EARLY YEARS

Catalonia, a region of Spain with a dialect all its own, lies against the Pyrenees in the northeastern corner of that country. It was there, in the town of Sallent, that Senor Juan Claret made a special visit to the parish church on Christmas morning, 1807, to have his day-old son baptized. Surely, he reasoned, in favor of his haste, God would especially bless a child regenerated in grace on the very birthday of Our Lord. And, of course, he was right.

The infant was christened Antonio Juan Adjutorio Claret y Clara. Years later when consecrated archbishop, "out of devotion to Mary Most Holy I added the sweet name of Maria, my mother, my patroness, my mistress, my directress, and, after Jesus, my all." But in childhood he was known simply as "Tonin." And that's the long and the short of the heralded name, Anthony Mary Claret.

There was something exceptional about "poco Tonin." There was, for example, his rare disposition and charitable nature which he would later attribute entirely to God's good grace. Constrained by his confessor under formal obedience later in life to write his autobiography, Saint Anthony affirmed, "I am by nature so softhearted and compassionate that I cannot bear seeing misfortune or misery without doing something to help."

This explains his struggling with thoughts about eternity at the mere age of five. "Siempre, siempre, siempre"—"forever and ever and ever" was the shuddering notion that robbed the little fellow of sleep, contemplating the endless horrible suffering that was the lot of the damned. "Yes, forever and ever they will have to bear their pain."

It was "this idea of a lost eternity" that would actuate the extraordinarily holy and eventful career of the apostle, and that would provoke him one day to remark, "I simply cannot understand how other priests who believe the same truths that I do, and as we all should, do not preach and exhort people to save themselves from falling into hell. I wonder, too, how the laity, men and women who have the Faith, can help from crying out."

The diminutive aspirant for the priesthood began school at the age of six and proved to be a diligent student. It was during these years of primary education that the stalwart champion of sound catechetical training learned his most important lesson in life: "Just as the buds of roses open in due time, and, if there are no buds, there can be no roses, so it is with the truths of religion. If one has no instruction in catechism, one has complete ignorance in matters of religion, even if one happens to be of those who pass for wise. Oh, how well my instruction in catechism has served me!"

These were economically hard times for Spain and the Clarets could not afford seminary enrollment for their pious son after his elementary schooling was completed. A local priest offered to give Antonio private instruction in Latin, but the death of that good man a short time later left no alternative but for the boy to take up work in his father's textile shop, to which he devoted his next five years.

Prior to being named vicar of the Sallent parish, Saint Anthony Claret was chosen to fill a very important post that of Regent of Copons. Typical of his humility, he had protested the appointment, and the bishop did set it aside, but only to offer then the position at Sallent. This, too, Father Claret shrank from, and when all other objections were overruled he argued that his insignificant stature, he was only five feet tall, would be a handicap. The physiognomical argument, however, was wittingly countered by another from his superior: "A man is measured by his head." Claret had a large round head, though obviously the Prelate was alluding to his brilliant mind. And so, the saint then felt obliged by obedience to accept the appointment of parish assistant.

But able administrator though he was, this deeply compassionate priest who from childhood had yearned to save all souls from hell's eternity was restless to undertake apostolic labors. The passage of time only increased that ambition, for in reality it was divinely inspired. Mystically, too, he was also given the instilled knowledge that he would have to suffer tremendous persecution as a missionary. Far from discouraging the saint, however, the anticipation of it only further inflamed his fervor with the desire to seal his faith with his blood.

Upon completing his theology studies after years of parish work, "I determined to . . . go to Rome, to present myself to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith so that they could send me anywhere in the world." Having been released by his bishop, Padre Claret set out for the Eternal City.

When Antonio arrived at Rome in August 1839, he learned that it would be several weeks before he could see the Prefect of Propaganda Fide. Deciding to utilize the time by making a retreat, therefore, he presented himself to the Jesuit Fathers for guidance in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola. Awed by the exceptional piety of Padre Claret, the retreat master urged the saint immediately to enter the Society of Jesus to fulfill his apostolic ambitions. Thus it happened quite unexpectedly for the humble Catalan who never dreamed himself worthy of belonging to the Society: "Overnight I found myself a Jesuit."

Here again was an unexpected change in direction and it would not be the last for Antonio Claret. Indeed, the uncertainty of his future must have been frustrating, as his desire to labor in the apostolic vineyards, though stronger now than ever, was hindered at every turn.

His vocational detour to the Society of Jesus had not been without purpose. For among the many things he learned from the Jesuits that would richly benefit his oncoming spectacular fate were the studied practices of devotion to the Immaculate Heart, as acquired from the recently discovered Treatise On The True Devotion, by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort. Hence, we find Claret at this time offering his whole being to the Immaculate Mother: "You seek, perhaps, an instrument who will serve you in bringing a remedy to the great evils of the day. Here you have one, who, while he knows himself as most vile and despicable for the purpose, yet considers himself most useful, inasmuch as by using me it is your power that shall splendor, and it will be plain to the eye that it is you who are accomplishing things, and not I."

He was being asked to conduct "novenas" which he called his missions so as not to invite the suspicion of civil authorities in the neighboring parishes. The demand for his missions grew about the region, so also did the crowds attending them. It was only to be expected that Antonio could not long escape the ire of the anticlericals. His sermons eventually were banned, and the saint had to retire to a remote parish deep in the mountains.

In1843 power shifts in the government temporarily led to a somewhat more lenient attitude toward the Church. The Holy See, therefore, named Antonio Claret as apostolic missionary. At last the saint had become an apostle!

Once underway in his new assignment the holy priest was preaching sometimes ten, even twelve sermons a day. In this way, he would manage to deliver some ten thousand sermons in his apostolic career, an effort that would crush the stamina of giants. Yet this little man slept no more than two hours a day. Often satisfying himself with a short nap while sitting in a chair—and ate hardly more than a sparrow. After years of sustaining his grueling pace, the saint would explain, "I know God wants me to preach, because I feel as peaceful, rested, and energetic as if I'd done nothing at all. Our Lord has done it all. May He be blessed forever."

"Summer caused me the most suffering," he revealed, "for I always wore a cassock and a winter cloak with sleeves, while the hard shoes and woolen stockings so wounded my feet that I frequently limped. The snow also gave me a chance to practice patience, because when high snowdrifts covered the roads I couldn't recognize the landscape, and in trying to cross the drifts I would sometimes get buried in snow-covered ditches."

Sometimes the missioner needed a little supernatural help. In making one of his strenuous journeys, he confronted an impassable river. An angel in the form of a young boy approached from nowhere and said, "I will carry you across." Father Claret only smiled incredulously, asking how such a small child expected to carry one of his bulk across the swollen waters. But the boy did just that, then vanished!

The saint had recently arrived at Olost. After saying morning Mass, he was headed for the confessional at 6:45 when he unexpectedly announced, "I'm off for Vich!" and disappeared through the door. The roads at the time being buried under several feet of snow, his startled host immediately sent an assistant with a horse after the preacher to help him on his way. But after riding three miles the assistant returned, unable to find Mosen Claret or even his tracks in the snow! Eight witnesses testified that at 7: 15—a half hour later—Saint Anthony arrived at Vich, some thirty miles distant, just as a messenger was leaving to bring the preacher word that his dear friend, Father Fortunato Bres, had only moments earlier suffered a bad accident!

"For a Son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary," he explained, "is a man on fire with love, who spreads its flames wherever he goes. He desires mightily and strives by all means possible to set the whole world on fire with God's love. Nothing daunts him; he delights in privations, welcomes work, embraces sacrifices, smiles at slander, and rejoices in suffering. His only concern is how he can best follow Jesus Christ and imitate Him in working, suffering, and striving constantly and single-mindedly for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls."

He was struck with complete surprise when, only weeks after founding the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a notice arrived from Rome that he had been nominated to become Archbishop of Santiago, the primatial see of Cuba!

"The nomination frightened me so much that I did not want to accept. I deemed myself unworthy of so exalted a dignity and incapable of its discharge, owing to my lack of learning and virtue necessary for an office of such importance. Afterward I decided to abandon the Libreria Religiosa and the congregation which had just come into existence."

"The Blessed Virgin will always be prelate here," the holy man had protested on the day of his episcopal installation. This heartfelt declaration underscored not only his humble servility to the Immaculate Heart, but his hope, too, that a short-lived incumbency as Archbishop would please Divine Providence, allowing him soon to return to his missionary field. Thus, he had hardly completed his first pastoral tour when he petitioned to be released from "this cross, because I have done all I am capable of to institute here a general reform of customs. Nothing more is possible."

This was an ironic request since, as well he knew, his departure from the island was not so soon to be. Even before his arrival, the saint had foretold: "We shall spend six or seven years in America." His stay in Cuba was precisely six years and two months, and during that time he made at least three pastoral visitations to every parish in the archdiocese—four to most of them. And despite the many hardships and obstacles, Claret himself had to admit, contrary to his earlier opinion, that "with God's help in every way imaginable a great deal of good was accomplished."

It was 8:30 in the morning of August 20 that the worst earthquake in Cuba's memory struck Santiago. Every day for several weeks one merciless shock followed another—sometimes as many as five in a day in a siege of terror that left no structure spared of devastation. Only with the presence of their saintly pastor could the people of Santiago muster hope for deliverance from this awful scourge. Nor was their confidence in the powers of the famed miracle worker unmerited. Claret did, in fact, stop at least one erupting tremor by pressing his holy hand to the ground.

"God does with many of us as does a mother with a lazy sleeping child," the saint explained. "She shakes his cot to wake him and make him rise. If that fails, she strikes him. The good God does the same with His children who are sleeping in their sins. He has shaken their beds that is, their houses by the earthquakes, but He spared their lives. If this does not awaken them and cause them to rise, He will strike them with cholera and pestilence. God has made this known to me."

Even so, many seemed to forget his doleful prognostication. Scarcely a month passed, when cholera broke out, spreading with the speed and horror of an inferno. Again, the saint hurried home from a distant mission to attend to his stricken sheep, exhausting himself in every way possible for their spiritual and bodily comfort.

Within three months the plague claimed nearly three thousand lives one-tenth of Santiago's population. And while the reality of such human misery pained the blessed Claret, he had the far greater comfort of knowing that not one life was lost without the consolation of the sacraments.

Nothing, however, would comfort the apostle when he foresaw the spiritual death of many souls, who at a later time would follow into schism an apostate priest, proclaiming himself to be Archbishop of Santiago. The schism itself, he said, would be "a chastisement," but only part of a third great punishment that would afflict Cubans, whose hearts remained callously hardened against God.

The spectacular life of Saint Anthony Mary Claret could be likened to the Holy Rosary, which was so much an integral part of it. It had its joys in the tireless and constant preaching of the Faith and the conversion of countless souls.

It had its sorrows, too, in sufferings increasingly so bitter that they evoked from the little saint this fitting utterance: "On the cross I have lived and on the cross I wish to die. From the cross I hope to come down, not by my own hands, but at the hands of others after I have finished my sacrifice."

And, as incredibly intense persecutions summoned Antonio nearer to his last earthly mission, glorious mysteries also became a part of his rare career of holiness, giving him the sweetest heavenly consolations in the midst of his greatest anguish.

Beginning in 1856, the saint was under command by his confessor to write of any inner lights he received from heaven. Monsignor Claret obediently began this unusual log, noting an event that occurred in Cuba, on July 12, 1855. Kneeling before a painting of Our Lady, to give thanks for the graces She obtained for him in composing his beautiful pastoral letter on the Immaculate Conception,* he "heard a clear and distinct voice issuing from the picture, saying 'Bene scripsisti' You have written well."

On three other occasions did Our Divine Lord utter His approval of books the saint had penned.

Saint Anthony was blessed with many heavenly messages from Jesus and Mary, most of them to console him in his suffering or to counsel him in perseverance and prayer.

The next day, "at four o'clock in the morning," the Queen of Heaven again addressed him, saying: "You must be the Dominic of these times in propagating devotion to the Rosary."

Then, on September 23, 1859, "at seven-thirty in the morning, Our Lord told me: 'You will fly across the earth to preach of the immense chastisements soon to come to pass.' And He gave me to understand those words of the Apocalypse (8: 13): 'And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth; by reason of the rest of the voices of the three angels who are yet to sound the trumpet.'

"This meant that the three great judgments of God which are going to fall upon the world are: (1) Protestantism and Communism; (2) the four archdemons who will, in a truly frightful manner, incite all to the love of pleasure, money, reason and independence of will; (3) the great wars with their horrible consequences."

On the following day, Our Lord made known to Claret that his Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary would spread the saint's exquisite writings and his apostolic spirit throughout the world, to combat these monstrous evils of modern times.

In all his afflictions Saint Anthony had always found incomparable strength and consolation in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. And so, to fortify the little apostle in his fiercest combat, God conferred upon him a very special grace with which few other saints in the history of the Church have ever been favored.

"On August 26, 1861, finding myself at prayer in the church of the Holy Rosary, at La Granja, at seven o'clock in the evening, the Lord granted me the grace of conserving the Sacramental Species within my heart."

For the rest of his earthly days he shared with the Mother of God in a special way the divine privilege preserving incorruptibly from Communion to Communion the precious Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in his bosom. Now a human tabernacle of Our Lord, he reflected: "I now bear within me day and night the adorable Eucharist. I must therefore be always recollected and cultivate the interior life. Moreover, according to Our Lord's command, I must try to arrest by prayer and in other ways the evil rampant in Spain."

Some months later, after obediently writing down this sublime experience, Antonio became plagued with doubt. Believing himself to be wholly unworthy of so wondrous a blessing, he perhaps felt that he might only have dreamed it. In any event, he was thinking of erasing all mention of the episode when the Blessed Mother spoke, forbidding him to do so. "Afterward, while I was saying Mass, Jesus Christ told me that He had indeed granted me this grace."

Then, as if to assure the humble prelate of his worthiness of the esteemed privilege, something quite remarkable occurred on Christmas Eve in 1864. Having celebrated Midnight Mass, Monsignor Claret arose from making an unusually long thanksgiving. As he left the chapel his countenance betrayed an unmistakable look of ecstasy to Don Carmela Sala, who greeted the saint outside. At length, Antonio dispelled the mystery, confiding to his friend his precious secret: "The holy Virgin placed the Child Jesus in my arms tonight!"

Home for Saint Anthony now was in Prades, France, whither his exiled confreres had fled. Padre Jaime Clotet recounts the bittersweet joy of the Founder's return to his Congregation: "Despite the ineffable consolation of having him with us, I was deeply pained to see him so weak. He could hardly stand! The change in his features was shocking, and he could scarcely speak. 'My God!' I said to myself, 'can this be the Archbishop?'"

With no regard for his awful state, the saint insisted on preaching, hearing confessions, and participating in community devotions as much as his strength would endure. He did, in fact, enjoy some flurries of improved health, but just as quickly he would lapse back into a condition at times "so severe," reported Clotet, "that the prayers of the dying were said over him five different times." To make matters worse, he also began to suffer attacks of neuralgia that afflicted him with excruciating torment.

Father Clotet again comments: "One might have thought that he would be left in peace among his little band of followers. But this was not to be." Even now, the Masons could not resist the opportunity to inflict colossal indignities upon their hated enemy. Word arrived that French gendarmes had orders to arrest His Excellency under preposterous charges of organizing guerrilla activities and of conspiracy against the Red regime in Spain. The stricken Founder, bidding a final good-bye to his children of Mary's Pure Heart, was whisked away into hiding, taking refuge in the Trappist monastery at Fontfroide.

Early in October, Padre Xifre sent a message to the saint's dear friend, Padre Clotet: "The founder is dying. His vestments and episcopal insignia required for interment." Clotet promptly collected the items and sped off to Fontfroide in the hopes that he would not be too late to embrace his spiritual father one last time. But soon enough he was at the side of Saint Anthony, where he faithfully remained for ten long and painful days.

They say that the saint was often delirious in those latter days. But in his most enfeebled state, his mind was still preoccupied with the salvation of souls. "Souls, souls, give me souls," he said repeatedly.

And, strangely, something else: "Shall you go to the United States, then?" he asked Padre Clotet, taking his friend by total surprise in the middle of the night. Was this, also delirium? Perhaps. But while exiled in Paris, when certainly his mind was fully rational, the mystic then too had been anxious for his Congregation to labor in the New World writing: "America is a great and fertile field, and in time more souls will enter heaven from America than from Europe. This part of the world is like an old vine that bears little fruit, whereas America is a young vine. I've already grown old. If it weren't for this, I'd fly there myself."

On the twenty-first of October the Archbishop was seized with fresh torments, this time with no unconsciousness or delirium to give him any relief from this long and final siege of suffering.

Two days later, barely able even to whisper, he asked for absolution while with great effort he signed himself with the Cross, clutching his Rosary beads and tenderly kissing the Crucifix. The end was now very near.

After passing the long night in watch, Padre Clotet next morning left the saint's side long enough to say Mass. When he returned, his beloved friend and father could only speak to him by way of a gaze. But this, between two men who shared a common spirit of sanctity, was itself a moving dialogue. And Clotet with complete understanding of his wishes, gave utterance to those words which the eyes of his dear companion conveyed: "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, into your hands I commend my spirit."

Just before nine o'clock on the morning of October 24, 1870, the bell at the convent of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, in far-off Tarragona, suddenly began to toll untouched by human hands. At that very same moment the soul of Saint Anthony Mary Claret was summoned by Almighty God into glorious eternity.

His remains were laid to rest at the monastery in Fontfroide. Fittingly, his tombstone was inscribed with the words: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." The body, exhumed twenty-seven years later to be transported back to Spain, was found to be perfectly incorrupt.