Archive, Readings
Desert Fathers 3
Below is the text of the second episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts.
Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. He was altogether equal to himself, a man governed by the Word and abiding in a natural state.
Antony’s fiercest inward struggles occurred while he lived in a pagan cemetery. It was a place associated with unquiet spirits. He chose it purposely, to face evil on its own turf. The battle brought him to the limit of his strength. On one occasion he found himself immersed in troubled darkness when, of a sudden, a ray of light descended on him. The spirits vanished; there was peace; the pain was gone. The Lord had come to his aid. Antony was comforted, yet puzzled. He cried: ‘Where were you? Why did you not appear before, to bring an end to my suffering?’ A voice answered: ‘I was there, Antony, but waited to see you fight.’
There is a lesson in this story. Often we see our struggles in a negative light, as obstacles only. We think God has abandoned us. We lose hope, and mope in self-pity. Let us instead be mindful that God makes use of trials, even contradictions, to test and purify us. Scripture testifies to this pedagogy. Think of Jacob’s fight with the angel, of Job’s vast losses, of Jeremiah imprisoned in a well. These hardships were not arbitrary. They were calibrated preparations for some future grace and task. In Antony’s case, resistance to temptation gave his inner man discipline and strength. It made him ready to leave the cemetery; he had learnt what there was to learn from the realm of the dead. After the incident with the ray of light, he found his way into the inner desert. There he settled in an abandoned fort. He remained there, all alone, for twenty years.
What did he do during this time, from his thirty-sixth to his fifty-sixth year? He lived sparely, on bread and water. Twice a year his friends would lower a supply of Egyptian loaves, baked to last, down through the roof; there was a well inside. He still endured demonic assaults. Passers-by could hear the racket that ensued. One worried traveller called out to Antony: ‘How are you?’ Antony replied through the barred door: ‘Oh, this is how demons appear to those who are afraid. Make the sign of the cross and go in peace. Let them make fools of themselves.’ Antony had passed beyond fear. Peace was his portion now, growing and flourishing through love.
It says much about him that his friends turned up up so loyally with his ration of bread, year after year, hardly ever catching sight of him. They heard him, though; they heard him sing. The Psalter was Antony’s constant companion. In a throwaway remark early in his text, Athanasius tells us that Antony while still a boy ‘attended faithfully to reading, conserving its benefit within’. He likely committed large chunks of Scripture to memory. They stood him in good stead in the desert. ‘The word of God is alive and active.’ How vital it is, then, to know it well and to interiorise it.
It was not by his own initiative that Antony eventually left the fort. His friends brought him out. They just could not bear it anymore. They had to know what had become of him. Had the solitude made him mad? Or angelic? They pulled down the door and cried, as if to a Lazarus: ‘Come out!’ We can imagine the suspense in the crowd when the hermit stepped forth ‘as from a shrine, as an initiate into mysteries, inspired by a divine breath’.
People were almost disappointed at first. Antony was recognisably the man they knew, ‘neither chubby for lack of exercise nor gaunt from fasting’. A new kind of light, however, shone from within him. His soul was pure, totally tranquil in the midst of popular excitement. At this point Athanasius makes a crucial remark. He says that Antony was ‘fully equal to himself, a man governed by the Word, abiding in a natural state.’
The Greek word I have translated as ‘Word’ is logos. It can equally well mean ‘reason’. That is the rendering you will find in most published versions. Still, I will argue for this stronger, more specific translation. Athanasius, remember, was a theologian of the incarnation. He had attended the Council of Nicaea, which defined the creed we still recite, spelling out the mystery of who Christ is, God from God yet born of Mary, truly divine and truly human.
The life of Antony illustrates what this tenet of faith means for concrete human living. ‘God became man so that man may be divinised.’ This Athanasian formula is no abstract speculation. It points to what St Paul teaches: that we are called to a new life in Christ. Christ truly lives in us. Recognising this, we do not become less ourselves, but more. Antony remained his well-loved self; but it was as if this self had been raised into a new dimension. He was no longer a mere individual in a queue of others. He had become ‘a man of God’. In him the life of God was palpably present. This presence revealed man in his natural state, which we are all called to reach.
No asceticism is an end in itself. The end is always to become Christlike and a Christ-bearer, to carry the living water of God’s light grace into an arid, heavy world.
The Son of God, incarnate in the Blessed Virgin Mary, giving his Word to angels, that they may carry it abroad. The Word remains alive and active. The photograph comes from a church in Puglia I visited years ago – I’ve forgotten its name.