Feast day: January 17

St. Anthony of Egypt

Abbot, Father of Monasticism · 251–356

Patron of Monks, gravediggers, those facing temptation

At age 20 he heard the Gospel say 'sell what you possess,' did exactly that, and walked into the desert — launching Christian monasticism.

Anthony was born around the middle of the third century at Coma, near Heracleopolis in the Fayum region of Egypt, the son of well-to-do Christian parents. When they died, leaving him their estate while he was still about twenty, he heard read in church the Gospel words to the rich young man: 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor.' He took them as spoken directly to himself, disposed of his property, settled his younger sister with a community of virgins, and gave himself wholly to a life of prayer and discipline.

At first he lived austerely on the edge of his village under the guidance of an older hermit, then withdrew ever deeper into the wilderness — into a tomb, an abandoned fort, and at last the inner desert by the Red Sea. The 'Life of Anthony' written by his friend St. Athanasius describes his long, fierce struggles against temptation and the assaults of demons, struggles that became one of the most painted subjects in all of Christian art.

Anthony did not invent the solitary life, but it was he who made it a movement. Around the year 305 he came out of his solitude to organize and direct the multitude of hermits who had gathered near him in the Thebaid, giving them spiritual fatherhood and a pattern of life. From the middle of the fourth century onward he was honored throughout the Church as the founder and father of Christian monasticism.

Though he loved solitude, he twice left the desert for the great city of Alexandria — once to encourage the Christians during persecution, and once in extreme old age to lend his enormous prestige to St. Athanasius against the Arian heresy. He is said to have lived to about a hundred and five, dying around 356, and asking that his burial place be kept secret. He is invoked against skin diseases and, with his companion pig in medieval art, became patron of swineherds and basket-makers.

He lived to 105, in an era when most people didn't see 40, on a diet of bread, salt, and water.

“The devil is afraid of us when we pray and make sacrifices.”
— St. Anthony of Egypt

Image: Michael Damaskinos (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01553d.htm