ANTHONY THE GREAT

Monasticism is by no means a sacrament, since recognizing it as such would mean that a person who had taken monastic vows would remain a monk regardless of what he did in life. It is impossible to find a person who could be called the first baptized person in history. Even Jesus, who was baptized by John in the Jordan River, according to the Gospel, followed the example of those who were baptized before Him. Baptism is a sacrament; it is objective. Monasticism is not a sacrament; it is subjective. At the same time, Church tradition and the consensus of the Fathers affirm that St. Anthony was the first Christian monk.

1 “I will make him a pillar in the church of my God,” says the Apocalypse (Rev. 3:12). On January 30, the penultimate day of January and the eve of the commemoration of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, the Church celebrates the memory of one of its most precious saints, Anthony the Great. Anthony was the founder of monasticism, an apostle of true conversion, a champion of Nicene Orthodoxy, and a hero of the faith for all times. The life of Anthony was known to Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom: and was read by Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. His example became the prototype of Christian asceticism for all time. The Lord made him a pillar of His Church. 2 Anthony was born in 251 and passed away in 356. He lived through the era of persecution of Christians by pagan Rome, he witnessed the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great, the Council of Nicaea, and the era of dogmatic disputes. Anthony followed Jesus in his youth. His parents were Christians. At the age of eighteen, he was orphaned. Hearing in church the call of the Gospel reading to give away all his possessions and give to the poor (Matthew 19:21), Anthony did so: he distributed the land left by his parents to the inhabitants of his village, sold his movable property, gave the money to the poor, and left part of it to his sister. But the voice of the Gospel followed him, giving him no peace. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:34) were the next words he heard in the church. So, Anthony went into the Egyptian desert. 3 The imagination of his contemporaries was shaken by the stories described in his biography about the demons who visited Anthony, sometimes frightening him, and sometimes flattering him to leave his solitude. In the presence of Anthony, the incorporeal evil seemed to become jealous of the flesh-and-blood man who opposed it and this evil began to materialize, taking on ugly, distorted, and terrifying forms of demonic apparitions. The name Anthony literally means “opponent.” At first, Anthony lived near a village, but then he withdrew to tombs far from people. There he spent a long, secluded, but eventful life. Being outside the world, he seemed to keep his hand on the pulse of the heart of the Church and the Universe. Anthony supported Nicene Orthodoxy, named after the confession of faith of the First Ecumenical Council, which took place in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor in 326. In 2025, this event marked 1700 years ago. This is a remarkable indicator of how long ago Anthony lived. Thanks to the Communion of Saints, this distance from us is no longer felt. Thanks to the Communion of Saints, which is professed in the Apostles’ Creed, this enormous temporal distance is not felt. How can we not recall Saint Augustine, who mentions Anthony in his Confessions, who once said in a sermon: “In Jesus, the Son of God, who was outside of time, became temporal himself in order to free us from time.” 4 A contemporary of Diocletian’s Great Persecution (303–313), Anthony, according to hagiographers, came from the desert to Alexandria to strengthen those who had been captured and tortured for their faith in Christ. Perhaps Anthony himself longed to suffer in testimony of spoken words and spilled blood. But God did not hear him. Even the church canons very early on forbade Christians from seeking martyrdom themselves and provoking their persecutors. Therefore, Anthony, who was then 60 years old, stood at the walls of Alexandria, “the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified” (Rev. 11:8), in the indecision of a timid, always youthful question about whether the Lord would accept his sacrifice. This is how the Book of Revelation figuratively speaks of all human civilization. 5 Anthony greatly helped the Church. The legalization of Christianity awakened the previously dormant monster of dogmatic aberrations, which soon gave rise to the Arian controversies. The Church of Alexandria was a very exceptional Church, in which presbyters at that time had great spiritual authority. Ancient written evidence has survived showing that when the presiding bishop died, the priests together with other bishops laid their hands on the candidate’s head and thus appointed his successor. Even the rites of ordination of a priest and a bishop did not differ in content. One of these priests was a contemporary of Anthony named Arius (256–336). He taught that the Word of God, the Logos, the incarnate Son of God, was created. He taught that the Word of God, the Logos, the incarnate Son of God, was created. The new image of the Christian Emperor, a reflection of divine omnipotence, as many believed, would inevitably lead to the recognition of the absolute monarchy of God the Father, transforming the Son, the Logos, the God-man Christ, into a brilliant but fictitious “Artificial Intelligence” created by the Sovereign God—an instrument of the Almighty’s unlimited will to power. Therefore, the aging Emperor Constantine, his sons, and his successors ultimately supported the Arians. History knows no subjunctive mood. But one can speculate what would have happened to monasticism if Arianism had finally prevailed. The ideal of Jesus, not just a teacher, but God who became man so that man could know the divine within himself, greatly inspired monastics. It was this ideal that attracted a huge number of sincere believers to the ascetic interpretation of Christianity, which monasticism ultimately became. The final dismantling of Arianism took place at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381. After Nicaea, Orthodox Christians had to wait many years. Anthony and his monks became true apostles of this expectation. 6 Anthony is remembered by the Church as the father of all monastics. But we would hardly know anything about the Great Anthony if he had not met the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, on his life’s journey. Polemists reported that because of his dark skin, short stature, and baldness, envious heretical opponents nicknamed him “homunculus”. But the “Immortal One”, which is what the name Athanasius literally means, immortalized Anthony by recording the story of his life in 360, just four years after the ascetic’s death. Athanasius gave Anthony immortality in the memory of the Church. Monasticism was Athanasius’ first love. But he did not become a monk. After all, in the mind of the Ancient Church, monasticism and episcopate were incompatible. Athanasius was the bishop of the great city of Alexandria. But it was among the monastics that he sought refuge in exile and support in his numerous confrontations with the heretical authorities. Anthony strengthened Athanasius in his trials and tribulations. 7 During the time of Anthony and Athanasius, Egypt was the center of the world, second only to Rome as the seat of apostolic origin, a glorious part of Mediterranean civilization. Anthony the Great is the father of all monastics. But Anthony has his own disciples, who are especially close to him in direct historical succession. “Anthony was a native of Egypt,” begins the Life of Athanasius. The monks of the monasteries he founded in Egypt, representatives of the so-called pre-Chalcedonian church tradition, are the children of Anthony. Building on the previous Alexandrian tradition, the Church of Egypt once rejected the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451). With the support of the monastics and the people, Alexandria was able to stand firm in the doctrinal battle with the Empire of Constantinople concerning Christology. A division occurred into two Patriarchates, Coptic and Greek, and Eastern Orthodoxy remains divided to this day.