St. Anthony of Padua is one of my favorite saints, and in honor of his feast day, I want to share how he’s helped me over the years.
I struggle with a tendency to be absentminded and forgetful, so I’ve been great friends with St. Anthony most of my life, as he’s the patron saint of finding lost items. He always comes through for me, especially on one memorable occasion.
My St. Anthony story
About 15 years ago, when I was a student at the University of Notre Dame, I had the opportunity to live in London for a semester through their study abroad program. The London campus was so beautiful; to live and study there felt magical.
Although in theory we all speak English, the little ways that life was different in London delighted me. I loved riding the Tube, visiting museums and historic sites, and acquiring an unshakable fondness for afternoon tea, fairy cakes, tikka masala, and Cornish pasties. (I also brought home an abiding obsession with British literature, but I had that before I went.)
During spring break, I made plans to travel to several other European countries with a group of friends, and it was during our weekend in Berlin that my troubles began.
A fateful train ride
After a full day of sightseeing in Berlin, we were riding the train back to our hostel when I inadvertently left my purse on a train. Holding both my purse and a shopping bag with some souvenirs, I set both bags on the seat next to me; when we rushed off at our stop, I accidentally grabbed only the shopping bag and left behind my purse.
My purse, which contained my passport, wallet, iPod, cash, cards, all forms of identification, and all methods of paying for anything.
I realized my mistake as we exited the subway station and ran back down to the platform, frantic with distress. The train was gone. I tried to get help from the station attendant, but quickly it became clear that there was no way to get back on that same train car.
I don’t think I had ever been that scared and upset in my life. We were supposed to fly out of Germany the next day, and worry and fear about what would happen overwhelmed me.
A frantic prayer
I had no hope of ever seeing my purse again. How could I leave the country with no passport or any other identification? Would I be stranded in Berlin indefinitely? But how could I stay there with no way to pay for food, housing, or anything else?
As the full weight of the situation bore down on me, I began to cry. Years before I had read something that became one of my favorite quotes: “The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor,” attributed to Charles Stanley. This problem seemed to have no possible solution, but I knelt down, right there in the train station, and asked God for help.
“God, please help me. I don’t even know what to do,” I thought. “St. Anthony, you’ve always been a friend to me. Please help me find my purse and all my stuff in it.”
I went back to the hostel, and needless to say I spent a sleepless night trying to think what to do…
Miracle morning
The next day, my problem was the talk of the hostel, and a friendly young man who was staying there offered to help. He told me that recently a friend of his lost his wallet in a similar way, and it was turned in to the local police station.
“I bet your purse is with the police,” he reassured me.
It was a Sunday morning, so before the police station opened, I went to Mass at St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin and lit a candle in prayer. “St. Anthony, please pray for me,” I said again. “I promise I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life, and if someday God gives me a son, I’ll name him after you.”
My newfound friend took me to the police station as soon as it opened to file a report, and kindly treated me to breakfast. For some time afterward, I wondered, only mostly joking, if perhaps he was my guardian angel in disguise.
Just an hour or two after I filed the police report, I got a phone call from the Berlin police. Sure enough, some kind-hearted Good Samaritan found my purse and turned it into the police. They brought it to the hostel and I was overjoyed to find that the contents were completely untouched.
Thank you, Otto
I was so impressed with the honesty and good conscience of the Berliners who found it. As best as I could make out from the German police report, a man named Otto turned it in, and I have prayed for him throughout the years in gratitude.
In the end, I made it on my afternoon flight with no problem, and the rest of the trip continued without incident.
The funny part is that the news of my story spread throughout the study-abroad community with such speed that the next day, my mom was at a grocery store near her home in the Chicago suburbs and overheard two women talking about it! It turned out one of them was the mom of another student in my program. She was amused, but I was mortified!
A promise kept
I never forgot my promise to St. Anthony, and years later, when God sent me a son, I gave him the middle name Anthony in gratitude. Conveniently, Anthony was also my husband’s middle name, so my son is named for his dad as well as the saint. Marrying someone with that name seemed like more than a coincidence.
It’s a little hard to write about this story, even all these years later, because not only was it scary and upsetting, but also embarrassing! To this day, I will only wear a purse that attaches to my body, like a crossbody bag or backpack. But with time and distance, I’ve come to see that my forgetful mistake isn’t really the point.
The heart of this story is St. Anthony and our friendship. That’s the point of it all. The saints are our big brothers and sisters in heaven, and I’m forever grateful to have this helpful intercessor in my corner!
And today we celebrate...