Abba Anthony the Great

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Abba Anthony is also known as St Anthony the Great or St Anthony the Abbot. He was born in Egypt around the year 250. He came from a wealthy family, but after the death of his parents he gave away all his possessions and began the life of an ascetic. He spent several years in the family home and then moved to an ancient tomb some distance from his home village. There he began to attract people who wanted to imitate his way of life.

He changed his residence several times, but each time his followers found him and followed him. They formed the first groups of Anachorets.

During his life he went to Alexandria twice. Once to support the Christians there during the persecution. The second time to support the Patriarch Athanasius in his dispute with the Arians. It was Athanasius who wrote his life.

What is striking is the great discrepancy between the way St Anthony is represented in iconography and the image of him that emerges from the writings that have survived. Iconography focuses on images of the monk, sometimes very fantastic, attacked by Satan and depicted as various monsters. In contrast, his writings are full of peace.

Undoubtedly, St Anthony experienced the action of Satan in his life. This action was clear and often painful. All the battles he had to fight became a source of strength for him. For painters, these battles are mainly the inspiration for images that are meant to inspire the imagination. For Anthony, however, they were primarily internal.

Satan does not act openly. Such action would be detrimental to him. He prefers subtleties, half-truths and subtle inspirations to 'standing with his visor open'. But original sin makes us vulnerable to his actions. In each person, Satan finds a "beachhead" from which to launch his attacks. He acts through temptation, which concerns the particular weakness that man carries within him. He encourages man to succumb to this weakness until it becomes an addiction, and then he brings evil into man's life and into the lives of those around him. A common tactic of his is to present evil as something good. He wants to confuse minds and consciences with his actions.

But man is not defenceless. He can seek out and recognise his weaknesses. He can also identify the places from which Satan attacks the innocence of another person. There is, however, a danger in this method - because in a defensive struggle, the same methods are very often used by the attacker out of necessity.

The hermits, including Saint Anthony, fought this battle in a different way. They looked for the influence of Satan within themselves and fought on that basis. This battle has a special characteristic. It can only be undertaken out of love for God. It involves great difficulties and the benefits are sometimes elusive and hard to see. This motivation (love of God) is important because it is impossible to fight Satan effectively if the motive for this fight is the pursuit of perfectionism or any other selfish motivation.

What was this like for St Anthony?

Once, when he fell into discouragement and inner darkness, he had a vision of someone like him quietly interspersing his work with prayer. This encouraged him to persevere. When he wanted to delve into God's orchestration of individual people, to look for patterns in the workings of divine providence, he received a vision telling him to stop. Thus Anthony experienced two temptations: despair and complacency in judging God's judgments. His victory over them was not on the basis of his strength, but as a result of God's clear help. His ability to resist temptation, then, is an ability that is well transformed into a strong habit of relying on God's help.

Anthony was characterised by a constant search for closeness to God. This closeness, however, turns out to be difficult - in the sense that a close life with God becomes a source of light that illuminates all that is unholy in us. It offers an experience of weakness that can become a source of despair. This was the experience of our Saint, who, with God's help, found the way to overcome this temptation. It is the recognition of one's own powerlessness - humility. The paradox of this situation is that the encounter with evil in oneself becomes the gateway to the triumph of God. For Anthony, then, temptation became an opportunity not so much for a fall as for a victory made possible by God and his grace. He sums up this experience by saying "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being tried. Take away the temptation and no one will be saved".

This is the first lesson we receive from him. To learn to call the sin in our lives by its name, to recognise it as our weakness, and to entrust it to God so that he may, by his grace, free us from this weakness.