The miracle
A young girl in Padua called Eurilia had followed her mother in one of her visits to an old lady. Eurilia however, stayed outside to gather sticks and twigs for the fire. After a while, at the end of her visit, the mother came out and found her daughter floating on a muddy pond, face up. Somehow Eurilia had slipped into the water and drowned. The poor woman waded in and dragged the body up on to the road, but the young girl seemed lifeless. The poor mother started to cry and a small crowd gathered around her. One of the men present saw that the girl was cold and rigid, and said that she was dead. At this point in her anguish the mother begged the Saint to pray to Christ to save her daughter, “Oh please, St. Anthony, give me back my daughter.” Shortly after this simple prayer everyone could see that Eurilia's lips began to twitch, and then she started to throw out the water she had swallowed. And so, after a short while, through the merits of St. Anthony, Eurilia grew warm again and came back to life.
Meditation
What really strikes us in this story is the faith of Eurilia’s mother; it is a faith that never fails, not even in the presence of death. Which is not surprising, for faith does not operate in the realm of the possible, faith begins where human power ends. And in fact the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you” (Lk 17,6).
Some people, however, think that if you have enough faith, life will be plain sailing for you. Unfortunately faith doesn’t shield us from the hard knocks of life or from death. So, what does faith do? It gives us bearings, and thus enables us to live in a difficult world without getting lost or giving in to despair. We believers entrust our lives to the power of God, who brought his Son, Jesus, back from the dead.