St Antony

Cyprian died in 258,  seven years after Antony’s birth in 251. Antony, one of the first of the Desert Fathers, was one day in church he heard these words of Christ:

“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, an thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”

So, when he was about twenty years old,  he followed this injunction to the letter, sold all his possessions, donated the money to the poor, and joined himself to a group of ascetics living nearby. After about fifteen years he left this community for an old Roman fort, which he found at Pispir, and there spent the next twenty years living in complete solitude.  Over the years he gradually acquired a group of disciples, who lived in nearby caves and who regularly begged him to come out from his hermitage so that he could guide them. When eventually he yielded to their pleas, and emerged from solitude, far from being shrivelled an emaciated, as everybody had expected, he was found to be hearty both in body and mind.

After spending five years instructing his disciples in the ways of the spiritual life he once again retreated into solitude. He emeged from hir retreat once, in 311 when he went to Alexandria to encourage Christians who were suffering in the persecution of Maximinus., and again in 355, when he emerged at the instigation of Athanasius to preach against the Arian heresy; still a force thirty years after the Council of Nicea. The following year he died whilst still living in solitude.