The Life
Anthony was an ordinary Egyptian farmer’s son. One Sunday at church, the Gospel was read about a rich young man, and Christ said: "Sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow me." Anthony heard those words and his heart leapt. He went home, gave his land away, settled his sister with good Christian women, and went out into the desert to be alone with God. He stayed there the rest of his very long life, and through him heaven made the desert bloom.
His parents had recently fallen asleep in the Lord, leaving him a beautiful farm and the care of his little sister. He was twenty years old. That morning the Gospel reading at Liturgy was about the rich young ruler, and the words "Go, sell what you have and give to the poor" entered his heart like fire. He did not argue. He did not delay. He simply did it — with such joy and freedom that everyone who heard about it was astonished.
Anthony did not invent the spiritual life. He went to find the older holy men who lived in the villages around him, and he humbly asked each one for what they could teach him. He stayed near his village for fifteen years, working with his hands, giving alms to the poor, and gathering wisdom like honey. He took the gentleness of one elder, the prayerfulness of another, the cheerfulness of a third. He did not run ahead. He let himself be formed.
For deeper solitude, Anthony moved to a tomb outside the village and asked a friend to bring him bread. The evil one, furious at his prayer, attacked him so violently that the friend found him on the ground as if dead and carried him home for burial. But at midnight Anthony opened his eyes and asked to be taken back. There, broken in body but radiant in faith, he saw a great light, and the Lord himself was present. Anthony cried out, "Where were you, Lord, when I was suffering?" And the Lord answered with such love: "I was here all along, watching your courage. Now I will make your name known throughout the world."
Anthony crossed the Nile and found an abandoned little fortress at a place called Pispir. He blocked the doorway and stayed inside for twenty years — just him and the Lord, with bread brought by his friend twice a year. When his disciples finally pulled the stones away from the entrance, expecting to find a wild and broken man, Anthony walked out smiling. He was peaceful, gentle, balanced, healthy. Twenty years of prayer had not damaged him — they had healed him. He looked, Athanasius said, like a man whose soul had been restored to its natural state.
When the brothers came to ask Anthony how to pray and how to fight the temptations of the soul, he taught them with such kindness. The evil one, he said, only has the power we hand him. The Lord has already won the battle on the Cross. Every baptized Christian carries Christ’s victory inside them. We only need to remember it, to call on the Name of Jesus, to make the sign of the Cross, and to keep our hearts open to the love that is always being poured into us. He never told anyone to be afraid. He told them, again and again, that the Lord is near.
This is the very first saying recorded from Anthony, and the Church loved it so much that it placed it at the opening of the great book of the Desert Fathers. There is so much in the world that can wound a soul. But humility passes through every snare untouched. The humble heart is the safe one. The Lord rests in it.
Anthony loved his disciples and gave them gentle, simple guidance. Three things, he said. Always remember the Lord is with you. Let everything you do be measured against the Holy Scriptures. And do not keep moving from place to place looking for some better situation — stay where the Lord has planted you, and let your soul put down deep roots. So much of the spiritual life happens slowly, in one place, over time.
These are the words Anthony heard at Liturgy when he was twenty. They are still being spoken every Sunday, in every Orthodox church, all over the world. Somewhere right now, someone is hearing them and answering yes the way Anthony did.
When Anthony emerged from his twenty years at the fortress, his fame spread, and so many people came to find him that the desert itself filled up with monks. So Anthony went deeper, to a remote mountain by the Red Sea, where he spent the last forty-five years of his life. Even there the visitors followed. He came down only twice in all those decades: once to encourage Christians being persecuted in Alexandria, and once to defend the Orthodox faith against heresy. The rest of the time he kept his cell and prayed for the world he had left behind.
Athanasius wrote the Life of Anthony shortly after his death. He had known Anthony personally and watched him into his old age. The portrait he gives us is of a man who, even at over a hundred years old, was strong and joyful, his eyes bright, his hands steady, loved by everyone who met him. The Christian life, Athanasius is showing us, makes the body more itself, not less.
When Anthony knew the Lord was about to take him, he gathered his two closest disciples and gave them his last words. He told them: hold to the true faith, do not be discouraged in your struggles, and pray for one another. He gave one of his old sheepskin cloaks to Athanasius and the other to Serapion, two bishops who loved him. Then he asked his disciples to bury him in a secret place, so that no one would make his bones into a shrine. He died very peacefully at the age of one hundred and five. His disciples laid him in the desert, just as he had asked, and only the Lord knows the place.
Anthony is not a figure from a distant past. He is a living member of the Church, a friend in the great communion of saints, who prays for us right now. His life shows us, with a beautiful simplicity, what happens when an ordinary person says yes to the Lord without holding anything back. We do not all need to live in the desert. But the same Lord who filled Anthony with light is filling our lives with that same light, in our own particular ways. We can ask Anthony to pray for us. He does, gladly.