“He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely […]

Some of the brothers came to Abba Anthony to tell him the dreams they had seen, and to learn from him if they are true, or from demons. Now they had a donkey, and it died on the way. When they finally came to the elder, he said to them first, How did the little […]

“There is an old saying: ‘Excesses meet.’ Too much fasting and too much eating come to the same end. Keeping too long a vigil brings the same disastrous cost as … sluggishness… Too much self-denial brings weakness and induces the same condition as carelessness. Often I have seen men who would not be snared by […]

It is a perilous time to be a moderate. Less than a week ago the above comic was published. It well expresses the dilemma of the moderate, but it expresses it even better than I thought when I first read the comic. You see, to my surprise, many of those who read the comic read […]

A brother said to Father Anthony, “Pray for me,”  The elder said to him, “I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.” 38 Sayings of Saint Anthony the Great But, Saint Anthony discerned something about […]

A brother in a monastery was falsely accused of fornication, and he got up and went to Abba Anthony. And the brothers came from the monastery to heal him and take him back, and they started to charge that he did so. But he defended himself that he did no such thing. Now Abba Paphnutius […]

“Abba Anthony said, ‘A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”‘” The 38 Counsels of St. Anthony the Great The advent of post-modernism various decades ago set us on the path to […]

“A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him, ‘Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.’ So he did. The old man then […]