St. Anthony lived in solitude, prayer

In a BBC television show, “Extreme Pilgrim,” an English vicar of 14 years seeks to find himself.

A 50-year-old divorced clergyman who likes to garden decides that one of the ways he can find himself and experience a deeper sense of meaning for his life is to live as St. Anthony of Egypt lived for a month.

St. Anthony of Egypt lived as a solitary hermit, living alone in a tomb and a cave in the Egyptian desert for decades.

While it sounds simple, in reality, the vicar realizes at the end of his noble experiment a solitary life can be difficult.

The vicar travels to Egypt and tries to reconnect with this early ascetic experience.

One can learn more about the vicar’s experience on a Youtube video: an Internet search can provide the video clip.

St. Anthony was one of the first monastics, a founder of the anchorite tradition of monasticism, living alone and in silence.

St. Anthony had no distractions and no means of escape from a life of prayer and solitude.

His Vita, or life, comes to us in both Latin and Greek translations, and influenced the creation and spread of monastic life in Egypt, the Middle East, and subsequently throughout Europe.

Anthony’s Vita, authored by Athanasius of Alexandria, dates to 360.

According to his Vita, in 251, Anthony’s parents, wealthy landowners along the Nile River in Egypt, died, leaving an 18-year-old alone with responsibility for the estate and his sister.

On hearing the Gospel, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, give it to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven,” Anthony was inspired and literally followed the Gospel command.

Placing his sister in the care of others and distributing his parent’s estate, he lived the next 43 years of his life in tombs and a cave in the desert.

For several decades Anthony lived in isolation, in abandoned Pharaonic tombs.

Anthony renounced everything and experienced extreme deprivation.

He also experienced temptations and visions while living alone.

The English vicar tries praying in one of the tombs. After several hours of darkness below ground, he moves on.

After several decades, St. Anthony heads out even farther into the desert to be alone, living in an abandoned Roman fort.

After trying the tombs, the vicar joins several desert nomads and travels several days to the monastery of St. Anthony.

Anthony founded what is today one of the oldest monasteries in Christianity in Egypt.

St. Anthony is considered one of the Desert Fathers, a group of early Egyptian and Palestinian monastics, at the dawn of the Christian era, whose teachings come to us via an ancient oral tradition.

The desert fathers, withdrawing from society, lived a life of solitude, charity and forgiveness, a life of prayer and Scripture.

One of the sayings attributed to St. Anthony: “Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make …. a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so, we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge. Otherwise, we labor in vain.”

Another saying of the desert fathers: “Take care to be silent. Empty your mind. Attend to your meditation in the fear of God, whether resting or working.”

The vicar finds at St. Anthony’s monastery a monk, Friar Lazarus, whose life is to model St. Anthony’s life, living in a cave 1,000 feet up a mountain, close to the monastery in the desert.

According to tradition, Friar Lazarus lives in the very cave that Anthony inhabited.

Friar Lazarus has dedicated himself to living as St. Anthony did, what the English vicar desires to do for a month.

The vicar wonders what inspired Friar Lazarus to live such a life.

Inspired by Old Testament prophets like Elijah and Christ’s 40 days in the desert, Friar Lazarus explains that life sometimes presents too many opportunities.

The life of St. Anthony, the life of living alone in the desert, is a life of emptiness.

The desert pares back the distractions of everyday life.

We are left with ourselves, our prayers and our thoughts, and stillness.

This is the life the vicar wants to experience.

For Friar Lazarus, as for St. Anthony, the meaning of life is found in an interior dialogue, a life of prayer.

Life becomes reflective.

Alone without distraction, the head quiets.

Silence becomes enjoyed as one goes into oneself to think about something beyond one’s self.

Reliance on little things and habits is stripped away.

Goodness is found in this struggle.

Time is provided to meditate on the choices one makes – good or bad.

The desert offers silence and no distractions.

The vicar learns that what provides numbness, in contrast to this meditative experience, is the rush of everyday life, an absence of spiritual struggle.

As the holiday season fades, look back on feasting and celebrations.

Pause and consider the rush, over indulgence, noise, consumerism and numbness that Christmas might have brought.

Who doesn’t want a silent, holy night?

My prayer for you is that in silence and stillness, like Elijah, St. Anthony and Friar Lazarus, you might be able to hear something holy.

In January on the calendar of the saints, Christians have as reminders the value of this meditative approach to holiness, St. Anthony the Great, one of the founders of monasticism, a life of simplicity and silence.

Only in our aloneness, can we experience the awesome mystery of the incarnation: God becoming man, so that humans might experience God.

Dr. David J. Gemmel is a deacon at St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Campbell.