Contemplate Christ, enjoy him and live him, but taking him from the mysteries of his Gospel. This was the great force that attracted Brother Anthony to seraphic love, this his only desire.

He preferred a few of the mysteries in which Jesus figured.

Those which best embraced the visible in the vastness of the invisible. This first among these was the mystery of Bethlehem.

The infancy of Jesus is a deep and unfathomable mystery, but certainly the most tender and inviting of Christological mysteries. In the grotto of Bethlehem men find not a God who threatens and condemns like in heaven on earth, not a God who blazes amongst lightening and thunder as on Mount Sinai, but a weak baby reclining in a narrow manger.

There are many reasons why the Word presented himself as a small baby. "But I," affirms the saint, "for love of brevity will mention only one. If you wrong a child, if you provoke him with rude actions, if you strike him, but then you show him and offer him a flower, a rose or something similar, he will immediately forget the offence, put aside his anger and run to hug you. Similarly, if you have offended Christ with a mortal sin, or you have wronged him in some way, if you offer him the flower of repentance, the rose of a confession full of tears, which are the blood of the soul, he, the Christ, will no longer remember your offence, he will pardon you and run to hug you and kiss you." Nothing in the world charms man like the lovableness of a child. A child does not have a fine appearance, he does not cause fear; he is as tender and sweet as the milk that nourishes him. He has a spontaneous grace and a trusting liking for anyone who approaches him.

Franciscan spirituality, which loves concreteness, invites one, above all, to "live" the mystery of passion through meditation and daily sacrifice. The saving value of redemption rests, in fact, on the incorporation of man in Christ, on man's solidarity with Christ's sacrifice, in which human pain, transhumanised by divine grace, lifts one progressively higher and transports man towards God.

For the inner construction of this Christian mystery, Franciscan spirituality follows the direction of Saint Paul, the theologian par excellence of the passion. He teaches to concern himself with having "the same feelings that Jesus Christ had" (Fil 2,5). Therefore, to not worry about knowing anything other than Jesus Christ and Christ crucified (1Cor 2,2), to choice with total abnegation to participate "in his suffering to participate in his glory as well" (Rom 8,17) and to carry "always and wherever the death of Jesus in our bodies, because even the life of Jesus manifests itself in our bodies" (2 Cor 4,10).

Saint Francis followed no other method: his preferred meditation was the passion of Jesus and his ardent yearning to be crucified with him.

Faithful to the teachings of the Father, Anthony considers the passion to be a lifting and purifying force. Christ, according to a nice thought of the saint's, has always had the cross in his hands: before the passion, the cross was his arduous work; during the passion, his hands were attached to it; and after the resurrection it left its trace in his stigmata. "A true Christian will always keep the same cross in his mind and in his heart." Anthony invites the just to form, like the bride in the Canticle, a nosegay of myrrh with the main events of the life and the painful passion of Jesus. The memory of these keeps alive the devotion and the compassion for he who so loved humanity.

It will be said that this is all very nice, but that, in the end, this is mystic elevation, more than theology. But if theology is, according to the definition of Saint Anselm, fides quaerens intellectum, or the faith that tries to understand the science of revelation, Anthony seems to be more of a theologian than he might appear at first glance. Theology does not require polemics or controversy, which some consider the characteristics of the theologian. Controversy, more than an integral part of theology, is a function of theology. One can have optimal theology without arguing. In fact, irenical theology is, by its nature, superior to apologetic theology. That is how Saint Augustine and the whole Augustine tradition, and therefore, the great majority of the Fathers of the Latin Church, perceived it.

The fact that the irenical exposition of revelation is done with fervour of soul, as happens with the theologians in the Augustinian tradition, detracts nothing from its value.

In his Sermones, Anthony reveals himself to be a great theologian when enters the encouraging field of the love of God, while always, however, respecting the rights of intelligence. This is the theology that he calls a "new canticle that sounds softly in the ears of the Lord and renews our spirit." That theology that, transforming his heart, lifted him up as far as the intuition of God Himself through the humanity of Christ, given to man by the sainted Virgin.