Sermons For Sundays And Festivals Volume I: General Prologue Sundays From Septuagesima to Pentecost by Saint Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church

Paperback: The introduction, translation and notes in Sermons for Sundays and Festivals Volume 1 (2007) is carried out by Paul Spilsbury.

Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) is one of the most popular saints of Christendom, renowned for his miracles and his concern for the poor. It is less well known that he was the first great theologian and teacher of the early Franciscan Order. Commissioned by Francis himself to teach theology to the friars, he fulfilled this task by composing his Opus Evangeliorum, a set of Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels. It is also called his Opus Dominicale or Sunday Work because it deals with the Gospels as they are read liturgically, week by week.

Beginning this work while superior at Limoges, he completed it at Padua. A little later, he undertook a second set on the Festivals and other important days, such as Ash Wednesday. This work was barely half finished at his death.

The other three volumes are 

II. From the first Sunday after Pentecost to the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

III. From the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost to the third Sunday after Epiphany and Marian Sermons.

IV. Sermons for Festivals and Index.

Anthony made it very clear that his work was written to instruct preachers. It should be repeated, the work is not his "sermons", but a text-book from which sermons may be composed according to the individual skills of preachers.

On the cover of the book: Saint Anthony of Padua by Tanzio da Varallo (1575-1635).

About the author: Anthony of Padua, OFM (born Fernando Martins de Bulhões; 15 August 1190 - 13 June 1231), also known as Anthony of Lisbon, was a Portuguese Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. Though he died in Padua, Italy, he was born and raised in a wealthy family in Lisbon. More known for his ability to wash the dishes than for Scriptural learning at first, as his first biographer said, he had since then been noted by his contemporaries for his forceful preaching and expert knowledge of scripture. 

He was the second-fastest canonized saint (after St Peter of Verona) and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946. He is also the patron saint of finding things or lost people.