06/01/2026
Some would call them hermits
A man walked into the desert and accidentally started a movement that shaped the entire Christian world.
Anthony of Egypt — born around 251 AD into a wealthy Egyptian family — heard the Gospel reading one day in church. Sell what you possess and give to the poor and come follow me. He went home and gave everything away. Then he walked into the desert.
He spent the next 86 years there.
He didn't intend to start a movement. He wanted to be alone with God. But disciples followed him. They built cells near his. They came asking him questions. He sent them away. They came back. He answered.
His answers — and the answers of the hundreds of other desert hermits who gathered in the Egyptian wilderness over the following century — were collected into a book called the Apophthegmata Patrum. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
These sayings have a quality unlike anything else in Christian literature. They are brief. They are specific. They cut through piety and sentiment to the actual mechanics of the soul.
A brother asked Abba Moses — give me a word. He said — go and sit in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything.
A brother asked Abba Antony — what shall I do? He said — trust no one, judge no one, never cease to pray. Then you will live.
These are not comforting words. They are the words of people who had sat alone with their own thoughts long enough to know what the human heart actually contains.
The monastic tradition that shaped medieval Europe — the Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustinians — all trace their spiritual genealogy back to these hermits in the Egyptian sand.
Contemplative communities from New Mexico to South Korea today read the sayings of the desert fathers before they sleep.
A man walked into the desert to be alone.
The whole church followed him.
Share this with someone who needs to sit still.
"In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and trust shall be your strength." — Isaiah 30:15
