PaddlingPadre

There’s a scene in St. Augustine’s Confessions where he relates the story of two men, two Roman officials, who were going for a walk in the city of Trier. As they walked, they came upon a house where some Christians lived, and in the house they found a book that told the story of St. Anthony of Egypt, who at that time was only recently deceased. Now St. Anthony, if you don’t know, was a great Egyptian saint who lived during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries. As a young man he had come into a sizeable inheritance, but he had renounced everything in order to devote himself single-mindedly to God. After hearing the Gospel in church one day, he literally sold everything he had and went out into the desert, where he would spend the rest of life, (which was a very long life, he died at 105) living in the wilderness, dedicating himself to prayer and ascetical practices. Anthony was so holy that, in spite of his isolation, his reputation spread very far, and many people would flock to him in his desert hermitage, and, observing how he lived, these pilgrims made Anthony their inspiration in establishing the very first Christian monasteries, first in Egypt, and then across the Roman world.

And so these two Roman officials found this book that told the story of St. Anthony (which is a book we still have by the way), and as they read it they gradually become overwhelmed by what they are reading. These Roman officials, after all, are ambitious men, bent on climbing the rungs of imperial power and influence and wealth, and here they are being confronted with the story of a man who spurned all of that, a man who, in spite of a very advantageous social position, had walked away from everything that these two Roman officials cared about and longed for, all in order to embrace a life of poverty and want in the desert.

In St. Anthony, these two Roman officials saw a man who repudiated their entire way of life. And so how do they react? We might expect that they would throw the book aside, and comfort themselves by saying that surely Anthony must have been crazy to throw these things away. That would be an understandable, very human reaction. But St. Augustine tells us that something different happened. These two Roman officials, as they read this story, are wounded in their conscience, Augustine tells us that they begin to grow angry with themselves. And then, overwhelmed with a holy love and sober shame, the one official turns to the other and exclaims, “What are we doing!? What is it we are after in the midst of our toils, what it is it we desire!? What is the goal of our public service!? Can our hopes rise any higher than to become ‘Friends of the Emperor?’ And how frail and beset with peril is that pride! Through what dangers must we climb to a greater danger? And when shall we succeed? But if I chose to become a friend of God, see, I can become one now.” That’s a very grace-filled reaction, isn’t it? Augustine tells us that this official continued to read from this book about St. Anthony, and as he did the world dropped away from his mind, and setting aside all earthly hopes and government ambitions, he resolved, from that moment onward, to serve God with his entire life. The other official, seeing this, resolved to do the same, and together, St. Augustine says, they forsook all they had in order to follow the Lord.

 In reading the Life of St. Anthony, these two Roman officials had encountered a man who had recognized what really mattered in life, who had recognized what it was the Gospel offered, and who, acting accordingly, had sold everything he had in order to acquire that treasure, who had given up everything that this world had to offer in order to attain that pearl of great price. And, praised be God, these two men resolved to do the same. And, hearing of their example and being moved by them much as they had been moved by Anthony, St. Augustine would himself very soon after come to the same sort of resolution.

What St. Anthony, these two anonymous Roman officials, and St. Augustine all have in common is that they were all realists, and perhaps one could even say that they were radical realists. They saw how things actually stood, they saw how stark was the difference between the earthly things which the world offers and the heavenly things that the Gospel offers. And so they behaved in thoroughly pragmatic ways, setting aside everything for the sake of the one thing that really matters.

And when we see such examples (and these are but a few classic cases, there are certainly many more saints throughout the ages, canonized and not, whose lives could illustrate the point just as well), but when we see such examples, when see merchants who actually go and sell all they have to buy a pearl of great price, when we see someone actually give up everything in order to buy a field with its buried treasure, it can shock us. You’ll often see this when you see young people courageously pursuing their vocation, whether it be to marriage or religious life or priesthood, people will sometimes seem a little incredulous (and sometimes we’re the ones who are incredulous) saying things like “Are you sure?” or “Do you really want to make that kind of commitment?” as if the most important thing, the practical thing, would be to hold back in some respect, to keep ones options open, to not commit oneself fully. But what the gospel teaches, and what the saints show us, it is only by giving up everything, it is only by committing ourselves fully to the Christian way of life, that we can ever hope to attain anything worthwhile.

Now, as with so many things in the Christian life, it is easy to hear these things and perhaps to understand them, but actually doing them is harder. It is one thing to know that the rational, sensible thing to do is sell all we have so as to buy that pearl of great price, but it is another thing to actually start selling all of our stuff. To to burn the bridges behind us as we set out on the road of Christian discipleship, to actually and truly give up on earthly things in hope of a heavenly reward, can be a daunting proposition.

Some of you might be further along that path than others, indeed some of you, I pray, might be good examples of what it looks like to abandon earthly ambitions in favor of heavenly ones, particularly to younger people. Indeed, and I can I only speculate here, but I wonder if one of the reasons that God permits us to grow old is that it might become easier with age to adopt a more heavenly, which is to say a more realistic, perspective as the good things of this life are gradually stripped away.

But in any case, whether we are near or far on the road of faith, we can all at least pray for the grace to desire heavenly things, as well as the grace to see the world clearly, so that we might hold nothing back in our pursuit of sanctity. Let us pray to be realists who can give up everything with joy, since, as a French writer once said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”