Dr Augustine Sokolovski
The feast day of Saint Anthony is easy to remember. It is the penultimate day of January for churches that, like ours, follow the Julian calendar. The memory of St. Anthony is celebrated on January 30, as well as on the penultimate Saturday before Great Lent, on the feast of All Fathers and Mothers who shone in asceticism and monasticism. The penultimate Saturday before Lent is the commemoration of all holy ascetics. Saturday is a day of rest; Lent is a time of repentance and asceticism. The holy ascetics repented and fasted a lot, they rested in God, for God rested in them.
Anthony, Paul, and Pachomius, are considered fathers of the orthodox monasticism. Their memory has been preserved thanks to the fact that one of the ancient authors, one person, as in the case of Anthony or Paul, or various sources, as in the case of Pachomius, wrote their lives. This is very important. Holiness is the memory preserved by other people of the presence of grace in a holy person. Christian holiness cannot be separate, egoistic, or abstract. Holiness is the manifestation of preserved memory of love for one's neighbor.
The Life of Saint Anthony was written by the great Father of the Church, Athanasius of Alexandria (295-373). Like Anthony, Athanasius also went down in the history of the Church with the name “the Great.” Let us remember right away that the memory of Athanasius himself, together with Cyril of Alexandria, is celebrated by the Church on the day after the memory of Anthony, on the last day of January, December 31, in churches that follow the Julian calendar.
Let us remember three other dates. Saint Jerome continued the chronology of church history begun by Eusebius of Caesarea and dated Anthony's death to 356. The Life of Anthony was written by Athanasius around 360. Anthony lived a very long life, even by our standards, reaching the age of 105. According to Athanasius, like the biblical prophets, Anthony bequeathed that after his death, the resting place of his body should not be found. Like the prophets, he left Athanasius and a few others with pieces of his clothing. There was a great deal of prophetic in Anthony's life. There was also something deeply philosophical about him. Like the ancient philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and, of course, Socrates, he set examples of behavior for all subsequent generations of Orthodox monks in both the East and the West. This is extremely relevant, because philosophy literally means love of wisdom. And the wisdom of God is Jesus Christ.