Soon after Saint Anthony began his career as a public preacher, he encountered many friars in need of instruction in both content and method for preaching. Drawing upon resources he remembered from his Augustinian days in Lisbon and Coimbra,
Portugal, he assembled a fruitful compendium of sermon material for the Sundays and the major feast days of the year. The overall purpose of the book was to prepare friars to preach with understanding, so that their audience would grasp the literal, allegorical, and moral impact of passages from Scripture. The framework was the Sundays and major feast days of the year. At the same time and through out the book he includes recommendations for good preaching. Nowhere does he overburden his readers with theory. Application is the goal; theory is its support. He describes the characteristics of a good preacher and his relationship with his audience. The spiritual life of the preacher receives outstanding attention. While this sequence of themes describes the article, Anthony spread the ideas out over the entire text, whereby the students would absorb them more easily. Saint Anthony proved himself an excellent teacher.
