Saturday, April 16 : Saint Anthony of Padua

“See your king” (Zec 9,9). Jeremiah speaks of this king thus: “No one is like you, O Lord, great are you, great and mighty is your name. Who would not fear you, King of the nations?” (10,6). This king, says Revelation, “has a name written on his cloak and on his thigh, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords’” (19,16). Linen bands are his cloak; his thigh is his flesh. In Nazareth, where he took flesh, he was crowned as if with a diadem; in Bethlehem he was wrapped in linen bands as if with royal purple. Such were the first of his royal insignia. And it was against these insignia that his foes rose up to indicate their wish to remove his royalty from him: during his Passion they stripped him of his garments and his flesh was pierced with nails. Or rather, it was then that the rest of his royal insignia was given to him: he already had the crown and the purple; he received the scepter when “carrying the cross, he went out to Golgotha” (Jn 19,17). Then it was that, in Isaiah’s words: “upon his shoulder dominion rested” (9,5) and, as the Letter to the Hebrews says: “we see Jesus ‘crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death’”(2,9). See, then, your king coming to you, bringing happiness. He comes in gentleness, that he might be loved, not in power that he might be feared. He comes, seated on a donkey… The virtues proper to a king are those of justice and goodness. So your king is just: “he repays everyone according to their conduct” (Mt 16,27). And he is gentle; he is “your redeemer” (Is 54,5). He is poor, too. As the apostle Paul says: “he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2,7).
maronite readings – rosary,team