Christian History Home > Issue 64 > The Best There Ever Was
The Best There Ever Was
Modern Christian hermits still look to him for inspiration, as did the entire Middle Ages, but today we hardly know him. What did the illiterate recluse, known as Antony of the Desert, do to earn such adulation?
Mark Galli | posted 10/01/1999 12:00AM
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When Antony was between 18 and 20, two events took place that altered his life trajectory. First, both his parents died—how exactly, we don't know, though plague is a likely candidate. Antony now found himself caring for "one quite young sister," as well as the family estate of over 200 acres.
The second event took place about six months later. One Sunday, as Antony made his way to church, he was contemplating the biblical passage that described early Christians' selling their possessions and giving everything to the poor (Acts 4:32-37). When he stepped into the church, the Gospel was being read, and Antony heard, "If you would be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give to the poor; and come follow me and you shall have treasure in heaven."
Antony was startled—it was "as if the passage were read on his account." He did not quibble nor hesitate, but obeyed as if it had indeed been spoken to him personally. He donated his family estate to his town (though historians are unclear as to which town that was), sold or gave away the rest of his possessions, put his sister into the care of a convent, and "devoted himself from then on to the discipline rather than the household."
"The discipline" included a variety of practices, from constant prayer and working with one's hands to severe fasts and sleep deprivation. He took up with a Christian hermit living in a neighboring village, and over the next several years visited many others: "He observed the graciousness of one, the eagerness for prayers in another; he took careful note of one's freedom from anger and the human concern of another. … He admired one for patience, and another for fastings and sleeping on the ground. … He marked likewise, the piety toward Christ and the mutual love of them all."
Mutual love, perhaps, but there was also in early monasticism a competitive spirit, in which monks sought to outdo one another in "the discipline." This is where Antony shined; he aimed to "be second to none of them in moral improvements":
"His watchfulness was such that he often passed the entire night without sleep, and doing this not once, but often, he inspired wonder. He ate once daily after sunset, but there were times when he received food every second and frequently even every fourth day. His food was bread and salt, and drinking he took only water. … A rush mat was sufficient to him for sleeping, but more regularly he lay on the bare ground."
Antony believed, as did most Christians of his era, that "the soul's intensity is strong when the pleasures of the body are weakened" A well-rested body, satiated with pleasure, and basking in the good things of life, becomes spiritually lazy. That is, no pain, no gain. Christians like Antony took literally the sayings of Jesus about the incompatibility of mammon and God, about earthly treasures being a stumbling block to heavenly joy, and so on. Not many took up the discipline as radically as did Antony, but even those who didn't recognized the need to discipline the body and its desires, sticking to some physical and spiritual regimen.
Though Antony already impressed many of the townspeople, he remained unsatisfied with his progress. So he moved "some distance from the village," entered a tomb, and had a friend, who agreed to supply him with bread, close the entrance.
It was here that Antony experienced some of his most horrific demonic attacks.
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