Anthony the Great

If you just want to go ahead and look into it, you can find evidence for what I'm talking about all over the place.

But anyway, when I was thinking about these people, Kurzweil and Brian Johnson, it occurred to me that St. Anthony, Anthony of the Desert, was more or less the exact opposite of these guys in many respects.

But at the same time, he was looking forward to the glorification of his body and for because of, you know, the return of the Lord.

And consequently, he believed in eternal life and he believed in, you know, the risen Lord and that we will be like him because we'll see him as he is.

The Desert Fathers understood this instinctively.

St. Anthony of Egypt didn't flee to the wilderness because the world was too comfortable to endure.

He fled it because he understood that the comfortable Alexandria of his day Where demons of complacency did their quietest but most devastating work meant he needed the desert, where paradoxically his soul's hunger for God would be sharpened to a fine point.

Now, that's all good biblical stuff.

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons, pray for Meaning of Catholic.

St. Anthony of the Desert, pray for all clergy and seminarians.

St. Teresa Benedicta, pray for us.

Emperor St. Henry II, model of Catholic lay nobility, pray for us.

And on one of those nights, she's taken again, the way she was taken as a girl of 14.

She stands before St. Anthony the Great and receives an instruction from Christ himself.

Rebuild this community of the rule of Bachomius.

The Bachoman rule is Christianity's oldest surviving monastic rulebook, laid down 1600 years earlier by a soldier turned monk in this same Egyptian desert.

St. Macario says, For by divine beauty they were touched, and heavenly life of immortality was dropped into their souls.

But their great love for God overrides the fear of death, and every fear, says Anthony the Great.

Since a saint is a spirit bearer, he has a direct perception and understanding of the world, of man, and also the daily actions of life.

Finding himself in this condition, he even surpasses himself so that death becomes for him the great initiation into the spiritual world.

You touched me, and I burned for your peace." The life of Christ, whether you're a priest or a monk or a nun or a laywoman or a mom or a dad, anyone, it's far more demanding than anything on TikTok, but it gives us something beyond wellness, something indescribably sweet.

As a Catholic, I would say that St. Maximilian Kolbe lived a far more optimized life than Bryan Johnson, and Anthony of the Desert makes Andrew Huberman look like a pansy.

But so does an ordinary mom who gets up for the fourth time at night to soothe a crying baby.

So does the dad who works two jobs and still finds the energy to read to his kids before bed.

And sometimes those subtleties are really necessary and also really extreme.

Like St. Anthony the Great and The Anesthesia Galactica, they'll talk about the stench, like the absolute crazy smell that demonic activity leaves.

And a lot of people are not Privy to that, especially in circumstances where the line could potentially be so close that are really enigmatic.

Like they'll be like, oh, I wanted to vomit because they have that discernment.

And that's why wherever they were, they said, don't be in a hurry to leave.

St. Anthony the Great said that.

Wherever you find yourself, don't be in a hurry to leave.

Saint Gabriela said, wherever you find yourself, unless God moves you, don't move.