In the end we are dealing with a phenomenon that transformed the world. When Christ was transfigured on Mount Tabor, he bestowed on history what we now understand to be an uncreated and natural grace. It has affected the way we view the world ever since. Anthony and his fellow anchorites were not just uneducated peasants who felt the need to escape the clutches of Roman authority. Many of them were deeply educated men who had voyaged from afar to be a part of this great human experiment. Nor is it right to describe them as killjoys who despised pleasure as an agent of the devil. Rather, they were men who looked on the body and the mind as objects that needed to be overcome, indeed modified, before any real spiritual progress could be achieved. Asceticism was the means, not the end. I think, if you could ask Anthony what he thought the ultimate goal was, he would surely say that asceticism was no more than an inn on the road to salvation. A man needs to rest in it for a time — but that he must once more take the road and dispense with it altogether.
Lazarus speaking to James Cowan from Desert Father, A Journey in the Wilderness with Saint Anthony, pp. 131-132.
