January 17th - St. Anthony of the Desert
Patriarch of Monastic Life
 (251-356)

Saint Anthony was born in the year 251, in Upper Egypt. Hearing at Mass the
words, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor,"
he gave away all his vast possessions - staying only to see that his sister's
education was completed - and retired into the desert. He then begged an aged
hermit to teach him the spiritual life, and he also visited various solitaries,
undertaking to copy the principal virtue of each.

To serve God more perfectly, Anthony immured himself in a ruin, building up the
door so that none could enter. Here the devils assaulted him furiously,
appearing as various monsters, and even wounding him severely; but his courage
never failed, and he overcame them all by confidence in God and by the sign of
the cross. One night, while Anthony was in his solitude, many devils scourged
him so terribly that he lay as if dead. A friend found him in this condition,
and believing him dead carried him home. But when Anthony came to himself he
persuaded his friend to take him back, in spite of his wounds, to his solitude.
Here, prostrate from weakness, he defied the devils, saying, "I fear you not;
you cannot separate me from the love of Christ." After more vain assaults the
devils fled, and Christ appeared to Anthony in His glory.

Saint Anthony's only food was bread and water, which he never tasted before
sunset, and sometimes only once in two, three, or four days. He wore sackcloth
and sheepskin, and he often knelt in prayer from sunset to sunrise.

His admirers became so many and so insistent that he was eventually persuaded to
found two monasteries for them and to give them a rule of life. These were the
first monasteries ever to be founded, and Saint Anthony is, therefore, the
father of cenobites of monks. In 311 he went to Alexandria to take part in the
Arian controversy and to comfort those who were being persecuted by Maximinus.
This visit lasted for a few days only, after which he retired into a solitude
even more remote so that he might cut himself off completely from his admirers.
When he was over ninety, he was commanded by God in a vision to search the
desert for Saint Paul the Hermit. He is said to have survived until the age of a
hundred and five, when he died peacefully in a cave on Mount Kolzim near the Red
Sea. Saint Athanasius, his biographer, says that the mere knowledge of how Saint
Anthony lived is a good guide to virtue.

Reflection. The more violent the assaults of temptation suffered by Saint
Anthony, the more firmly did he grasp his weapons, namely, mortification and
prayer. Let us imitate him in this, if we wish to obtain victories like his.

Sources: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler's
Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers:
New York, 1894); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin
(Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 1; The Saints, a Concise Biographical
Dictionary, edited by John Coulson (Hawthorn Books, Inc.: New York, 1957).

See longer version found at:
http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0317.htm


Quotes:
"Whoever sits in solitude and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing,
speaking, and seeing. Yet against one thing he must constantly battle: his own
heart."
-Saint Antony Abbot.

"[The devil] dreads fasting, prayer, humility, and good works: He is not able
even to stop my mouth who speak against him. The illusions of the devil soon
vanish, especially if a man arms himself with the Sign of the Cross. The devils
tremble at the Sign of the Cross of our Lord, by which He triumphed over and
disarmed them."
-Saint Antony Abbot.

Bible Quote
But Peter and the apostles answering, said: We ought to obey God, rather than
men.
The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him
upon a tree.
Him hath God exalted with his right hand, to be Prince and Saviour, to give
repentance to Israel,
and remission of sins.  (Acts 5:29-31)


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A prayer to St. Anthony:

O glorious St. Anthony, who upon hearing only one word of
the Gospel didst forsake the riches and the ease of thy family,
thy native land and the world, in order to retire into the
wilderness; who, in spite of the heavy burden of advanced
age and the ravages of severe penance, didst not hesitate to
leave thy solitude to rebuke openly the impiety of heretics
and to restore wavering Christians to a firmer hold upon their
faith with all the zeal of a confessor desirous of martyrdom;
who through thy conquest of self and the excellence of thy
virtues wast endowed by Our Lord with miraculous power
over animate and inanimate nature; do thou obtain for us the
grace to be ever zealous in the cause of Christ and His
Church and to persevere even unto death in our imitation of
thee, in our belief in revealed truth, and in our keeping of the
commandments and the counsels of the Gospel; to the end
that, having faithfully followed in thy footsteps here on earth,
we may be enabled to become sharers in thy heavenly glory
through all the ages of eternity.  Amen.

Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be... (thrice in honor of St.
Anthony)