One of my favorite things to analyze is how things from way back in the deep past snowball into social formations in the present day. It fascinates me how mythologies, stories from a fictionalized source or a history so altered that their accurate origins become undetectable, manifest in daily banalities. I often consider these on a societal level, such as how weekdays are named after Gods or how mytho-historical figures like George Washington affect individuals in the 21st Century. However, this post is going to be much more personal – here I am going to investigate how a 13th-century Saint is deeply interwoven into my familial self-understanding and how, I propose, this relationship illuminates why I am always misplacing my car keys.
A trait that my family shares is that the whole group is a bunch of losers. Not that we are lame or failures or anything like that, but just the fact that we lose things very very often. Nearly every family trip or visit something gets left behind. It is a part of the natural flow of travel that something gets left behind. I have lost significant things, and oftentimes need to go to great lengths to reclaim them, if I were to ever find them at all. I, and many members of my greater family, just accept this as the nature of the world. But as much as a bunch of losers we are, we do tend to be pretty good finders as well. Probably a result of losing so much. When something is lost my mind goes into a state of locating, a hyper-vigilant retracing my steps type of mentality. Oftentimes I do in fact find the lost objects. And it is only after long periods that I accept the defeat of having properly lost something.
Losing objects and trying to locate them is just a natural part of the day-to-day tedium of the households that belong to my family. Maybe this is a modern condition or a universal thing. Perhaps losing is natural because in the 21st century, we have too many things to keep track of, a far departure from the 2-3 wooden tools and stone totems our cave-dwelling ancestors had to deal with. But in my particular familial case, being one who loses feels quite supernatural, near a state of cosmic consequence rather than banal recklessness. I propose that our perpetual state of loserdom is not only the result of nature and nurturing, but more likely a deeper more historically interwoven connection to spiritual forces greater beyond our understanding, almost like a curse from way long ago. The origin of this familial myth can be traced to Saint Anthony.
St. Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon in 1195 and was a member of the Franciscan Order. Coming from a wealthy background our man studied Latin and theology in Lisbon and was a full-on worker at an Abby when he was 19 years old and then eventually found his way to the Franciscan order. Being a priest must have been such a solid vocation in the medieval era because there were so many perks, such as housing and travel. St. Anthony, through his work, navigated around the Mediterranean, and eventually, he wound up in Italy and settled into a new role when St. Francis of Assisi (the founder of the contemp Franciscan order) recognized him as a kindred spirit. Assisi’s order had a bit of a problem where highbrow religious doctrine and studies were somewhat abandoned as it prevented individuals from fulfilling a life of service focused on the impoverished and needy per Franciscan tradition, but it seemed like Anthony was able to attend to the needy while also teach the hard theory. A true man of multitasking. So, our guy settled in Bologna and that became the home base that would launch his future sainthood.
St. Anthony’s connection to loserdom began in this Italian kingdom. The Saint had a hand-copied, ultra-fancy, book of Psalms, accompanied by his handwritten notes necessary for teaching. This book, or Psalter, one day went missing, and since the printing press nor Barnes and Nobles had yet to been invented in the 1220s, a replacement would have been difficult to procure, especially considering the Franciscans swore to a life of poverty i.e. no liquid funds. Sweet Tony, then dropped to his knees and prayed to the lord that the book would return. I relate to this moment deeply, as some of the only times I ever drop down to my knees and have faith in a forgiving God is when I’m missing something dear to me. But alas! It turns out the Psalter was not simply lost, but stolen by what amounts to an apostolic intern. The intern, as catholic guilt was well cemented in the brains of the youth during the 12th century, must have been overwhelmed by his sin and then returned the tome to the holy man. And alas, the myth had begun.
I find Saints and their miracles to be such silly things because these days a lot of the stories seem either trivial, falsifiable, or ostensibly unmiraculous. Furthermore, based on a lot of Saint’s miracles it seems silly because the bar for Saint seems a bit low. I think, ultimately it comes down to clerical nepotism, but perhaps there are truly holy acts in trivialities. For example, when researching St. Anthony, one of his supposed miracles is when preaching the good word in a small villa. Nobody was listening so he started reading the word to some fish and they held a captive audience. He then called the town folk heretics because the fish seemed to care more about God than the people did. This is a sick burn but is it to be qualified as a miracle? Small stories such as this, which, could definitely be examined with some debunking (like these fish perhaps thought St. Anthony would feed them) are so fascinating because it canonizes someone to a position to where they are remembered today, and I just think about silly stories I’ve heard from friends that, maybe one day, will be snowballed into as a miracle 300 years down the line. Or perhaps a more optimistic approach is to consider that normal day-to-day things can be admired and seen as miracles; this is a more wholesome frame of analysis.
Due to the psalter story, St. Anthony became regarded as the patron saint of lost things. And this applies to not just objects but lost souls, lost people, lost causes, travelers, and I guess “searching” in the broadest sense. So, when something gets lost it is customary for one to pray to St. Anthony with the hopes of spiritual assistance. The official prayer is: “St. Anthony, perfect imitator of Jesus, who received from God the special power of restoring lost things, grant that I may find what has been lost[1]”. But I much prefer the more common parlance of the informal prayer, “Tony, Tony, Look Around Somethings Lost and Can’t Be Found[2]”. But regardless, the belief was that St. Anthony can lend a spiritual hand in helping an individual find Lost things, however, the “lostness” manifests.
This belief carried itself to my earliest known matrilineal ancestor, which was a man who went by Antonino. It’s unclear exactly if the given name is a reflection of the eponymous St. Anthony himself, or of an earlier family member (as given names were often a mirror of an earlier generation’s naming conventions, giving Italian naming practices an almost spiral effect). If I had to guess it’s some combo of the two, meaning St. Anthony’s been in my family way before Antonino in the 1880s. But regardless, the belief of St. Anthony was well instilled in Antonino’s psyche, and as he crossed the Atlantic via boat, made his way through Ellis Island, met my great-grandmother Frances in New York city, married (way too young mind you), and then settled in Astoria NY. The saintly specter of Anthony was with them the whole journey and eventually found his way into the spiritual lives of Antonino’s children, especially that of his 4th child aka my Grandmother.
Born in 1931 My grandmother was very much a part of the generation of Great Depression Babies, but her faith in God was always strong, as was the tradition for first-generation Italian immigrants. She met my Grandfather at the New Year’s Eve Party of 1954 and soon they were married (quite late age-wise for people born around that time). My grandparents then tried for a baby, but it started off in tragedy. The first conception resulted in miscarriage, and this event of a lost child is what resulted in the cementing of St. Anthony in my family mythology. Helen got on her knees and made an oath to St. Anthony that if she could bear a child then she would forever honor him by giving the first child his namesake and by holding a Novena, or a formalized ceremony for 9 consecutive days, in St. Anthony’s honor, for 25 years to come. Alas, the prayer was answered and my Mother Antonia was born. So, from 1957 to 1982 Saint Anthony was honored in their Long Island home.
When my Mother grew up on Long Island, every June 4th – June 13th her household would host the Novena. This celebration is where Catholic parishioners from all over the community would come to their house and they would say prayers, light candles, and leave trinkets for the Saint in the hopes that he would help them find the lost things for which they search. The Novena ended on June 13th, which was St. Anthony’s feast day and the date of his death back in 1231. When my mom was young, my grandparents had my parents play a role in the festivity where she "served" as St. Anthony for all the Novena participants, who were for the most part strangers. She would wear francescian styled robes crafted by my great-grandmother, a seamstress" and march around the house like the missionary handing out a special "blessed" bread to each visitor. My mom recounts that there would be so many candles in the household that the entire building was sauna-like, filled with the heat of one-hundred prayers manifested in fire. The people who came said their prayers, lit candles, and set their intentions, all under the sphere of desiring to recover something lost. On the last day of the Novena, St. Anthony’s Feast Day, Father John from the local church came to the house to give a mass which truly was a big deal. Once again, I’m shaken by the deep relay race of histories, how the stories of this 13th-century Saint from Bologna century cannonballed into a week-long celebration in the early 60s on Long Island.
The markings of St. Anthony were all over my Grandparent’s house as I grew up and remain in my Grandfather’s house to this day. I remember the shine of St. Anthony in their backyard, a figure in robes holding a child and a bunch of lilies. I always accepted this part of the house, and thought shrines to a St. were a normative Grandma thing (and I still assume they are, especially from the Italio-American ilk of my Grandma’s generation. There were images all throughout the house, paintings, prayer cards, and small figurines all dedicated to the Portuguese holy man. Little did I know I was steeped in this reality of St. Anthony as a child, from my grandma’s beliefs to, the images of treasures scattered around my grandparental houses, to my mom’s namesake. Whenever my mom would lose something (which is more than often) she would say “help me, St. Anthony”. The Saint, and the corresponding emotions of evoking his name, were engrained into me from an early point, foundational to my development and my psychology regarding lost things.
So it’s not surprising, that throughout my 20’s I found myself thinking about a historical Saint as I overturn my room looking for my car keys, breath a sigh of relief when I see an email that someone had found my wallet, and grow frustrated when I realize I left my glasses in the airport security bin. All the minor small things I’ve lost throughout my life are linked to a behavioral pattern that I cannot help but link to St. Anthony. There is a vast collection of the things I have lost, and I just find it almost ordained that I can genetically trace this throughout my family to an inciting incident involving an intern stealing a psalter. Losing things is a quality that is deeply ingrained in the culture of my family and consequently my personal psychology.
Is this tendency to lose cosmically inscribed? Or maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps losing is a natural part of the modern experience, and that’s why St. Anthony has relevancy in the 21st century. The figure of Saint Anthony and the mythological order of my family history are intertwined, and this is evidence that the fabled miracles of small actions 800 years ago can affect the thoughts and behaviors of an individual when they simply do not know where their car keys are.
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