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St. Anthony of Egypt
00:21:56
In this episode, Dr. Elizabeth Klein and Taylor discuss St. Anthony of Egypt, or "Anthony the Great," a hermit who lived from around 251 to 356 A.D. Anthony is widely regarded as the most famous of the Desert Fathers, a class of Christians who fled to the wilderness in order to give themselves wholly to prayer and asceticism. This radical devotion to the Lord made the Desert Fathers serious threats to the Evil One. In fact, Satan would often send legions of demons to attack Anthony, yet the Saint always prevailed. Anthony's heroic life of humility and prayer inspired many other great Saints, including Athanasius and Augustine.
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- [00:05]
A
Hi and welcome to Form Now. I'm Taylor Kemp and with me is Dr. Elizabeth Klein, a professor of theology here at the Graduate School of Theology. Welcome, Dr. Klein. Today we are talking about St. Anthony of Egypt, also known as St. Anthony the Great. We celebrate his feast on January 17th. Before we get into just some very general information about him, Dr. Klein, would you like, do you have any introductory remarks?
- [00:27]
B
Sure, sure. I mean, I'm really happy to talk about St. Anthony because St. Anthony, often when we say St. Anthony now, people think of St. Anthony of Padua, but this St. Anthony is the original St. Anthony the Great. And he really was like an all star, incredibly popular saint of the early church, one of the most well known saints. And so it's good to be able to talk to him and tell people a little bit why, why he was so.
- [00:49]
A
People may be surprised that he was so popular because you. Well, for one, you can read about him. So a lot of what we're going to be talking about today comes from a document written by Saint Athanasius called the Life of Anthony. You can Google this, you can find PDFs online, but you can find it and read it for yourself. But he lived a very radical life. So it's kind of surprising that people read this and not surprising they're inspired by it. Surprising that it was a popular piece of literature.
- [01:16]
B
And it's interesting, you know, kind of in each stage of history, you know, people need heroes and it is really reflective of the time of the spirit to look at who those heroes were and why they were so heroic. You know, in the earliest period, a lot of the greatest heroes were martyrs. And as you move out of the period of martyrdom, then in the next period of Christianity, really the greatest heroes, the ones who are most famous are monastics, and often very radical monastics doing ascetic practices that sometimes make us raise an eyebrow. So it is something, I think, beautiful and interesting to reflect on what was the heroic quality of that person's life that attracted so many people to them.
- [01:51]
A
Yeah, I like it that God is always putting calls on people's hearts to respond radically to the gospel. But the form that that always takes, it can change over time. So I like it a lot. And it kind of begs the question of, you know, what does that look like for us today, which hopefully we will get into. So St. Anthony was born in Egypt. He was born to a moderately wealthy family. It seems this was around 251 AD and he dies in 356 AD at the ripe old age of 105. He lost both of his parents by the time he was somewhere between 18 and 20 ish and was just left with a sister. And then let's, let's pick the story up there. So he's a young man, right?
- [02:33]
B
So he's. The story is in the life of St. Anthony that he comes in, it seems a little late, late to Mass, late to church. So he's not actually, you know, necessarily the, the most punctual church attender. He comes in at the proclamation of the Gospel and hears our Lord's words, go and tell everything that you have. And he's very compelled by these words. So a similar story to Saint Francis of Assisi. He's very convicted by these words and decides to, to take the Lord at his word. He makes sure there's provision for his sister, it seems like she's in a. Sells all the properties of his family, sells everything, and then just kind of sets about trying to live a holy life. Like he doesn't necessarily know where to start. He, he goes around and kind of hears about other holy people and what they're doing and meets with them and asks their advice. So that's kind of the beginning of his journey. And then he makes this radical decision to withdraw into the desert. And that's really what makes Anthony famous, is that he is possibly, or people think he's the first one to have done this, to decide to sort of leave, leave the city behind, go out into this desert to live a radical Christian life. And what the story really is a lot about is to do battle with the devil. And so there's really a model of our Lord withdrawing into the desert to face the devil on his own territory. It was a really fun line in the life of St. Anthony where the devil complains about Anthony coming into his territory and he says that this monk is going to make the desert a city because of his devotion and that he will draw more people to his holy way of life.
- [04:06]
A
So thinking about that, I mean, it's interesting to think about that line that the devil saying that St Anthony is coming into his territory. And as you mentioned, we think of our Lord who goes into the desert and does battle with Satan there. So what is it about the desert, I don't know, that welcomes this battle? What is it that makes it a place where Satan says, that's my space?
- [04:29]
B
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And I think actually watched a couple modern takes on living the life of St. Anthony. One was from an Anglican priest who decided to live like Anthony for three days. Another was a really beautiful example. His name is Father Lazarus, who's a Coptic monk who lives on St. Anthony's Mountain. And you can YouTube them, watch videos of them talking about why, battling with the devil, what is out there? And, you know, Father Lazarus says, really, what's out there is yourself, you know, and. And that is where the temptations can be seen for what they are. Because when you're in the city and, you know, there's a really nice meal set in front of you or whatever, you might think, well, I should do this for the sake of my guests, or I need to do this for the sake of my job or whatever, or there are all kinds of complex motivations that you can't necessarily single out. Oh, no, this desire is coming from, you know, pride or is coming from greed. And this desire is a good desire. They're often very conflicted. But if you go out to the desert and say, I'm going to live for Christ alone. I'm going to dedicate myself to prayer and fasting, it's very easy suddenly to see the temptations. And that's what happens in very dramatic fashion with Anthony. So, you know, when Anthony's headed out into the desert, he sees gold, you know, laying all. Laying all over the place. And it's a. It's just a funny kind of a beautiful way of setting forth that image of going into the desert. All of a sudden you see money for what it is. Right. It's just an illusion.
- [05:57]
A
Yeah, it's just.
- [05:58]
B
There's nothing there. There's no draw for him anymore once he's made that. That radical choice.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah, I like that. That story too, because he says that he. I think it says that he ran over it like it was hot coals or something, this illusion of gold. But, yeah, there's definitely. You know, I've never retreated into the desert for lengthy periods of time, but you can imagine just the stripping away of just everything which would just leave you alone with yourself, with God, with. With the enemy in some. Some respects. But there is something where I think in all of us, there's a desire to, like, let everything kind of melt away that does, like, assail us. Where it is difficult when you're. When you're living your life and you're faced with different circumstances to. To actually really get a. An honest stock of, like, what are my motivations for. Why am I doing this? Like, well, I have to support my family or I have to. Yeah, like, do something for work. I have to.
- [06:52]
B
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah.
- [06:53]
A
And there's just something very appealing, terrifying in the same sense, obviously, to retreat into the desert, but there's something very appealing at face value of, like, yeah, I would love to silence out, like, just so much noise.
- [07:06]
B
And then this. This tradition is carried on in small ways. You know, there's lots of Catholics who go on silent retreats or go away for a set period of time. There are many, many saints who don't do the extreme Anthony thing where they go to the desert forever. But many saints have a period where they withdraw. You know, St. Benedict had a period where he withdrew by himself before he founded his community as St. Catherine of Siena had a period where she was a hermit. And so it, you know, and this is on the example of our Lord, who did the same thing after his baptism, before the starting of his public ministry, he had a period where, you know, he withdrew. And so even though not, you know, most of us are not going to withdraw into the desert and make the desert a city, I think that that tradition of the saint of Saint Anthony really lives on and even sort of everyday Catholic spirituality.
- [07:51]
A
So what would that. When we are. I like the example of. There's certain things, like silent retreats that people can go on today. But what are some ways where we can try to imitate St Anthony by, in a sense, you know, shutting out the world, Not. Not for the sake of completely leaving the world behind. That's. That's not certainly the call for everybody, though it could be the call for some. But what. What can we do to try to model him in. In closing out a lot of the noise, trying to enter into the interior battle that we see. So beautifully documented. Yeah. What could that look like for some of us today?
- [08:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess some aspects of Anthony's life that are kind of easy things to emulate, or maybe not easy to emulate, but easy to picture is his reliance on the holy lives of other people. And he says that there's a line in the life of St. Anthony where whenever someone comes to ask him for advice and what they should do, he tells them that they should pray, that they should, you know, meditate on the law of the Lord in the morning and sing hymns at night and that they should meditate on the lives of the saints. And that's, you know, that's advice that anyone can follow. Obviously, Anthony followed it in a very extreme way, but that's really advice that anyone can follow to, you know, meditate on the law of the Lord in the morning and the psalms in the evening and the lives of the saints. And Anthony. I think one aspect of this withdrawing into the desert and having absolutely nothing is this radical trust in God that I think for those of us who aren't going to go into the desert, Anthony can be an inspiration for us in what he did and having nothing, that there are times in our life that we feel we don't have anything. We don't have any control over a particular situation, or we don't have anything left to give when we're at the end of our rope. And. And what St. Anthony's life teaches us more than anything is that prayer and trust in the Lord is the only way to overcome those situations. Because he has this really intense story in the life of St. Anthony where he's kind of sealed in like, this tomb for a time and he's assaulted by the devil and by all of these visions. There's lots of. This is a popular topic in sort of Western art, this temptation of St. Anthony. But he defeats it by prayer. And. And he has this one thing he says to the devil is that if you could have injured me, you would have done so already. And so to be able to look at. To be able to look at everything in the world and say, if there was something that could have destroyed my faith, it would have done it already. And then that sort of, for Anthony, breaks the illusions of what these problems he's facing are. And that radical trust in God is really, I think, what's shown by this withdrawal into the desert.
- [10:44]
A
And I think it's worth talking about too, the. You know, because sometimes, especially when I've know some friends who have looked at, like, the Catholic practices of fasting, and it's like, well, what's the point of just denying yourself? Or what's the point of. Of putting yourself through something in a voluntary fashion? And I think you could look at St. Anthony and say, you know, kind of, what. What are you doing denying yourself, like, all comfort, all community, earthly community. And it's good to remember that it's for something that is actually positive in a sense. Like when we are fasting, we are preparing ourselves, opening up a space in ourselves to receive more of whatever God is wanting to give us and to discipline our bodies and to remind ourselves that the spiritual things are more important than the temporal things. And I think we can see in St. Anthony this just such a desire and love of God that he's like, I'll do anything to. To, yeah. To discipline my body, to put away everything else so that, like, Lord you're the one thing.
- [11:47]
B
And there is a kind of the heroic aspect that I think that appealed to a lot of people in Anthony's time is that, like, almost athletic quality that often compare monastics to athletes. And if you think about the kinds of things we valorize now, you know, people going on diets and exercising and training for a marathon and doing these forms of self denial for the purpose of winning the race, like this is a kind of analogy with Paul, right, where they looked at these as the. As heroic athletes for the Lord who were doing an intense form of training for the spiritual Olympics.
- [12:25]
A
That's so true.
- [12:25]
B
You know, we know not everybody is going to go to the spiritual Olympics, but like, but they're inspiring, right, those people who make that. That commitment to show us what it really looks like to live a kind of undivided life. And you mentioned him giving up community, which is. Which is an interesting aspect of the story because. And the one, he goes out into the desert by himself. But inevitably, holy people, as a sign of God's grace, they draw people to themselves. So Anthony goes out by himself and he draws other monks who want to live like him. And all of a sudden he has a community out there in the middle of the desert. And that's why the devil complains that he's made the desert a city.
- [12:59]
A
Yeah, it's so cool. And to recognize too, that even though he is going out alone and he does eventually draw other people to him, but that he's not in a sense going out entirely for absolute solitude that he is going away from, but he's going for communion with God and communion with the saints. So he's not alone in that fashion, which I just think is. When we think of the Christian life, we think of it as a communal venture, which it is. And St. Anthony has not departed from that truth. He's living it out in, I guess, a different way, you would say, but through the community of saints and for the sake of communion with God.
- [13:41]
B
And I think if you listen to even kind of modern hermits or people who've lived this kind of life talk about it, they see this withdrawal as for the sake of the church and praying and praying for the church. And so I think that's something also to reflect on when we do something that's difficult or contradictory to what other people expect or to whether other people think is even any good. It is difficult to do those things for the sake of the church. But this is also our Lord, who was, you know, people fled from him at the Cross at the foot of the cross. There wasn't a whole lot of people left. And, you know, his. His community ended up being basically like two convicts, you know, who were accompanying him. And that. But that was for the sake of the world, right? That withdrawal from the world was for the sake of the world.
- [14:31]
A
It makes me think of St. Therese, how she is that really famous line where she says, I'll do far more good in heaven than on earth. But it's just this counterintuitive sense of like, yeah, there's. We know of cloistered monks, cloistered nuns, and we're like, well, you know, it's easy to look at their life and be like, well, what is. What is that for? What good is that doing? And it's like, well, the. In the reality of prayer, which is so much more powerful than often much that we can do, so to speak, with our hands. Both are important. But. And then I've always loved that by St. Therese that she's. You know, we think that someone's life ends and it's like, oh, what. What a tragedy, what a loss. They. They're no longer able to participate in life as we so know them. And Therese is like, what are you talking about? I'll be able to do what way more to help the church in heaven than I will on earth. And you can look at St. Anthony saying, I'm going to do way more for the church by going out into the desert, battling the devil, discipline myself, giving people a new model for holiness in a way than I could if I would have stayed in the city. And who knows what would have come of him there.
- [15:28]
B
This is reminding me of a novel called in this House of Breed that's about contemplative cloistered nuns. And there's a line in there where I think it's maybe the queen or a government official who says someone should give those women something to do. And it's. But it's really beautiful in the story that. How their life of prayer affects so many. And there's a number of beautiful stories in there that are actually, at least one of them is based on the author's own experience of a nun praying for her daughter and was part of her conversion. So, yeah, and it's that life, the contemplative life or something like St. Anthony. It really is a sign of contradiction. There's something. There's a sign of contradiction, something about our Lord's, the evangelical councils and following them, that it makes the gospel visible in a way that the lives that Are like, we can live the evangelical councils in our married lives, but there's a way that it makes it visible in a life of someone like St. Anthony. That is an essential sign, really. I think it's an essential sign of the church's renewal. And that's why we've always had the consecrated life as this essential witness. I think.
- [16:33]
A
And I think it's a sign of contradiction that people like the story that they read. I mean, seriously, you're just like, this is crazy, you know, but you read it and there's just this like, like this deep, I feel like, heroic desire to live a radical life. And you, you read the Lives of the Saints, you read Life of St. Anthony, and you're like, oh my gosh, he did it. Like, you're like, it's possible.
- [16:52]
B
And that's possible. And this story. So speaking of the fame of this story, it was translated into Latin very quickly, disseminated throughout the West. And there's a famous part of Augustine's Confessions that involves this story. You know, right before his big conversion moment under the tree, you know, he hears the voices of children. He's told this series of stories, and one of them is of two men going like a house. And the life of St. Anthony is open on the table. And they read it and they say, why not us? You know, what are we doing with our lives that this man could give up, forsake everything for Christ. And that's part of the final push for Augustine.
- [17:31]
A
And why we have Augustine, you know.
- [17:32]
B
Why we have him is this life. And so it's interesting because Augustine didn't actually live exactly this kind of life. He didn't withdraw to the desert. But the radical nature of Anthony's call and his generous, generous response to God is a heroic example that inspired other people to say, like, here I am wishy washy, I don't even want to be baptized, you know, and there's this person who has given everything to God in this heroic act of charity. And it's just, it's inspiring. And so he, he changes his life.
- [18:02]
A
And that, like, everyone can do that in terms of we can surrender whatever we have been given, whatever God has given us, we can surrender that, and then he can outline this path for us. Like you said, like, Augustine didn't do what Anthony did. He heard Anthony's life was like, that's awesome. I want to do something like that. But then he had a completely different life. He was forced to be made a bishop, very different than Anthony. But for us too, it's like, we can hear this and. And be like, yeah, like, Lord, I want that. I want to be a saint. And he's like, okay, great. I can work with that. Like, let's figure out how that's going to look for a married person, for an unmarried, like, whoever it may be. So it's awesome. So I. I thought it would be good. There. There was a couple. I had three little points that I pulled out that.
- [18:41]
B
Of.
- [18:41]
A
Of lessons that we can learn from St. Anthony, so I could list those and if you want to add a little commentary. But I really love his. His seeking out others who had virtue and holiness. I think that's just a great thing for us, that when we have people in our life that we admire, that you look at them, you're like, they have a. They have a virtue. They have a holiness level that I really love. Go spend time with them. Like, talk to them. St. Anthony does that. Any comments?
- [19:06]
B
Sounds good.
- [19:07]
A
Okay. Moving along. The other one that I love so much and Augustine had, this is an openness to the word of God to receive it as what it is, which is God's words to us, but to each individual person. St. Anthony heard the words that Jesus spoke to the rich young man, Go sell all you have, Give to the poor, and then come follow me. And he received that as speaking to me. And I think that is the relationship that many of us need to constantly return to when we read Scripture is like, the Lord is speaking to us.
- [19:35]
B
Yeah. And that's an. I didn't think about this until right now, but that's a really interesting overlap with Augustine's story.
- [19:39]
A
Right.
- [19:40]
B
Because he heard the life of Anthony, and then he himself opened the Scriptures and heard, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provisions for the flesh, and took that as speaking directly to him.
- [19:48]
A
And it's the moment of conversion, which is awesome. And then just the last is the interior battle that St. Anthony, in a really radical way, shows us the importance of the interior life. The invisible. Well, it was visible in many ways in his life, but the interior battle and the importance of it and. And for us, that is the life of prayer, fasting, alms, giving, and a real commitment to living these things out, which are acts of the will, especially early on. Like, we have to choose those, and we have to choose them again and again and again. And. And Anthony did that.
- [20:20]
B
He.
- [20:20]
A
He just chose to say. He looked at the world and he said, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go the other way. And this elevated him to incredible union with God. And now he's a great saint and for us is just a witness to the importance of the interior life into a life of prayer.
- [20:36]
B
Yeah. And I think something St. Anthony does that's very inspiring and can be inspiring for everyone is that when he sees a temptation, he just says no and prays, you know, and. And to have that. That clarity. Sometimes you don't have the clarity, but when you have the clarity to recognize something as coming from the enemy, to be able to say no and to pray for God's intercession in that moment, I think it's just very powerful.
- [21:01]
A
And is it. I don't know if you remember this, but I don't know if it's Anthony or if it's St. Benedict who, like, threw himself into the bush.
- [21:09]
B
That was St. Benedict.
- [21:10]
A
Okay. So there's that and there's. I don't know if it's St. Benedict, too, but sometimes the best thing we can do is run away from temptations. But I feel like Saint Anthony, when he. There's the gold, and he says, I ran over it like it was hot coals. Like. Like, he also had the wherewithal to look at a temptation. And not, like, hold on, like, stay there a little while. He just, like. He's like. He says no, and he's like, I'm out of here. Like, I'm not. I'm not going to linger. Which is a good lesson for us today. So thank you very much. We were praying for all of you. Pray that St. Anthony is a great inspiration for all of us to respond with, I don't know, heroic desire for love of God. We thank you so much. We will see you next time. God bless.