the court. Of course, his enemies interpreted Anthony’s every word and action in the worst possible light and constantly claimed that he was influencing or even controlling the queen of Spain.

In 1868, Anthony was traveling with Queen Isabella and her entourage. At the time, everyone knew that some great act of violence was in the air, but Anthony seemed to have a presentiment of the danger—perhaps a vision?—precisely as it was occurring many miles away. He begged the queen to return to Madrid.

The queen failed to take his advice, and a few days later, she learned that she had been dethroned as a result of a revolution. Anthony followed her into exile in France and died two years later.

There were too many apparent miracles in Anthony’s life—his accurate predictions of future events, his survival of multiple assassination attempts, his ability to cure the sick and the possessed—to be a mere coincidence. What is most striking in his autobiography, however, is that Anthony seemed to consider these inexplicable events to be of minor importance.

What really mattered to him was the important lesson he had learned when he was just a little boy. Our time here on earth is very limited, but eternity is long. Do we want to spend “forever and ever” alone and far from the God who loves us so much? If so, then we too should allow ourselves to be moved by the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:14) as was Saint Anthony Mary Claret. We, too, can choose to listen to God’s voice in prayer, cheerfully accept personal sacrifices, and perhaps even make a detour or two in life. Then, God willing, we too will ultimately end up in Heaven.

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