"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.

And hitherto he had been more alone; but his sincere people often came to him from the village, and he himself went to the elders, then to the village church for divine services, especially the Liturgy. All this was associated with a kind of entertainment, no matter how you cut them off. The spirit of St. Anthony, drawn inward, began to demand resolute solitude, so as not to see or hear anything.

To this, as has been pointed out, the soul comes of its own accord, by the direct path of asceticism; but this turn is hastened and given a decisive impetus by some strong outbursts of self-denial. St. Anthony had the opportunity to manifest such an impulse when he was openly attacked by demons. The demons, deprived of the opportunity to act through thoughts on the purified soul, begin to act from the outside, appear visibly and build for the ascetic that by which they hope to harm him, or to shake his good intentions. – The grace of God allows this in the form of the ascetic's exaltation, thereby opening up to him the ascent to the highest degree and at the same time providing him with a certain right to later assume power over the tempting spirits themselves. This was the case with St. Anthony.

The most important moment in this circumstance is the moment when St. Anthony, waking up in the narthex of the church in the village, and barely breathing, said to his friend: "Carry me again to my solitude." For by this he expressed his surrender to death for the sake of life, which in his person he recognized as the only one pleasing to God. This meant the same as dying for the Lord's sake: for there was a complete readiness for this.

Readiness to die for the sake of the Lord and to please Him is an all-conquering weapon: for with what else can one tempt or frighten him who has it? It is considered to be the starting point of asceticism and strength throughout its continuation. The Lord and Saviour, our Podvig, saw death before Him all the days of His earthly life, but in the Garden of Gethsemane, during the time of prayerful struggle, He finally conquered it with humanity; the sufferings and death of the cross accomplished by their deeds what is said there. This was followed by a three-day Sabbath, before the glorious resurrection. This is the path of all souls who have followed the Lord. The first step in this is self-denial; but no matter how small the beginnings are, it always has its share of readiness for death. Then self-denial grows, and this readiness also grows, or this readiness is the soul of self-denial. Whoever reaches such a degree of readiness as the Savior had in the garden is immediately set before him the ascent in spirit to the cross, and then the spiritual Sabbath, followed by the spiritual resurrection in the glory of the Lord Jesus. "This is what has now happened in the spirit of St. Anthony. By speaking to his friend, he took him back to the same place where he had been so tortured, he showed that in his spirit it was the same as that of the Saviour, when, after praying in the garden, He said to His disciples: "Let us go; Behold, draw nigh and betray Me! This was immediately followed by his departure into the wilderness and twenty years of his sojourn in silence there, as his crucifixion and Sabbath were in the spirit.

As soon as St. Anthony recovered from the sufferings inflicted by the demons, he rushed into the wilderness two or three days' journey from the dwelling places – and there he shut himself up in an old abandoned pagan temple, in which there was a well with water, and bread was delivered to him by half a friend of his. What labors and feats he bore here, and what happened to him – no one saw. But judging by the way he came out of the hermitage, we must conclude that this was the time of the creation of his spirit by the Holy Spirit. Here the same thing happened to a caterpillar when it wraps itself in a chrysalis. No one sees what is happening to her at this time: she seems to be frozen. But in the meantime, the all-enlivening force of nature acts in her, and in due time a beautiful multi-colored moth flies out of the chrysalis. So it is in St. Anthony. No one saw what happened to him; but the Spirit of God, invisibly to no one, for the most part even to Anthony himself, created in him a new man, in the image of Him Who created him. When the time of building was over, he was commanded to go out to serve the faithful. And he went out, clothed with various grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit. Spirit. As Christ rose from the dead in the glory of the Father, so St. Anthony now came forth in a life renewed in spirit.

Thus ended the formation of the spirit of St. Anthony. All his subsequent life was nothing but the fruit of what was sown in the first two periods of his life. This is the third time of service for the good of the Church, as if it were his apostleship – How fruitful and broad this service was, everyone can see from the description of his life by St. Athanasius. He served with all the gifts of grace. And what did he not have? "There was the gift of miracles, the gift of power over demons, over the forces of nature and over animals, the gift of insight into thoughts, the gift of seeing what was happening in the distance, the gift of revelations and visions. But of all the gifts, the most fruitful and extensive in application was the gift of speech. "And it was to them that he served the least of his brethren more than all other gifts.

St. Athanasius writes that God gave St. Anthony a powerful word, reaching to the depths of the heart. And he knew how to speak for the benefit of everyone with such force, that many of the nobles, military and civilian, people with great wealth, laid aside the burdens of life and became monks. And who, coming to him sad, returned uncheered? Who, coming to him shedding tears for the dead, did not immediately abandon his weeping? Who, when he came wrathful, did not change his anger to meekness? What monk who fell into disgrace, having visited him, did not again become zealous and strong in asceticism? What young man, having seen St. Anthony and listened to him, did not renounce pleasures, and did not begin to love chastity? How many virgins, who already had suitors, only after seeing St. Anthony, passed into the rank of brides of Christ?