“A hunter in the desert saw Abba Anthony enjoying himself with the brethren and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brethren, the old man said to him, ‘Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.’ So he did. The old man then said, ‘Shoot another,’ and he did so. Then the old man said, ‘Shoot yet again,’ and the hunter replied ‘If I bend my bow so much I will break it.’ Then the old man said to him, ‘It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure they will soon break. Sometimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs.’ When he heard these words the hunter was pierced by compunction and, greatly edified by the old man, he went away. As for the brethren, they went home strengthened.”
Counsels of St. Anthony the Great
“For
Luke 7:33-35John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by all her children.”
There are always those who are willing to criticize based on appearances. As a priest, I have experienced those who feel I should be more pious, or more ascetic, etc. They probably have a point. My Latino heritage tends to push me toward an expansive outward expression of myself. In other words, my Cuban heritage pushes me to be boisterous, loud, etc. This can give a non-pious impression. In America, for some reason, piety is equated with quietude. But, the two are not the same.
In today’s counsel from St. Anthony the Great, we can see that this was the expectation of the hunter who met the saint. Obviously, the saint was enjoying himself with his brethren, but the hunter was scandalized. It was obvious that the hunter equated spirituality with some type of quietude. But, he was wrong.
St. Anthony’s answer corrects two errors. One is the error that piety means a certain dour quietude that is suspicious of joy and enjoyment. But, as St. Anthony points out, the person who tries to live out such a life of dour quietude is certain to break. This does not mean that the person will break emotionally, But, it will certainly mean that the person will break theologically. Almost certainly the dour Christian will descend into some type of legalism and judgmentalism that will make him or her useless for the Kingdom of God. Rather than opening the door to the Kingdom, that type of dour believer will often close the door for others to enter the Kingdom, with the danger that the dour person will also not enter the Kingdom.
The second error that St. Anthony corrects is that a monk may not (or should not) engage in joyous celebrations. This is a more specific version of the paragraph above. In this case, people will allow–often with a sniff–that the hoi polloi may certainly engage in such pursuits, but that those truly dedicated to the Lord will not do so. Among these people are those who will frequently criticize the parish priest for Greek dancing, or for laughing too much, etc. To those people, Saint Anthony is also a corrective, for he himself participated in the celebration.
As a side note, it is interesting to see that there are many in the Protestant and secularist camps who will criticize medieval monks for manufacturing wine, supposedly living a life of too much luxury, etc. Behind those critiques is the false idea that spirituality and the simple enjoyment of life do not go together. That is, asceticism is equated with a rejection of the world rather than with the means to grow in one’s spiritual life. But, as St. Anthony pointed out, an unrelieved asceticism leads to some type of breakage in the person practicing it.
In his first pastoral letter, His Beatitude John X, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East made the following statement: “In order for a Christian to accomplish his mission inside society, he needs first to accept and love this society, even if it contains dangerous trends, even if it is corrupt and evil, and even if its values conflict with the Christian conscience.”
I think that St. Anthony the Great would have said the same.
“How does a Methodist go fishing without his Baptist friend drinking all the beer? Bring another Baptists.”
Really enjoyed this and the previous post about St Anthony. I’ve learned a lot from you since I came across you in the comments section of internetmonk