Only its general features are indicated here.

God's election of St. Anthony to the work he had accomplished was revealed in him as a child. His quiet, warm-hearted disposition, inclined to solitude, kept him away from the childish frolics and pranks of companionship, and kept him in the house before the eyes of his parents, who watched over him like the apple of their eye. And so he grew up, in this detachment from people, leaving the house only to go to church. In such a mood and order of life, the grace of God, received in baptism, acted unhindered on the edification of the spirit and without any special effort on its part. It is very natural that he early felt the sweetness of living according to God and became inflamed with Divine desire, as St. Athanasius says.

Finding no obstacles to such a life in the home – for the parents were of the same spirit – St. Anthony did not show any desire to leave him while his parents were alive, and they relieved him of the inevitable cares of life. But when they departed to God, he, remaining the greatest, had to take upon himself the care of managing the house and feeding his sister. This immediately made him feel the great difference between life in God and the life of many cares, and laid a firm foundation for his desire to leave everything behind and live only for God. The word of the Lord, heard by him in this mood in church: "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell thy possessions, and give to the poor, and have treasure in heaven" (Matt. 19:21) – and then another: "Do not pray for the morning" (Matt. 6:34), sealed this desire with the seal of God; for in those words he heard God's answer to the questions of his conscience, and at the same time God's command and blessing for the fulfillment of the innermost desires and aspirations of his heart. He made up his mind with unrepentant determination, and, having given everything away, began to live for God alone.

St. Anthony spent the first years of his worldly life in the same way as other ascetics, known at that time, spent it, learning everything from them. It is known that worldly asceticism, in which, having renounced all worldly cares, one is zealous only for how to please the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:32), was established in the Church of God from its very foundation, as an essential necessity in its structure, and from the Holy Apostles it received the first fundamental laws. But at first, ascetics, as people were called, who devoted themselves to this kind of life, renouncing the world and worldly cares, remained in their homes, only secluded themselves somewhere in an inconspicuous corner, and there they devoted themselves to prayers, contemplation of God, fasting, vigils and all podvigs. In the course of time, when Christianity expanded, within the boundaries and number of believers, many ascetics began to leave their families, and, withdrawing from the city or village, there, in the wilderness, they spent a solitary life, in some natural cave, in a desolate coffin, or in a small cell specially built. By the time of St. Anthony, the ascetics, the most zealous, lived mainly in this way. St. Anthony the Great was zealous to imitate them.

The beginning of the ascetic life is novitiate. St. Anthony went through it in imitation and obedience to those ascetics. The essence of novitiate consists in the affirmation of Christian virtues in the heart and in the assimilation of the rules of ascetic life, under the guidance of the most experienced. Christian virtues were brought out of education by St. Anthony; now he had only to find out what feats were necessary for those who were zealous to live in God, and how they should be accomplished. For this purpose he went to the ascetics known at that time, learned how to do it, learned it, and returned with this acquisition, as with booty, to his solitude. Thus, as St. Athanasius notes, he, like a wise bee, gathered spiritual honey for himself from everywhere, storing it in his heart, as in a hive. From one he adopted the strictness of abstinence in food, sleeping on the bare ground, and prolonged vigil; from another he learned (tirelessness in prayer, attention to thoughts and contemplation of God; from a third he took the example of diligence, faithfulness to rules, and patience; and from all he borrowed the same spirit of firm faith in Christ the Lord and brotherly love for all, trying to combine in himself alone everything that distinguished each of the fathers he saw.

Without checking one's life with the lives of others and without external guidance, no one attained the highest degrees of ascetic life. With the above-mentioned elders, St. Anthony entrusted his life, and by their guidance he was guided along the steady path to perfection. In this novitiate education he spent fifteen years, living outside the village in a tomb, at first not so far away, and there far away, where a certain villager who was sincere to him came to him, bringing bread – the only food of St. Anthony – and taking away needlework: for St. Anthony lived by the labors of his hands. All his time he divided between this handiwork, prayer and meditation on the Divine truths of the Scriptures: in what deeds the Angel of God who appeared to him confirmed him, when once the spirit of despondency tormented him.

How his life flowed at that time, we cite the testimony of Sozomen (Cer. Hist., Book 1, Ch. 13), who writes about St. Anthony:

"Knowing that a good life becomes pleasant from habit, although at first it is difficult, he invented experiments in asceticism more and more strict, becoming more and more abstinent every day, and as if always just beginning, he gave new strength to zeal; He restrained bodily pleasures by labor, and against the passions of the soul he armed himself with God's hatred for them. His food was bread and salt, his drink was water, and the time of dinner was sunset; not infrequently, however, he remained without food for two days or more; he was awake, one might say, whole nights and met the day in prayer, and if he did sleep, it was for one minute; he lay down for the most part on the bare ground, and had only the earth as his bed. He did not allow himself to anoint himself with oil, wash and use other comforts, since this pampers the body. He could not stand laziness, and work did not leave his hands for almost the whole day."

St. Anthony walked such a difficult path. But, as you know, such a life does not pass without a struggle, just as there is no light without shadow. If there were no sin in us, and if we did not have an enemy, only good would be revealed in us and grow unhindered. But since both exist and both claim their rights to us, no one has done without fighting them. "We must weaken them and defeat them in order to go on freely. Without this, they will all confuse the hands and feet of the one who wants the right to walk, whoever he is. That is why the grace of God, which created in the spirit of St. Anthony, led him into battle, in order to tempt him like gold in a furnace, to strengthen his moral forces and give scope to their action. The enemy was given access, and the ascetic was supported by secret help.

St. Athanasius describes this struggle at length. The enemy's arrows, he said, were very sensitive; but the courageous fighter repelled them without the slightest hesitation.

At first, the enemy tried to shake him with regret that he had left the world, bringing to mind on the one hand the nobility of the family, needlessly contemptible, no small wealth, as if in vain, and all the comforts of life, as if uselessly rejected, and especially his sister, thrown with nothing into someone else's hands, without his own support, supervision and consolation, – on the other hand, the difficulty and cruelty of the joyless life he had begun, the unaccustomedness and endurance of the body, which seems to be unable to resist such deprivations, and the length of this life – so that there seems to be no end in sight – far from people, without any consolation, in incessant self-mortification. By these suggestions, the enemy stirred up a strong storm of thoughts; but was not only reflected by the firmness of St. Anthony, who stood unshakably in his intention and in his determination, but was also deposed by his great faith that everything he forsaken and tolerated was nothing in comparison with the endless blessings prepared for the worldly laborers from God, Whom it is more convenient to please one who is free from all worldly and material bonds, and was even thrown into the dust by his unceasing prayers. who attracted into his heart the sweetest spiritual consolations.

The enemy defeated on this side attacks the young wrestler on the other; with which he is already accustomed to overthrow youth, begins to fight with carnal lust, confusing at night and disturbing by day. The struggle was so fierce and prolonged that it was not hidden even from outsiders. The enemy implanted impure thoughts, and St. Anthony repelled them with prayer; the one brought the limbs to pieces, and the other cooled them by fasting, vigil, and all sorts of self-labor; the one took upon himself female images at night, contriving in every way to arouse seductive inclinations, but this one was delighted with grief, and by the contemplation of the beauties there, as well as by the liveliest consciousness of the nobility which our nature is vouchsafed in the Lord Jesus Christ, dispelled the deceptive charm; The accursed one evoked a feeling of sweetness from pleasure, and the blessed one raised up a counter-feeling of the terrible bitterness of torment in eternal fire and from worms that never sleep, and remained unharmed. The annoyance and ugliness of the attacks finally formed in the struggling man an aversion to all impure movements and anger at them with strong irritation, which deprived the enemy of the opportunity to approach him and even from a distance somehow tempt and disturb him from this side. For feelings of disgust and hatred for passionate movements are fiery arrows that scorch the enemy. Thus was the all-cunning one overcome in this by youth, bearing passionate flesh, and departed in shame, because the servant of God was assisted by the Lord Himself, Who bore the flesh for our sake and crushed all the power in it by the enemy, as every true ascetic confesses, saying with the Apostle: "Not I, but grace, which is with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10).

But the man-hater has not yet run out of arrows. Seeing the protection of God over the young fighter, and knowing that it overshadows only the humble, the enemy plots to deprive him of this covering, arousing in him arrogance and self-conceit. For this purpose he appears apparently in the form of a little boy – black, and with feigned humiliation speaks to St. Anthony; thou hast conquered me, – supposing that he, having attributed the victory to himself, will dream much of himself and thus anger God, Who helps him. But St. Anthony asked him: "Who are you?" He answered, "I am the spirit of fornication, on which it is to stir up the kindling of lust and to plunge into carnal sin." Many, who have taken a vow of chastity, I have deceived; many who had long mortified their flesh He brought to fall; but by you all my snares have been broken, my arrows have been broken, and I have been cast down. Then St. Anthony, thanking God his Saviour, cried out: "The Lord is my helper," and I will look upon my enemies (Psalm 117:7), and then, fearlessly looking at the enemy, said: "My God has allowed you to appear to me as a sign of the blackness of your evil intentions," and as a lad to denounce your impotence. Therefore you are worthy of all contempt. At these words this spirit, as if burned by fire, fled, and no longer approached Blessed Anthony.

Victory over the passions brings one closer to impassibility; and to the extent that impassibility is affirmed, it brings with it peace of the soul: and the peace of the soul, with the sweet sensations given by prayer and contemplation of God, arouses in the heart a spiritual warmth, which, gathering to itself all the powers of the spirit, soul and body, leads a person inside, where, having settled, he feels the irresistible need to be one with the one God. This irresistible attraction inward before God is the second degree of spiritual advancement; and now St. Anthony came up to her.