The Sayings of Antony the Great in the Alphabetical Apophthegmata

Each Breath Both Prayer and Practice: The Sayings of Antony the Great in the Alphabetical Apophthepfmata Patrum, A New Translation with a Commentary1 Tim Vivian INTRODUCTION AND REFLECTION will the real Abba Antony please stand up? Late Antiquity has given us many Antonys: the Antony of the Life by Athanasius; the Antony of the Letters; the Antony of the Greek, Coptic, and Arabic Sayings—and the Antonys of the Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic Sayings. Trying to discover the real or authentic Antony may well be like the elephant in the Hindu parable in which each of the blind men, touching a different part of the elephant, “sees” something different. This is even truer when we think about the number of sayings that involve Antony: Samuel Ruben- son counts 119.2 What we have, as with Jesus, is the Antony of tradition; the Antony of traditions. In the Life of Antony, Athanasius limns his hero in charcoal and pen- 1. The sayings translated here will appear in a forthcoming volume of translations of The Greek Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, with commentary, and in a forthcoming volume, with Lisa Agaiby, of translations of The Greek, Coptic, and Arabic Alphabetical Sayings of St. Antony the Great, both to be published by Cistercian Publications/Liturgical Press. 2. Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 193-95. Cistercian Studies Quarterly 53.3 (2018) 2 3 6 TIM VIVIAN cil as an uneducated ascetic extraordinaire, willing martyr, anti-Arian, miracleworker, discerning teacher, battler of philosophers, and defeater of demons.3 The Letters, probably authentic, paint for us a full-colored portrait of a philosophically and theologically sophisticated exegete and a follower of Origen of Alexandria.4 If we take the Letters with the Sayings, as Rubenson correctly recounts, we have, the image of Antony which later monastic tradition called for, but as single pictures [the sayings] are still glimpses of a man of cherished memory. Through his incorporation into tradition, the teacher of gnosis became the star of the desert. In this process the main criteria [sic] for preservation was apparently the identification of the image of Antony with the ideals of later generations of his disciples. The apophthegmata [sayings] are no nostalgic recollections of randomly preserved pieces of history but didactic sayings of a living tradition.5 A scholar once told me that at a conference she was attending many of the older Benedictines present knew very little about the Desert Fa thers and Mothers. So, the question here, for both those who value the ascetic-monastic spiritual tradition and those who know little or nothing about it, is, to put it pointedly, “Why read this stuff?” Here I will offer a brief reflection on the first three sayings and offer the reader some of the insights that I believe the sayings still very much offer us. Whoever organized the stories and sayings concerning Antony was an ascetic—and pastoral—genius. With regard to the human condition, most of these apothegms are timeless. We should, however, pause to re flect a moment on this potential cliche. We know—or should know—that the ancient Hebrews and Israelites were vastly different from us in soci ety, religiosity, and polity. With regard to Jesus, modern scholarship has 3. For a translation of the Life, see Athanasius, The Life of Antony: The Coptic Life and the Greek Life, trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis, CS 202 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 2003). For a study, see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995); on demons, see Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Boston: Harvard UP, 2006). 4. For a thorough discussion, see Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony 59-88. Rubenson 157, argues that a few sayings of Antony, perhaps authentic, “support the image of Antony as a philoso pher and ascetic teacher of a kind of a Christian g n o s is A good introduction to Origen is Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen (New York: Routledge, 1988). See also now John Behr, trans., Origen: On First Principles, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018). 5. Rubenson 162. THE SAYINGS OF ANTONY THE GREAT 237 emphasized his Galilean and Jewish milieus and taught us to pay atten tion to the economic, imperialistic, and oppressive social conditions in which Jesus lived, moved, and had his being. And the first monastics? In Egypt today, the monasteries are replete with highly-educated monks, seemingly far from the monastic fellahin of Antony’s day; perhaps the villages near the present-day monasteries tell us more about Antony and his confreres, at least sociologically, than do todays monasteries. The modern European, American, Canadian, or Australian (the countries where most Coptic emigres reside) would have an extremely difficult time living in these villages. All this suggests that Antony and his fellows lived in a cosmos vastly different from ours. Su perficially—and, paradoxically—yes. But history and religion tell us that all homo sapiens dwell, and indwell, one fundament. As the American poet Theodore Roethke tells us, “The soul has many motions, the body one.”6 The sayings of and stories about Antony gathered below often re prove the body’s and the soul’s motions, but, more often, I think, they dance with these movements, as an experienced and skilled dancer gen tly, sometimes more determinedly, guides her partner across the dance floor. These sayings and stories tell us, in fact, that Antony’s spiritual world—or psychological world, if one prefers—is still our own. With our repeated school shootings, deliberate political violence against Jesus’ “least of these,” and idolatry of technology, money, and power, the first line of Antony’s sayings still speaks very much to us: when Antony “was dwelling in the desert one time, he became dispirited, and his thoughts were extremely dark and gloomy” (Antony 1). Antony, then, carries my heart within his own.7 “Dispirited” translates Greek akedia, which has multiple meanings, including what we now call “depression.”81 suffer from depression, man aged well now; many of my friends, and some of my students, also suffer from it. The rate of depression in the United States hovers, almost apoca lyptically, at about 7% of adults.9 Today, it’s not the Devil who prowls 6. Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (New York: Doubleday, 1975) 346. 7. See e. e. Cummings, “i carry your heart with me,” online. 8. See n. 21. 9. National Institute on Mental Health (online): in 2016 an “estimated 16.2 million adults in 238 TIM VIVIAN around like a roaring lion, “looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8), but rather anger, fear, hatred, violence, addiction, and suicide. So Anto ny cries out, “Lord, I want to be saved, but my thoughts won’t leave me alone! Afflicted like this, what will I do? How will I be saved?” Antony 23 adds depth to Antony 1 by emphasizing communal salvation; Antony there tells a parable to some judgmental monks who have driven out a brother from their monastery: “A ship shipwrecked at sea and lost its cargo; after great hardship, it safely came to shore. You monks, however, want to throw into the sea to drown what has been safely brought to shore.” The monks earlier had not only exiled the brother; after Antony sent him back they refused to welcome him. Now they, Antony para- bolically accuses, want to throw the brother into the sea to drown. In other words, the sinful monk has been saved, but his fellow monks are too hard-hearted to see it. Antony’s cri de coeur in the first saying reminds me of Paul’s: “Wretch ed person that I am, who will save [or: rescue] me from this body of death?” (Rm 7:24). Paul and Antony use different verbs for “save” (or “rescue” in Romans), but they are clearly both afflicted. However, salva tion for Antony here will not come with an altar call, or being baptized (presumably, he already is). It’s not about getting a ticket to hand to Saint Peter at the eternal gates; the salvation Antony seeks is not heavenly, in eternity, but existentially, here and now. The answer he receives, at least for those of us living outside a monastery, will probably surprise us. But if we don’t turn our heads, or run away, there can be here a saving shock of recognition. Antony goes outside—that is, symbolically, he embarks on a spiritual journey; on this journey he sees “someone like him.” In other words, God (from Antony’s perspective) holds up a mirror to him—and to us. This is not Paul’s “glass, darkly” or “mirror, dimly” (1 Co 13:12, KJV and NRSV, respectively). It’s a call to emulation and praxis, two key mo nastic teachings and virtues. Antony sees—himself. The story, with a common trope, tells us that the other person is an angel. But before we smile, condescendingly, at what we suppose is naivete, we once again need the United States had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 6.7% of all U.S. adults. The prevalence of adults with a major depressive episode was highest among individuals aged 18-25 (10.9%).” THE SAYINGS OF ANTONY THE GREAT 239 to reflect symbolically. Antony is not entertaining an angel unawares; he is looking at the divine in himself—in Thomas Merton’s phrase, “the true self”—rather than the false self of anxiety and fear.

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