Human life is marked by constant conflict. We can’t just float through life. We have to confront the temptations that life brings with it. And there will never be a time when we can rest on our laurels. Temptations will be with us till the point of death. In another passage Anthony says: “No one can make it to the kingdom of heaven untempted. Take away the temptations, and no one will find salvation.” Anthony
One of the great themes of monasticism is the desert. The monks deliberately went into the desert to be alone and to seek God. The ancients considered the desert the dwelling-place of demons. Anthony went into the desert to fight the demons on their own turf. It was a heroic decision to push his way into the realm of the demons — and a declaration of war on the demons that plagued him and sought
Around the year 270 C.E., while attending the liturgy, the twenty-year-old Anthony heard the words of Jesus: “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). The words struck the young man to the heart. He sold his inheritance and went off into the desert. First he locked himself up in an abandoned fort, cut off from all contact with the
‘A Lover of Knowledge’ Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Mark the Ascetic (5th c.), also known as St Mark the Monk. Although St Mark wrote some very important hesychastic treatises, which have been included in the Philokalia, little is known about his life. An ascetic and wonderworker, he was made a monk at the age of forty by his teacher, St John Chrysostom. Mark spent sixty more years in the Nitrian desert
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