In each age, saints tell the true story of the Church. Will we join them?<\/p>\n
Anthony Abbot, Anthony the Great, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony of Egypt: Whatever you call him, his legacy is enormous. Born in Egypt nearly two centuries after the resurrection, he became the Father of Western Monasticism, and established a way of holy living for monks, abbots, contemplatives and saints of all kinds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Elizabeth Ann Bayley, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Mother Seton \u2014 her legacy is big too: born in New York, nearly two millennia after the resurrection, she inspired the Catholic parochial school system in America, creating an educational template for Catholic teachers to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These two saints are as different as an ancient-world North African hermit and an early American Wall Street lady can be, and yet, in Christ, they share so much in common.<\/p>\n Anthony was from a moderately wealthy background, orphaned as a young man and forced to put all of his trust in God as he faced life alone as the caretaker of his sister.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Elizabeth was from a moderately wealthy background, widowed as a young woman and forced to put all her trust in God as she cared for her five children.<\/p>\n It is this heroic trust in God despite the tragedies of their lives that unites them in spirit and makes them eternally relevant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Importantly, Anthony and Elizabeth show how much the Church needs not just saints, but popular <\/i>saints.<\/b><\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for the Church to understand that the lives of committed Christian men and women uniquely capture the imagination of the faithful. After all, the Gospel stories about Jesus in the New Testament are immediately followed by stories of the early saints in the Acts of the Apostles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Popular saints continued to lead the Church in the centuries afterward. An early example might be when St. Anthony of Egypt (251-356) helped the Bishop of Alexandria in his fight against the heresy of Arius (256\u2013336).<\/p>\n Arius claimed that Jesus was not co-equal with God the Father and his false doctrine spread like wildfire through the early Church. The works of St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, refuted Arius \u2014 but his most effective blow against the heresy came, not from these books, but from a biography. Athanasius\u2019s book The<\/i> Life of St. Anthony <\/i>was el<\/i> bestseller of early Christian literature, \u201cgoing viral\u201d as it was translated into several languages, spreading far and wide.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to see why. The story reads like a superhero saga, with Anthony fighting epic battles with Satan and gaining remarkable victories. In his Confessions, <\/i>St. Augustine describes how two officials he knew read the book and were moved immediately to become Christians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is exactly the kind of reaction Athanasius hoped for the book. \u201cI feel that, once you have heard the story, you will not merely admire the man but will wish to emulate his commitment as well,\u201d he writes in an early chapter.<\/p>\n People were captivated by the story of God calling St. Anthony in the middle of his ordinary circumstances.<\/b><\/p>\n The story begins when Anthony was orphaned as a young man and was left in charge of his sister.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNow it was not six months after the death of his parents, and going according to custom into the Lord’s House,\u201d Athanasius recounts, \u201che communed with himself and reflected as he walked about how the Apostles left all and followed the savior.\u201d<\/p>\n As he was thinking these things, he entered the Church and heard the Gospel story of the Rich Young Man.<\/p>\n In the story, Jesus tells his would-be follower, \u201cIf you would be perfect, go and sell what you have and give to the poor; and come, follow me and you shall have treasure in heaven.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anthony experienced the words as a personal invitation from God, and responded by distributing his property, finding a new caretaker for his sister, and going out into the desert to live in a cave and battle with the devil through fasting and prayer.<\/p>\n Anthony\u2019s life\u00a0 <\/span>shows how attractive fidelity to Christ is.<\/b><\/p>\n As Anthony lived alone in the desert, a strange thing began to happen.<\/p>\n First, pilgrims began to visit him and bring him their sufferings. \u201cAnthony healed not by commanding, but by prayer and speaking the name of Christ,\u201d wrote Athanasius, \u201cso that it was clear to all that it was not he himself who worked, but the Lord who showed mercy by his means and healed the sufferers.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthony tried his best to avoid people in the desert, \u201crejoicing in the contemplation of divine things, but grieving when troubled by much people.\u201d But soon, other hermits began to gather with him and, almost unwittingly, he became an abbot.<\/p>\n \u201cBy frequent conversation he increased the eagerness of those already monks, stirred up in most of the rest the love of the discipline,\u201d writes Athanasius, \u201cand speedily by the attraction of his words cells multiplied, and he directed them all as a father.\u201d<\/p>\n In a time before mass communication, people came from far away to visit Anthony, and Athanasius thinks he knows why. \u201cFor from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who dwelt hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes his own known everywhere?\u201d<\/p>\n Athanasius says of saints, \u201cEven if they work secretly, even if they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all, that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper and thus be zealous in the path of virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n The news even reached Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1800s America.<\/b><\/p>\n These images of befriending God, fighting the devil, and blessing others, were so powerful they reached even across space and time to Elizabeth Ann Seton. She would have exactly the reaction that so many Christians had to the early heroes of the faith.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt appears to me,\u201d wrote Elizabeth, \u201cthat a cave or a desert would best satisfy my natural desire. But God has given me a great deal to do.\u201d Her own life mirrored that of\u00a0 <\/span>Anthony\u2019s. Sisters gathered around her as well as those seeking healing or learning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If Bishop Athanasius saw the importance of Anthony in his time, so too did Cardinal Francis Spellman of\u00a0 <\/span>Elizabeth for America.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAmericans, and American Catholics in particular, should be proud of this jewel at the very center of their crown,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was a down-to-earth woman who breathed American air, loved American town and countryside, enjoyed American pastimes, followed American social conventions.\u201d<\/p>\n Her life shaped the course of the Church in America long before Cardinal Spellman and his brother bishops did.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it is especially to be noted that heroic sanctity like the venerable Mother Seton\u2019s did not have to wait until Catholicism had made its mark on the United States in impressive numbers of communicants and flourishing institutions,\u201d he said. \u201cSuch holiness appeared in the days of the American Church’s infancy, even as such holiness was a mark of Christ’s Church in the days immediately following his ascension into heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Anthony of Egypt’s life inspired many to say \u201cI can do that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s life tells us the same thing. No matter our life circumstances or the time that we live in, we too can surrender ourselves to God. We too can be saints.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n TOM HOOPES<\/strong>, autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em><\/p>\n