Saint Anthony of Egypt: Prayer, Solitude, and the Discipline of the Christian Life
MASS Os justi
LESSON Ecclus 45:1-6
GOSPEL St Luke 12:35-40
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
Welcome to this broadcast Mass on this, the feast, as we said, of St Anthony of Egypt, hailed and beloved as the great father of Christian monasticism. You will of course recognise his name, hopefully, from our considerations on the Feast of St Paul of Thieves, who of course Anthony was contemporaneous with.
Now, St Anthony was born in 251 in a village called Kora, in the Theide, in the middle of Egypt, and born to a Christian family, a wealthy family. At the age of 20, sadly his parents died, leaving him and his younger sister orphans.
Anthony heard in church the Gospel from St Matthew describing the rich young man, who you may recall went to Jesus and asked Him how he could perfect his Christian life. Don’t panic — that’s an expected fire alarm test. Good.
And hearing that Gospel, and hearing Our Lord say to the rich young man, “You must go sell all that you have and give it to the poor, then come and follow me,” Anthony took those words directly to his own heart, as if he was being personally addressed by that proclamation of that Gospel.
He of course identified himself as a rich young man. And so, leaving church, he went home, and in consultation with his sister, he did indeed sell all that they had, retaining only enough money for himself and his sister to live upon. Otherwise everything else was sold, and the money was indeed distributed to those who had better need of it.
His sister then retired to a convent, to a community of young Christian women who wanted to devote themselves to a life of prayer and service. And so he himself then determined that he likewise would like to seek a life after God, and so he took himself out initially to the nearby cemetery of the village, there to dwell amongst the dead, as it were.
There he prayed and fasted, endured many spiritual battles, and indeed on one occasion was nigh beaten to death. Indeed, he was found unconscious by a friend who had gone out to the cemetery with bread and water for him. The villagers came and took him back to the village and indeed began to prepare him for burial. Then suddenly Anthony came back to consciousness and bid them please return him to the tombs.
Anyway, he lived like that for some 15 years, until about the age of 35. He then determined to retire further from the world and went deeper into the survived desert to an old Roman fort, and there he lived in solitary isolation for some 20 years, surviving only on bread and water, and fasting every other day.
Despite the pleas of various friends for him to give this up, he persisted, until such a number of disciples — people who had learned of and were drawn by his example and by his piety — themselves came to establish themselves around that fort.
And so, after 20 years, he came out of the fort, and much to the surprise of everyone, rather than being found emaciated and ill-looking, he was quite the opposite. He was radiant, and the holiness, as it were, was just beaming from him.
He then succumbed to the pleas of those disciples and spent some time instructing them and teaching them and guiding them, and establishing of course what became the first rule of life for monastics, which subsequently has been used again and again by other religious foundations.
Until again he wanted to retire for some solitude himself, remembering of course, not forgetting his particular inlude with St Paul of Thieves, and his great friend St Athanasius, who was then the Bishop of Alexandria.
He died in isolation on his own, we think around the 17th of January in the year 351 — sorry — 354 AD. Just over 100-odd years old. His body was not found for 10 days until those who regularly came with bread discovered him, and then of course his body was taken and buried, etc.
Throughout his experience, St Anthony would speak of regular attacks by demons or the devil, who attacked him in all sorts of ways. Initially in the early days through boredom and leery, later perhaps more violently, certainly attacking or appealing to his passions.
And St Anthony would always say that the only way to overcome these things was with prayer. With prayer.
Of course many of us still have problems ourselves with all sorts of predilections and temptations and vices, faults and failings, and likewise the only real answer is prayer — is to, I would say, establish mind over matter.
One of the things I observed in my chefing days was that if I burned myself or cut myself, if I paid it no heed and carried on, invariably I would soon forget about it. And likewise we know that fire walkers, the people who walk across hot coals and things like that, again train their minds to think elsewhere, and such is the effect physiologically that they don’t even burn the skin of their feet, let alone worry about wounds.
And the same can be true for us in religious life, in the spiritual life. We can train ourselves, we can train our minds, we can train and improve and discipline our own will, but all this can only be accomplished with and by God’s grace.
And so that first duty of us all as Christians is to pray — meaning to have a relationship with God — because what is prayer but a spiritual conversation. It is so crucial and fundamental to the practice of our faith.
We might also take from St Anthony’s life and example that impact that the Gospel had upon him, from St Matthew, about the rich young man. Again, remember our reflections last week about the first vocation of humanity as stewards of God’s providence.
Likewise then, when we hear the parable of the rich young man, if we’re not also called like St Anthony to take ourselves off to the religious life, however we might take the lesson that is given to remind us that material things, temporal things, are only tools. They’re just things — but things, of course, that can be incredibly useful if correctly applied, and in our case, if correctly applied and used for God’s will.
And God’s will, of course, is that we should love and serve Him, love and serve our neighbour. That is why for centuries Christians understood the need to give and donate for the building of sanctuaries, for the decoration of the churches, for supplying the necessary things required to offer worthy liturgy, and also of course give alms, give to the poor, perform corporal acts of mercy and charity.
Also, too, from St Anthony’s life, we might appreciate the spiritual struggle. There are times when we will go through spiritual dryness, where sometimes no matter how diligent and how persistent and how many years it’s been that we have prayed, suddenly it doesn’t seem to offer us any consolation.
Well, sometimes no matter how many years we’ve been reading Scripture and always found something inspirational, suddenly we get no inspiration. This happens to us all. It happened to the great saints. It happened to St Anthony, it happened to St Paul, it happened to St Benedict, it happened to all those who, in seeking to be dutiful and faithful, sometimes fall into the trap of merely being dutiful rather than also faithful.
And so distraction and dryness comes in. But the cure for that is simply to continue to be faithful — for your dutifulness to become once more fidelity and faithfulness. And then soon you move along, and again you will receive inspiration.
It’s a part of our human condition. In many ways we’re always like children — after so long of something the same, we get bored, and when we get bored we get despondent, we get fed up, etc. What spiritual dryness is not a sign of is God leaving us. It’s quite the opposite.
And as we reflected on the Feast of St Paul the First Hermit, there is something, an aspect, about the religious life that we all need to take on board. As Anthony, in his rule and in his wisdom and guidance for monks, teaches us foundational principles that will aid all of us in the deepening of our spiritual lives and in the discernment of God’s will for our lives.
For many of us, of course, it’s not possible for us to take ourselves off, however much we might like to, to the desert to be alone and to search and think and ponder only upon God. But as Benedict would later say, ora et labora. We can pray and work.
We can be in the situation and the context in which we find ourselves and still offer prayer, still offer praise, still find stillness and God’s presence. We just have to be open and aware to it — meaning to take time out.
Our Lord Himself demonstrates this severally in the Gospel, where He goes alone to pray, even without the disciples. Likewise we too, perhaps not as extreme as the mystics and monastics, but we too need to make time for God, which is ultimately time for ourselves, that will benefit ourselves and our relationship with God, and thus everything else in our lives.
I find it curious that for all the inventions available to us to make our modern lives easier, somehow we continue to complain that there is never enough time, that we can’t make time. The truth is, we could, if we tried.
And it’s very important to our lives as Christians to make time on a daily basis for God. And sometimes that will mean making sacrifices. It may mean having to get up earlier before the rest of the family, or it may mean having to go to bed later than the rest of the family, in order to have a time of peace and quietude.
Whatever it is, we must be open and aware to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, to guide us and show us how it is. Because God is God — He wants this relationship with us. He wants this communion with us. So God the Holy Spirit is continually prompting us in ways to realise this relationship, this communion with God.
Yes, of course, receiving the Holy Eucharist, receiving Holy Communion, is a very focused and concentrated way, but it’s not the only way of experiencing God’s presence, of being aware of God.
The key always is that we strive to be open and aware to the promptings of the Spirit.
So, my brothers and sisters, let us today perhaps consider, find time, look at the schedule of our lives, and wonder: are there ways in which I can make actually more time — some time even — to spend with God? To open and avail myself and seek God’s grace, that I may overcome my own spiritual battles, my own temptations, my own fights with demons.
How is it possible for me to live a life of prayer and praise continually, whilst also being about my daily chores, my job, my work, my career, etc.? And how can I be a better steward of the providence from God that has been allotted to me? How can I better use it for God’s will, for serving Him, and for manifesting His love to my neighbour and serving them?
May holy St Anthony of Egypt pray for us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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