Who is Saint Anthony

St. Anthony is one of the great saints of the early years of the Christian Church. He lived about three hundred years after the time of Jesus. St. Anthony founded the first Christian monastery, a community of holy men who lived apart from all other people, never marrie and devoted their lives to prayer and thoughts of God. St. Anthony was born about the year 251 in Egypt. His parents were very rich, but he gave away all his money to the poor and when he was 20 years old he went into the desert to pray and live entirely alone.

Old stories tell how evil spirits tried to tempt St. Anthony to give up his holy life, and great artists have painted pictures showing the "Temptation of St. Anthony," but the demons failed to move him. When he was 30 years old he retired even further into the desert to be more alone with his own thoughts. Other Christian holy men who admired St. Anthony came out into the desert to be near him. In the year 305 he was finally persuaded by these admirers to leave the desert and become their leader. After a few years he went away again, to live by himself in the desert near Thebes, an important city of ancient Egypt. He died in the year 350 or later, when he was about one hundred years old