How profound and far-reaching was the influence that the example of St. Anthony the patriarch of the monastic life exercised on Society! If ever there was a man who dominated history ,dictated to the future, molded the lives of generations yet unborn, it was surely this man. Intent at first only upon the salvation of his own soul, he initiated one of the most amazing movement that history records.
There were certainly hermits before his time. But he is their recognized leader, and the monks of the desert , who at one time numbered hundreds of thousands , looked upon his as the father of monasticism . Indeed he is the father of the technical religious life in every shape and form. That is to say, no Christian name has inspired greater heroism or been productive of deeper and lasting results.
In the calendar of the saints we find a multitude whose very names are suggestive of momentous events, who were real makers of history and of large-scale history at that. A fourteenth-century chronicler says of St. Bridget of Sweden that on the day of her birth, a priest heard a supernatural voice saying, " Tonight there will be born a child to whose words the whole world will one day listen." Equally momentous was the nativity of many other saint.
St Augustine, for example, embodies in his own person that disturbed , uneasy period when paganism and Christianity were engaged in final conflict.
St Telemachus by his heroic sacrifice put an end to an abuse which was the scandal of Christendom.
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