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PATROLOGOS edutainment

On a fine contest you have entered with the monks in Egypt, since you have decided to measure up to them and even to surpass them with your virtuous ascetic life. For by now you have monasteries as well and the monastic life is well represented through your paradigm. 

Justifiably therefore someone could praise this purpose of yours, and through your prayers hopefully God will bring it to fulfillment. 

But since you have asked to hear by me as well about the life of the blessed Antony, how he began his ascetic life, and who he was before this, and what was the end of his life, and if they are true the things that are said about him, so that, in this way, you also might imitate his zeal, for this reason, with great willingness I have accepted your request. 

Because for me also it is a great the profit and the benefit that I receive by simply the remembrance of Antony. And I know that yourselves as well, as soon as you hear about him, along with the admiration that you will feel for the man, you will also wish and crave to emulate his purpose. Because Antony's way of life is for the monks an excellent standard for the ascetic life. 

Do not be incredulous, therefore, about what you have heard of him, by people who have narrated those things to you, but rather you should consider that just a few of his feats you have heard by them; Because just so much these people have managed to recount to you. 

And me too, for my part, since I was exhorted by you, I will send you through this letter of mine as much as I could write down, recalling a few things about him; you however do not stop asking questions to those who sail with the boats towards your territories. For perhaps, in this way, that is, by each one saying what he knows, it will be achieved to some extent to be properly completed the history of him. 

And I wanted, after I received your letter, to invite some of the monks, and especially those who used to visit him very often, in order to learn, maybe, something more and thus be able to write to you a more complete narrative. 

But since the season for the maritime voyages was coming to its end and the letter-bearer was in a hurry to depart, for this reason I hastened to write this letter to your piety, with everything that I myself know and everything that I was able to learn from him, for I have seen him many times since I lived next to him for quite some time and in fact I was pouring water over his hands for him to wash himself. 

And in every instance I took care for everything to be true of the things that I wrote, so that in case someone hears more than these he would not disbelieve and in case someone learns less than what he should have learned he would not disregard the man. 

Antony was an Egyptian as to his origin. His parents were of noble descent and owners of considerable property. And since they were Christians, he also was reared in a Christian manner. 

And while he was a little child, he was raised near his parents and he knew nothing else other than them and his home. But when he grew older and became a youth and he grew quite tall, he didn't desire at all to learn letters, because he wanted to avoid interactions with the other children of his age; all his yearning was to remain an unaffected person living in his home, as it is written in the Scripture for Jacob as well. 

He was going to the church, however, together with his parents and he was neither lazy, during his childhood, nor was he contemptuous about anything as he was advancing in age, but he was rather very obedient to his parents and he was paying great attention to the reading of the holy books and he was gaining great benefit for himself from these readings. 

And he was neither pestering his parents for food of various and luxurious kinds, as a child of parents with sufficient property, nor did he seek the pleasures associated with food, but he was content with what he would find and he wasn't looking for anything more. 

After the death of his parents, he remained alone with a very young sister of his. He was then eighteen or even twenty years old and he was looking after the household now and of his sister. 

Six months had not passed yet since the death of his parents, when one Sunday morning while he was going to the church, as was his custom, he was pondering in his mind, and as he walked he was thinking, how the apostles abandoned everything and they followed the Savious; 

and how the christians in the book of the Acts were selling their possessions and were bringing and placing the proceeds at the feet of the apostles in order for them to distribute them to the poor, and what and how great of a reward awaits for them in the heavens. 

So while he pondering these things, he entered the church where at that moment it coincided that the Gospel was being read aloud and then he heard the Lord saying to the rich man; «If you wish to be perfect go and sell all your possessions and distribute them to the poor and come follow me and you will have tresors to the heavens». 

And Anthony, as if he had been given the gift by God to commemorate the saints and as if it had been read for him only this evangelical passage, he immediately went out of the church, and the properties that he had from his ancestors, he gave them away for free to his fellow villagers, so that they would not disturb him or his sister in the least; 

he had about three hundred arable fields which were fertile and very good; and all the other movable property they had he sold them all, and after he gathered enough money, he gave them to the poor. He only kept some for his sister. 

And when he entered again in the church and he heard the Lord saying «Do not be anxious about tomorrow», in the evangelical reading, he couldn't bear to wait anymore and after he exited the temple, he shared also those to the poor. 

He entrusted his sister to the care of some familiar and faithful virgins, and after he handed her over to a convent in order to be raised, he himself began the ascetic life near his home, giving good heed to himself and patiently living his life. 

And he began practicing asceticism near his home, because back then, there were not yet organized monasteries in Egypt and no monk had known yet the great desert. Therefore, every one who wished to pay attention to himself, he would practice asceticism in isolation not very far away from his own village. 

Now, at that time, there was an elder at the neighbouring village, who, since his youth, was living ascetically as a monk. As soon as Anthony saw him, his zeal got immediately ignited to imitate him. And in the beginning, he also began by remaining in places proximate to the village. 

And when he would isten from there that somewhere there was some great ascetic hermit, he would go and search for him, like the wise bee. And he would not return to the place that he lived, if he wouldn't see him first and he wouldn't receive some spiritual provision from him, that would be useful to him on the path of virtue. 

So while he was living there in the beginning of his ascetic life, he was constantly pondering how he would not occupy himself anymore with the family matters, nor remember his relatives, but how to gather instead all his desire and all his zeal in the intensity of the ascetic life. 

And he was working with his hands, because he heard that the one who doesn't work should not eat either. And one part of the product from his work he spent it for his food, and the rest of it he distributed it to the poor. 

And he was continually praying, since he heard that each one must pray in private and unceasingly while he is working. And he was very attentive during the reading of Scripture, in order to memorize everything and not let anything escape from him from the writings, and in order to use from then on his memory instead of the books. 

Anthony, therefore, was living in this way and he was loved by all. But he was also practicing sincere obedience towards the great men of zeal, that he was visiting and he was applying upon himself the advantages of the zeal and of the ascesis of each one of them. 

To some eremite he would discern his character of graciousness, while to some other he would see his intense willingness in the prayers. To one he would appreciate the lack of irritability and to another the philanthropy. He was paying attention both to the one who was doing vigils, as to the other who loved the learning and the studies. 

And he would admire one for his patience, and another for the fasts and for his sleeping on the ground. And upon one he would observe the meekness, and of another the forbearance. And for all the monks together he would notice the piety towards Christ and the love that they had to each other. 

And thus full of spiritual gains he would return to his own ascetic hermitage, and he would keep reminiscing about all this and he would study everything in his mind and he would make sure to implement it all upon himself. 

With the monks of his own age he would not argue for any reason, and the only courteous competition that he would show towards them was only about how to not appear inferior to them in the virtues. And he was doing this in such manner, that he wouldn't grieve anyone of them, but they would also rejoice with him for this effort of his. 

All your fellow villagers therefore and the good people with whom he associated, when they were seeing him living in such a way, they were calling him friend of God, and others loved him as their own child, others as their brother. 

The envious devil however, as a hater of all good that he is, could not bear seeing such intention and good disposition in this young man. Thus, all the cunning tricks, that he has well studied since the old times, he attempted to apply them against Antonio as well. 

In the beginning therefore he was tempting him in order to distract him from the ascetic life, suggesting into his mind the memory of his estates, the care for his sister, the love of the relatives, the love for the money, the ambition, the pleasure of the variety of foods and the other comforts of life, and finally, the strictness of the virtue and the fact that a great effort is required for its acquisition. 

He also projected to him the weakness of the body and the length of the life, which is short however for the conquest of the virtue. In general, he was causing him a great obfuscation of thoughts into his mind, with the intention to distract him from the right intention. 

But when the enemy saw that he was completely incapable to overcome the good predisposition of Anthony, and rather be utterly crushed by the firmness of him, and be overturned by his great faith and drop defeated by the continuous prayers of Anthony, 

so then, relying on his weapons which focus their action in the area of the human body under the navel of the belly and boasting about them, because these are the first traps he is setting up against the young hermits, he comes again with hostile dispositions against the young man, noisily disturbing him by night, and troubling him in the daytime, so that even those who were watching him could perceive the battle that was going on between those two. 

Because while the devil submitted dirty thoughts to him, Anthony was rejecting them with prayers. And while he was exhorting him by tickling his senses, Anthony was blushing out of shame, and he was fortifying his body well, with the faith, the prayers and the fasts. 

And the wretched devil, had the patience to transform himself even into a woman at night, and to mimic all the female behaviours, merely in order to deceive Anthony. 

But he was quenching inside himself the flame of that delusion of the devil, by remembering Christ and his noble origin, which, being a christian, he ought it to Him, and also by thinking that, the soul is something mental and immaterial and not carnal. 

Another time again, the enemy secretly suggested to him the sweetness of pleasure, but he was pretending being angered and saddened, and remembering in his mind the threat of hell and the misery that the worm causes, and setting these things in opposition to the temptations, he would pass through them unharmed. 

And all these were taking place in order to humiliate the enemy. Because the one who thought that he would become equal to God, was now made a buffoon by a youngster. And the one who boasted that he is the lord of the flesh and the blood of the humans, was now knocked down by a man who was wearing flesh. 

Because the Lord was working within Anthony, the Lord who put on flesh for our sake and with His body He gave us the victory against the devil, so that each man who is really struggling can say; «It is not I, but the grace of God which is in me». 

Finally, since the devil did not succeed in this way either in defeating Antony, but instead he saw himself being expelled from the heart of the young man, gnashing his teeth, as the Scripture says, and like someone mad, as he is dark in the mind, such then appears in his imagination as well, as a black child. 

And as if he was giving way, he wouldn't enter his thoughts any more, because that deceitful one had been expelled from there, but assuming now a human voice he was saying to him; 

I have certainly deceived many and even more of them I have defeated, but now that I wanted to wage my attack against you and on your spiritual labors, I got defeated, as if I had to fight against many. 

Then, when Anthony asked him; «Who are you who stand next to me and you say these words?», he immediately emitted pitiful shouts saying; «I am the friend of fornication, I am the one who sets the ambushes and I cause arousing and tickling to the young people, and I have been called the spirit of fornication». 

How many people who wanted to live with prudence I have deceived! How many people who wanted to live with temperance I persuaded them to sin with tickling exhortations and arousings! 

I am that spirit, on account of which the prophet accuses the Israelites who fell and says; «The spirit of fornication has deceived you», because it was because of me they had fallen into the sin. I am the one who has disturbed you many times and on all these occasions I was defeated by you. 

And after Anthony thanked the Lord and received great courage against the devil, he said to him; 

So, you are very despicable, because not only you are blank of mind but you are also powerless like a little child. From now on therefore I'm not going to worry about you; «For the Lord is my helper and I will despise my enemies». 

As soon as the black one heard these, he fled, choking down his voices, and fearing even to come close to Anthony. 

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