We celebrate the Feast of St. Anthony. Tolius Barnulus and Anthony the Great. There is the father of monasticity. And as we have that in all Christian beginnings here, beginnings that the Lord sets in his church for our salvation. Those beginnings are always beginnings in fullness, just as the apostolic church in her life anticipates what then later happens in the course of history, so also in the life of St. Anthony. The best of monasticism is contained, anticipated, shown to. so that his life has remained a constant powered source of vitality in the church especially for the monks now let's try to meditate on some points that life of Saint Anthony as written by Saint Athanasius

[01:26]

is to our consideration. Yes, right, the beginning of St. Anthony's conversion, he was the son of wealthy parents, at least parents with some means, and when they died at an early stage of his own life, he himself took over the administration of the fortune possessions that were left to him. And he certainly found there also the, what we could call the law of the world. The world is somehow an organization, chaotic organization, But in some way, an organization of human selfishness, in that organization of human selfishness, works through possession, through property.

[02:34]

Property is that, imposes its law upon man, and it's a constant struggle. It's not only that man has then to keep or expand his property, he has also to defend it. And again, he has to defend it against the organized power of the world that always work on the individual through taxes. And there was, in those days of the late Roman Empire, enormously evident and burdening factor for the life of the people in the world. I always have a suspicion that taxes have a great thing to do also with the flourishing of monasticism in these years.

[03:37]

But I mean, that's another conservation. We have to keep our eye on the fact, you know, that the that in that money organization, the expanding of property or the taxing from the part of the state, that their selfishness is being organized and the individual is held in the grip of selfishness. That is so important that we keep that in mind for the right understanding of what the world is and why the monk leaves the world, leaves this world. But he can never be taken out of the world. They are two different things. And maybe in some way also the life of St. Anthony shows that. So then here one day there is that famous episode that you all know, St.

[04:41]

Anthony, assists at the services in church, and the gospel of the wealthy youth is being read. And then it happens. He feels, realizes that this word, this gospel, is addressed to him, and it is being read for his sake. It hits him. That is the mystery of the word in action. In the life of St. Anthony, the beginning of his conversion, there we meet the realization of that sentence of Thelmaeus. The word of God is like a hammer and it smashes rocks. That is, I would say, is the beginning. It's the mystery of the word. but the mystery of the living word, which only can be received when that spark goes over and tells me, it's you who is met.

[05:56]

To me, this word is addressed. Now, that word was, if you want to be perfect, sell what you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me. And St. Anthony then did in the fullness of Christ's spirit that which the wealthy youth before Christ's death did not do. He drew out the lines, as it were, and fulfilled it in himself. He sells and he distributes his property. That is the cutting of the bond. Of those chains that keep him in the world. That is the step into liberty. That's the step into simplicity. Because he realizes nobody can serve two laws.

[06:58]

That's the step into the absolute. Now a new realm. The kingdom of God is open. And then the new law, as it were, of the kingdom of God takes a hold of him. But that new law is not an external chain, but that new law is an inner will out of which the inner urge rises to follow Christ. Come and follow me. And there then comes that important thing. How did St. Anthony understand the imitation of Christ, following Christ? And there the first step that he makes, that's the beautiful thing that we can observe in the life of St. Anthony. How slowly this happens. law of the kingdom of God develops in him.

[08:04]

There is first that basic, let us say, care, taking care of his thoughts, of his way of life, guarding it and watching it, being eager to, let's say, enrich it with the heavenly treasures. He finds Following Christ, that means to follow the various ways with which he sees people following around him. As St. Athanasius explains it, there was from one he learned kindness. Another one he began to admire for his zeal in prayer. Of another one, in another one he saw his calmness, his quiet. In another one he perceived the love for men.

[09:06]

In another one his watchfulness. In another one he learned the eagerness for the acquiring of divine doctrine. In another he admired for his steadfastness. and another, again another, for his fasting and his sleeping on the floor, so that his eyes opened to see the vestiges of Christ in various people, their virtues, their special way in which they cultivated the spiritual life in their hearts. how his idea was to have the spirit of all the just, just the same thing that we also see in the life of St. Benedict, learn from various people. And that is such an important thing also to recommend for our own, especially because what we are just sketching out here, that is what we could call St.

[10:16]

Anthony's novitiate, But that's such an important part of the novitiate in the monastery, that the novice is eager to admire virtues in others. What a responsibility also on the part of the community to offer that example. That's one of the things that in our community is a difficult thing. If we only have, we should have more older mature folks, real fathers, maybe with a long beard. But they probably are still very black. But then they get wives, you know, later on. That's when they become really attractive. So that would add so much, you know, to also to the fullness of our own community life.

[11:16]

Therefore... Let us pray that we reach that too. In the ways of the help of God, there's no reason why we shouldn't reach that, but these fathers in the monastic life. But as long as we don't have fathers, let us not weep that we don't have them, but let us do our best to provide the novices with a good example, not in order to shine for our own sake, you know, not to put up something that we see then with kind of pleasure reflecting in others or being admired by others. That's childish, that disturbs, that destroys the power of the example. But that is necessary. Younger people enter into a community in order to find examples, in order to admire the elders that they may follow.

[12:18]

But there is also the importance for the novices, for example, to get acquainted with the lives of the saints, lives of monks, the lives of the saints of the church, because then they pick up from this, they pick up from that. All under the, of course, under the discretion and guidance of an experienced master. So there he, that was his novice, he tries to imitate the various examples that he finds in various people. But then one thing happens, all of the things that he sees and that he reads, then one ideal rises before his mind, and that impresses him most, and that is the figure of Elias the prophet. Elias the prophet. He is the, in that way, the Old Testament father of monasticism.

[13:24]

In him he sees, as he says himself, the mirror, a mirror for his own life. There is the way to liberty. There is the strength and power which is obtained also through the fortification of the body. And that becomes in this stage then more and more the concern of St. Anthony. This basic principle that we also see in the life of St. Benedict, that the wounds of our body are as it were flowers in our spirit. And that the body has to be weakened because with the body concupiscence is weakened. And with the weakening of concupiscence rises the power of the soul. That is an old law.

[14:27]

That is a law which we should keep in mind, also all of us. But always also that, as St. Anthony himself says, there are people who weaken their bodies by fasting. But they are far from God because they do not observe discretion. So St. Anthony knew of the danger that also is contained just in the exercise and practice of bodily mortifications. Just as somebody may shun bodily mortifications because he wants to escape the law of the cross he does not want to give his body as a pleasing sacrifice to God and therefore gets stuck in the power of his concupiscence of all those emotions that are connected and live in the body but

[15:36]

On the other hand, the weakening of the body, the fasting, the works of mortification, also have some, let us say, law in them which may be dangerous. And that is that a man gets the feeling he's never doing enough of it. There is a law, say, of quantity. There is the law of of practicing or making even sometimes sure of one's strength, which the devil then uses like a stick to drive man ahead, until he loses the perspective and his measure. He tries to carry God's burden. That is dangerous. That is diamond.

[16:39]

We can in that way never, that's not our, been given to our power to carry God's burden. So then St. Anthony in this stage then is besieged by temptations. That is the stage which is characterized by the counter-attack, as it were, of the devil, he who tries through temptations to unsettle, unseat the mind. And there is the great danger then, which St. Anthony has experienced also so vividly in him, that these temptations are apt to cause in the soul a state of sadness. The feeling of being far from God. The feeling which the devil of course tries to suggest to the soul.

[17:45]

This there is your real self. Your real self becomes manifest in the evil thoughts that rise out of the bottom of the heart. But St. Anthony knew the answer to what we may call the problem of temptation. He said, take away temptation and nobody will be saved. So true, because temptation is, has to be made an instrument in the hands of the spirit. It is the way in which God tests the soul like gold in the furnace. That again is an inescapable law, the law of sanctity. God is a living fire.

[18:47]

Those who approach him have to be tested like gold in the surface, in the furnace, are being tested like gold in the furnace. necessary to reach purity, to give to the soul that the soul may get that what St. Paul calls the weight of glory, that the firmness and stability of the soul may be reached. The growth of the soul is only possible through the overcoming of obstacles. And therefore temptations are necessary. We have to go through fire that we may be tested. But we should all make all these temptations really a step, a phase to which we pass. a tunnel on which we always see the exit on the other side.

[19:52]

Let us not consider temptations as the threat of an unending status in which we are caught. That's wrong. Temptations rise They impose themselves upon us with great urgency, with the idea of lasting all the time, but they don't. They come and they go. Therefore, we meet them in that fullness of the Spirit with courage and with hope. Since all these mistakes that I just described, that happened in the life of St. Anthony at the time when he, after selling his possessions, lived in a poor little hut at the outskirts of the village. He did a new step. He went away when his claim grew.

[20:56]

He lived again in his love for solitude and for separation from men. He went to what we call the sepulcher, the sepulcher. And he lived there in the cave in the sepulcher. And there he began another stage in his spiritual life. And then was his being delivered to the attacks of the, what would be called the powers of the air. the principalities of these darknesses. They attacked him, they beat him, as we see it in that beautiful picture that should have those things around somewhere. We had last year, you know, those customs come and go, actually, it depends on the people. And there is, you know, Grunewald's useful Life of St. Anthony.

[21:57]

And they are the St. Anthony's battle with the demons in the cave. The attack of the enemy and his being delivered. A weak and helpless being into their hands. But then out of that, you know, two rises there. new wisdom new confidence new fullness of the spirit the spirit of the resurrection is really as far as one can see there as far as see it in the life that of saint other natures when he lived in that sepulcher then arose in him what we may call the power of the resurrection power of the resurrection, that power to which Christ had promised his apostles, that they would be masters over the demons and over their attacks.

[23:00]

And there we find these beautiful words of St. Anthony that kind of summarize his experience when he say, there does not be frightened by the demons. There does not be sad as if we were lost. Let us remember that we have been redeemed and that the Lord is with us, who fights in us against them and overcomes them. As long as He is with us, our enemies are powerless. The evil spirits take different shapes according to our own moods. Do they find us despondent? Then they try to increase our discouragements by their fantasies. What we think in such moments of ourselves they try to exaggerate. But when they find us joyfully in the Lord, busy in the contemplation of our future blessedness, in the thought that all is in the hands of the Lord,

[24:11]

and that no evil spirit has any power over a Christian, then they turn away from a soul which they see guarded by such thoughts. Then comes the last step from the sepulchre into the desert, into the desert, the horrible desert. That desert, the poetry of which the man of the Mediterranean had not discovered at that time. I'm tempted to say just as it took the English to discover it, as they were the first to go into the Alps and climb the glaciers. But the Romans despised and were horrified by both, by the Alps and by the desert. that were the fortresses of the devil here in this world. For St. Anthony, it was again, you know, that even the sepulcher that he had chosen was not far enough from the people.

[25:18]

His love for solitude compelled him, that inner love of the kingdom of God was driving him further and further, step after step, into solitude, that complete solitude of the desert, where he finds a little oasis sufficient to sustain him, where he then starts what we may call his own little redeemed world, free from all the chains of that modern world, of that organization that I tried to describe At the beginning, here he organizes, as it were, his own little world in the desert, in the oasis. The first ones who associated with him, first they destroyed his garden, but then he spoke good words to them, and they were converted, and they were the animals among the beasts.

[26:27]

And they were the first way to understand him. So there, that little paradise, that little paradise of a new world arises around him. It's now not only the resurrection of the mind, but now it is, well, the consecration, the consecration of that place where he lives. He says at that time when they say, now, why can you be here without anything to help you? What do you do? You have no books. And he says, nature is my book. In it, I may read whenever I'd like to hear what God speaks. In other words, here in the desert, in that new life, the union The life of union starts. The peace, as it were, comes to him.

[27:28]

That peace and harmony, which also shows then, as they all who came to him realized, shows in his face that radiant cheerfulness. So in this life of union, it is a life of unceasing prayer. Then he says that beautiful word, Why do you rise so soon, O son, to draw me away from the uncreated light? Or the other word, This is not yet perfect prayer when man understands himself or what he is praying. So in other words, what no ear has heard, nor eye has seen, but never entered into a man's heart, that God has prepared for those who love him.

[28:30]

And that depth of union with God, that reaching into the mystery of the invisible, filling him with tremendous inner peace and joy. That is then what shines in his face, in his body. He was, as his contemporaries said, he was like a physician whom God had given to Egypt, who came to him sad and did not return full of joy. who came weeping and did not forget his sorrow, who came full of anger and was not converted to friendship. That was the time in which he radiates, not only into those who came to him to visit, but also then those who came to him to sit down at his feet, became a master, he had his disciples, gave his doctrines,

[29:38]

that wonderful, simple doctrine of monasticism, the core and center of the monastic life. Live as if daily expecting death. We can see that also in the rule of St. Benedict. Live as if daily expecting death. For every day start all over again and say to yourself, Blessed be the God before whom I stand this day. And never think you have done great things for God. That is the law of peace. That is the doctrine of the monk. And in this way we can see St. Anthony rising once he has cut the chain that fetters, that keep him under the dominion of the world by selling all his possessions, getting rid of property.

[30:48]

Then the law of the kingdom of God takes over and leads him through good example through the mortification of his body through the being delivered into the hands of the demons and not overcome although being helpless through participation in the mystery of the death and the resurrection of Christ in the second really his baptism and then going into the desert, into the oasis, and there then this consecration, the work of consecration, the blessing comes. The blessing comes reflected in that little place that he has in the peace with the animals, the peace of the messianic times that Isaiah has seen in his visions.

[31:52]

irradiating as Egypt's good physician. And the master who gives that word of life, that good word into the hearts of the disciples. So after such a great and wonderful life, then his death comes and his last words, now goodbye, dear children. Anthony passes and is not with you anymore.

[32:21]

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