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SANT’ ANTONIO E SORA[1] CASTITRE.
I too know a story about St. Anthony.
St. Anthony was a fair youth, as you will always see in his portraits. As he went about preaching there was a young woman who began to admire him very much, and her name was Sora Castitre. Whenever she could find out in which direction he was going she would put herself in his way and try to speak to him. St. Anthony at first kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and took no notice of her; then he tried to make her desist by rebuking her, but she ceased not to follow him.
Then he thought to himself, with all a saint’s compunction, ‘It is not she who is to blame, and who is worthy of rebuke, but I, who have been the occasion of sin to her. God grant that sin be not imputed to her through loving me.’
The next time she met him, it was in a deserted part of the Campagna.
‘Brother Antonio, come along with me down this path. No one will see us there,’ said Sora Castitre.
Much to her surprise, instead of pursuing the severe tone he had always adopted towards her, St. Anthony greeted her and smiled with a smile which filled her with a joy different from anything she had known before. What was more, he seemed to follow her, and she led on.
But as she went the way seemed quite changed. She knew well the retired path by which she had meant to lead him, but now everything around looked different; not one landmark was the same. Yet ‘how could it be different?’ she said within herself; and she led on.
What was her astonishment, when, instead of finding it terminate in a rocky gorge as she had found before, there rose before her presently an austere building surrounded with walls and gates!