32nd Sunday After Pentecost – St Anthony the Great

In the Holy Orthodox Church we have numerous Saints which are glorified and are set aside as examples for us to follow. Some of these Saints were Martyrs, who gave up their life for the faith. Others are Bishops who taught the truth of Orthodoxy in the face of heresy. We even have Priests, Monastics, and Nuns who are numbered among the holy ones. Some of these saints have well known lives and had numerous writings, while others had a very obscure life and only very little is known of them. Even though we have such a vast collection, we know that each of these lived out their lives to the fullest and now are in the presence of God in paradise.

One of these Saints, who we commemorate today, is one who is both a monastic and is known as the founder of wilderness monasticism. He is known in the Church as St. Anthony the Great. Because of his holy life, he was given the title "The Great" because of his great ascetic feats and love that he had for Christ.

St. Anthony was born in the year 251. He was born unto pious parents who had taken him to Church from a young age. He had great fervor for the Holy Church and for the things of God. However, at the age of 20, both of his parents had fallen asleep in the Lord. He had a younger sister whom he took care of. One Sunday, St Anthony attended the Church service, and durring the Gospel reading he heard the verse: " "If thou wouldst be perfect, sell what thou hast and give it to the poor; and thou wilt have treasure in heaven; and come follow after Me" (Mt. 19: 21). Hearing this, St Anthony was pierced in the heart and felt that this verse was directed at him. Immediately he took this verse and took action. He sold all his parents possessions, gave them to the poor, he took her sister and put her in the care of a nuns monastery, and abandoned the city life and went into the desert and began his ascetic feats.

For 85 years, St. Anthony lived in the desert and struggled to attain perfection in Christ. Even though he was glorified by the Church, this does not mean he was without struggle. In fact most of the time he was in the desert the devil tempted him. He was constantly barraged with thoughts to leave the desert and get married. Other thoughts came to him like did he do the right thing with his sister. He had thought if he did the wrong thing by leaving her in the monastery, maybe he should have taken care of her. All these and many others kept coming to him from the devil. But he prevailed and moved forward.

I want to read a story which I believe is very important in the life of St. Anthony: "When the holy abbot Antony lived in the desert, he was attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, Lord, I want to be saved, but these thoughts do not leave me alone. What shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved? A short while afterward, when he got up to go out, Antony saw a man like himself, sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, and then sitting down, braiding a rope, and then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and to reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, “Do this Antony, and you will be saved.”

At these words, Antony was filled with joy and courage, and he did this, and he was saved."

I think this story given to us in the life of St. Anthony is so important to us today. What does this story teach us? Well first off, it gives us exactly what we need to do in order to be saved. Do our work, after we do our work we pray. And then again do our work and then again pray. Our life is a cycle of prayer and work. It is important that we work, but it is also important that we pray. We do both as we need to.

Another lesson we can learn from this story is that filling our life with prayer and work is actually beneficial to ourselves. What tends to happen in the modern day is that we fill our lives with work, and then after we finish our work we rest and we forget to pray and to give glory to  God. So what happens in that time? That time of rest is when we tend to fall into the most sins. Our downtime seems to enable many of the sins that we fall into, like gossip, idle talk, or even sins of the flesh. When we keep ourselves busy with prayer and work we end up not having time to fall into these sins. In a sense, by keeping busy we fall less into sin and come closer to God.

So beloved in the Lord, let us keep ourselves busy with prayer and work. Let us make sure we don't neglect the things of God. And ultimately let us not let temptations given to us from the devil to make us forget God. We should stand vigilant and not forget God throughout the day. Pray to God to strengthen us and to give us the strength to continue on and overcome all the temptation of the evil one. As the text of the life of St. Anthony said he did these things and he was saved. Let us too do these things and we too shall be saved.