One day, when Anthony came down from the tree to join the other friars for lunch, he became seriously ill. He asked his confreres to take him by cart to Padua. When they got just outside Padua, however, the group decided to stop at the Franciscan friary at Arcella, next to a Poor Clare monastery. It was here that Anthony would breathe his last.
As the friar’s final moments drew near, he received the sacrament of reconciliation for the last time and “sang a hymn to the glorious Virgin.” When he finished the hymn, the First Life relates, the dying friar “suddenly raised his eyes toward heaven and with a stunned look, stared in front of himself for a long time. When the friar who was supporting him asked what he saw, he answered, ‘I see my Lord.’”
—from the book Saint Anthony of Padua: His Life, Legends, and Devotions
by Jack Wintz, OFM
