“In order to avoid the frequent disturbances, the saintly hermit finally decided to travel to the Upper Thebaid, where he was unknown. The monks gave him bread to take with him on the journey, and Anthony sat down on the bank of the Nile to wait for a ship that could transport him upriver. Deep in thought, he suddenly heard again the familiar voice that had first spoken to him in the rock cave. The divine voice repeated the question that it had once asked Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, outside the gates of Rome: ‘Anthony, where are you going, and why?’ By then Anthony used to speak with the Lord as though with an intimate friend, and he answered, ‘Since the crowds do not allow me any peace and quiet, I want to travel to the Upper Thebaid on account of the numerous distractions taking place here, and especially because they are always asking things from me that are beyond my ability.’ Yet the voice from heaven replied to the wise man, ‘Even if you go up to the Thebaid, as you propose, even if you go downstream to Boukolia [the Pastures], you will find plenty of troubles remaining, even twice as many as you have now. But if you really desire peace and quiet, leave now for the interior desert.’ Anthony replied, ‘And who will show me the way? I have no idea how to get there.’ By Divine Providence he immediately saw a group of Saracens who were traveling that same route. The Saracens welcomed the hermit into their party, and he walked for three days and three nights with them into the desert, until he reached a high mountain. It was Mount Kolzim, which Anthony chose for his hermitage and which from then on became known also as Saint Anthony’s mountain. Its location was described by the priest Cronius in the
Historia Lausiaca, when he reported that Anthony ‘lived between Babylon and Herakleopolis, deep in the vast desert which extends toward the Red Sea, almost thirty miles distant from the river.’ In his account of the subsequent years Athanasius refers to the saint’s retreat as the ‘Inner Mountain’ and to the settlement of monks in Pispir as the ‘Outer Mountain’. At the foot of the mountain there was clear, flowing water, and in the vicinity there was a plain with date palms. At first the Saracens brought bread for Anthony with their caravans. Later on some of the brothers, too, learned where the monk was staying and began to send bread to him. Anthony, however, did not want to be a burden to anyone and asked only for a two-pronged hoe, an ax, and some grain. Equipped in this way, he began to clear and cultivate a small garden by which to provide for himself. Then, when visitors began to appear again, he started a vegetable garden as well, so as to offer hospitality for his guests. In addition the saint busied himself by weaving baskets, which he gave to his benefactors in return. Wild animals damaged his crops at first, but the saint admonished them and they obeyed him. This too, incidentally, is reliably reported in many lives of the saints: someone who is so close to God is capable of exerting a special power even over irrational creatures. Just think of the
Poverello, Saint Francis of Assisi, who proclaimed the Good News about Jesus Christ even to the birds and made the Holy Father wait for him because he had to repair a spider’s web that he had inadvertently torn. When sin is overcome, then this already achieves in a fragmentary way, so to speak, the peaceful coexistence of paradise that is foretold by the prophet Isaiah for the time of fulfillment, when the wolf and the lamb will graze together (see Is 65:25).
Anthony would not have been Anthony, the demon fighter, if his battles against the powers of darkness had not continued in the interior of the Upper Thebaid region. Here, too, visitors used to hear noise, voices, and a great din, and they would see the hermit, who by then was up in years, advancing against the infernal powers as though contending with visible opponents. Athanasius reports that the old man not only suffered demonic attacks but also experienced consolations from the divine Savior. When he disclosed to the wild animals his identity as a servant of Christ, they fied from him as the Gerasene herd of swine had done from his Master. And when the hermit once saw in a spiritual vision all the snares that the wicked foe had set throughout the world, he sighed and asked, ‘Who, then, can escape them?’ Thereupon he heard a voice that spoke only one word: ‘Humility!’”
~Peter Görg
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