Into the wilderness
Anthony of Egypt
Anthony is about eighteen years old, walking to church six months after his parents have died, when he hears the gospel reading: If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and come, follow me.
He takes it literally. He goes home, gives away the family farm — three hundred fertile acres — and arranges care for his younger sister. Then he begins to apprentice himself to older ascetics who live on the edge of his Egyptian village, learning fasting and prayer and vigil from each of them in turn.
He is not yet satisfied. At thirty-five, he goes further. He crosses the Nile and moves into an abandoned fort at a place called Pispir. He seals himself in. His friends throw bread over the wall twice a year. He stays for twenty years.
What happens inside that fort — the visions, the spiritual battles, the dark nights — Athanasius will record in the biography that will be read across the empire and launch a thousand imitators. Anthony himself says almost nothing about it. What comes out the other side of those twenty years is a man so obviously at peace, so clearly finished with the anxieties that consume ordinary human life, that when he finally emerges, people come from hundreds of miles to simply be near him.
He is not wild-eyed. He is not broken. He is, by every account, luminous. Balanced. Serene.
He lives to over a hundred. The desert will fill with monks before he dies.
“Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three things and you will be saved.”
— Anthony of Egypt, c. 3rd–4th century
“Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Anthony heard a gospel reading that most people in church that morning also heard. Most of them went home and did nothing different.
He went home and gave away the farm.
This is not a call for everyone to become a desert monk. The tradition is clear that Anthony's path is a particular calling, not a universal command. But his story forces the question: when was the last time you heard something in scripture that asked something real of you — and you actually did it?
The distance between Anthony and everyone else in that church was not knowledge. They heard the same words. It was the willingness to take the words seriously enough to act.
What have you heard that you have not yet done?