This piece originally appeared in The Dispatch.
One morning in Egypt, sometime around A.D. 270, a Christian man quietly departed into the desert. In Egypt, of course, the desert was ever near, relentlessly encroaching with its dry winds threatening the fragile crops around the narrow fertile band of land around the Nile River. This oasis of life had been Rome’s bread basket for centuries, surrounded by thousands of miles of merciless sand. Walking into an abandoned Roman fort on the edge of civilization, the man shut the gates from the inside for the next twenty years, subsisting on a few loaves of bread lowered down to him twice a year.
So it was that a fort built centuries earlier to protect the edges of Roman territories from unromanized tribes beyond the frontier became the willing prison of this ascetic, Anthony, whose deepest longing was time alone with God, without the company of people or any comforts to distract his mind or flesh from this goal.
The movement that Anthony set off involves figures we now refer to as Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers. Living for decades alone on pillars, in caves, in hermitages, their stories seem formulaic—repeating many of the elements of Anthony’s life—yet no less spectacular for it. Reading their biographies, one is struck by their desire to deny their flesh various comforts—food, drink, sleep, clothing, speech, any kind of communion with other people. These ascetic practices did not begin with the desert saints—we could name such famous pagan ascetics as Diogenes the Cynic, a philosopher who lived on the streets of Athens in the late fourth century B.C., sleeping year-round in a large wine jar he had adopted as his home. Still, ascetic practices attained a new purpose and popularity because of the desert saints, who felt that these acts brought them closer to Jesus Christ and allowed them to imitate him.
With the season of Lent now underway, many Christians of various traditions adopt practices that aspire to the asceticism of ancient saints, but in an obviously milder form. Most of us cannot (and should not) give up our jobs and families for forty days, which would be both unloving and irresponsible in the extreme. We can, however, make small sacrifices, carefully selected and curated, much as we do with other aspects of life and faith in the twenty-first century.
This is why “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” is a common question in the weeks leading up to the beginning of the season. The process becomes the season’s equivalent of the gift lists for Santa and his helpers in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the notable exception that gift lists involve listing what we’d like to gain, whereas pre-Lenten preparation involves lists of things we would be willing to give up. This latter category often involves foods—like chocolate or coffee or meat or even Anthony’s staple, bread. For those unwilling or unable to give up one of those, other types of fasts are available as well—consider a social media fast, or a fast from movies for this season. I once heard a sermon from a pastor whose wife encouraged him to give up complaining for Lent. He admitted that this was the hardest fast of his life.
In our world of plenty, the idea of giving something—anything—up for the season is remarkably appealing. Indeed, this idea has been appealing to Christians since the second century, although not encompassing forty days yet. Then the idea of a forty-day Lenten fast came up at the Council of Nicaea in 325, and took off with some differences between Eastern and Western churches. The different churches also had a rough go of figuring out the date of Easter, but at least the idea of Lent was popular with all in some form at an early point.
“What are you giving up for Lent this year?” becomes the season’s equivalent of the gift lists for Santa.
This history raises an interesting question: what to make of such ascetic desires (even if mild ones) in our age of plenty? Why are we so fascinated with this idea of giving up something for a season, to the point that even some Christmas-Easter-only Christians observe Lent in this way? Do we think we will hear God’s voice more clearly if there is no sugar or caffeine (or, heavens help me, both!) in our lives for forty days? I think the answer to this last one is yes. Yet the experiences of ancient desert saints and ascetics give us useful reminders for our own lives in this season, even as the world they inhabited was much more familiar with privations of all sorts.
St. Anthony, as we know him today, became the unexpected and unintended leader of a movement. Athanasius, his biographer, remarked nearly a century later on the growing popularity of ascetic tourism: “The desert became a city.” People came from all over Egypt and beyond to encamp in the desert right outside Anthony’s tower, waiting for a mere glimpse of the immured saint. What was it like to be one of them?
I imagine the encampment resembled spiritual retreats and conferences of today: one sojourns to a semi-isolated location (a monastery, a university campus, a forest camp, a beach, a farm) for a few days and practices some monastic or monastic-adjacent activities. You could take the vow of silence for the duration of the visit, abstain from all electronics, and spend the days in prayer or listening to sermons.
So it was, presumably, with the various visitors who came to see Anthony’s fort during those twenty years. Visiting for a few days, weeks, or perhaps (in some cases) months, they could treat this as a departure from regular responsibilities, even as most of these pilgrims did not intend to embark upon a monastic life for the rest of their lives. While our sources do not mention this detail, surely vendors of food and drink and various amenities arrived at “Camp Anthony” at some point as well, eager to make money providing essential services.
And then there is the darker side of such experiences. We might not like to think about it, but probably not all who embarked on the pilgrimage to visit Anthony’s fort and spend time encamped outside of it were focused on spiritual goals, first and foremost. Some may even have found opportunities for deep sin, as fallen human beings are wont to do. Indeed, another saint’s biography—that of St. Mary the Egyptian—tells of how, before her conversion to Christianity, she paid for her travel from Alexandria to Jerusalem by prostituting herself to pilgrims.
These are good reminders that ascetic practices alone do not bring salvation. Forty days without coffee—or time spent sleeping outside in the desert and eating crickets—will only have spiritual benefits if accompanied by real heart transformation. Asceticism is not a guaranteed magic cure for spiritual ills. Still, the desire for such practices allures. No wonder Anthony’s fort pilgrims kept coming for two decades, curious, wondering just what was going on inside that locked fort.
The biography of St. Mary the Egyptian tells of how, before her conversion to Christianity, she paid for her travel from Alexandria to Jerusalem by prostituting herself to pilgrims.
It did not help that (as Athanasius reports) visitors “heard as it were crowds within clamouring, dinning, sending forth piteous voices and crying, ‘Go from what is ours. What do you even [do] in the desert? You can not abide our attack.’” These other crowds—of unearthly forces—kept testing the saint in isolation—for it turns out that the locked gates that could keep out people were not so effective against them. Demons tormented Anthony his entire time in the fort by offering him food, wealth, and sometimes appearing to him as beautiful women. So much for getting uninterrupted time alone with God.
At last, those who were patient enough got their miracle—or, rather, they took matters into their own hands and broke into the fort to see what they were sure would be miraculous.
It was. It turned out that twenty years of isolation, living on scant bread and water, in no way altered the beatific sight of the saint. He walked out looking exactly as he did when he walked inside.
Anthony’s twenty-year Lent, as we could call it, proved a successful experiment for him at least. The strength of his faith and determination against consistent demonic temptations for two decades seem to one-up even the desert temptation of Jesus, which lasted just forty days—the length of our annual Lenten season. At the same time, his preservation is a miracle, as all who could compare Anthony’s appearance before and after his two decades in the fort recognized. They came to see an old man, weathered by the desert and by suffering. What they found instead was a glowing youth.
If we are honest, we want such miracles in our own lives as well. Creatures of weak flesh, we wish our bodies were stronger—or, ideally, that our spirits were strong enough to overcome any temptations and threats to our flesh. And in this age of diets, one more extreme than another, our obsession with spiritual fasts surely has at least some less spiritual interest as well. Still, we wish to redeem our routines and give them meaning. In this regard, we are not too dissimilar yet again from the ancient believers, whose obsession with Anthony and his ilk created a lasting tradition.
The movement that Anthony unintentionally inaugurated continued after him, as did the burgeoning genre of biographies of desert saints, which became increasingly more extreme in their descriptions of the saints’ privations. When, not long after Anthony’s death in the mid-fourth century, the repentant Desert Mother St. Mary the Egyptian walks away from civilization into the same desert where John the Baptist once lived on a diet of crickets and wild honey, she brings with her the three loaves of bread that will last her a lifetime—close to half a century until her death. Unlike Anthony, no twice-annual refills will be forthcoming.
But there is one other obvious and important absence from the lives of the desert saints: the local church. It is a convicting reminder that while the stories of saints are beautiful in their intensity, they are not meant to be exact examples to emulate for the rest of us. The struggles of these saints with sins, in fact, continue even when they are alone. We should not aim to abandon our families to pursue God in the desert. And yet, we rightly crave the saints’ deep connection to God.
So what might this pursuit of the spiritual practices of relentless prayer and fasting look like when integrated into regular church life, practiced in community with normal people—like us? Lent offers us the opportunity to find out. But the answer is not one-size-fits-all.
I was raised in a secular Jewish household in Russia and Israel and became a Christian in 2011. This year’s Lenten season is my fourteenth since. Yet I have never observed Lent, despite being aware of it: none of the three Protestant church traditions of which I have been a part since my conversion observes Lent in any systematic way. Still, we talk about it: the season leading up to Easter is different, more somber and filled with reflection, even if we do not go into ascetic mode.
But the desert and its saints have held a strong allure for me personally over the years, Lent or no. I am an ideas-loving introvert who lives life surrounded by very loud image-bearers of God—a powerful concept that harkens back to God’s creation of all human beings “in his own image.” I feel sensory overstimulation in the depths of my bones. Wouldn’t it be nice to escape it all and dwell in a tower, alone with God and my thoughts? And yet I ask myself: would I truly grow closer to God if I were to copy Anthony’s model? I think the honest answer for most of us is no.
For most of us, asceticism and isolation from community is a sure path to spiritual weakness rather than strength. Few are the saints whose desert moments could lead to true spiritual growth in a world where we are more apt to turn every “desert moment” into a self care delight. For most of us, rather, it is the local church, community, and of course, our homes filled with loud and disruptive image-bearers where both service and growth happen. This is no coincidence. True sacrifice of the self lies in giving something up in service to others, rather than the act of giving up something in the abstract. While giving up sleep to train my flesh sounds like a self-improvement project, giving up sleep to take care of my children really does point my sleep-loving heart to God.
Every night, parents of small children engage in foot washing—and much more besides—as they bathe those who cannot take care of their needs entirely on their own. It is a simple and mundane task, yet it is also an echo of sorts to Christ’s humility in washing his disciples’ feet in the final days before his crucifixion. And every week in many churches, Christians lovingly prepare meals and deliver them to shut-ins or others. It is in these works of tenderness and care and mercy, often done while our own bodies and minds are weary, that we too can most closely live out the virtues of self-sacrifice that Jesus modeled throughout his time here on earth.
If we look closely, we will see that we do not need to chase ascetic practices after all, because reasons to sacrifice our comfort and desires—even if just a little bit—are all around us already. Lent offers a chance for such service—whether you give something up or not.