St. Anthony, about nineteen, gives three hundred acres to his village

COMA, Middle Egypt, about 270 AD — The three hundred acres around this village belong now to the villagers of Coma. Saint Anthony, who inherited them, is about nineteen. He buried his father and his mother less than six months ago, and he has given away the land and sold everything movable in the house for the poor.

Coma is a village of Middle Egypt, near Heracleopolis Magna, in the Fayum country. His family was one of the best known in it: Christians, wealthy, with slaves in the house. He refused to go to school, because he could not bear the way the other boys behaved, and he wanted to stay at home and live simply. While his parents were alive they had already left the running of the house to him.

Then both of them died, and the house, the land and his sister were his to look after. The ground was good and produced heavily — far more than the two of them needed to live on.

Less than six months after the funerals he was walking to church, as he did most days. He had walked that road since he was small, running on ahead of his parents to get there. On the way he was thinking about the Apostles, who left everything and followed the Lord, and about the first Christians, who sold what they had and laid the money at the Apostles’ feet for the poor. He came in while the Gospel was being read, and the passage was the Lord’s word to the rich man: “If you would be perfect, go and sell that you have and give to the poor; and come follow Me and you shall have treasure in heaven.” He took it as spoken to him.

He walked straight out of the church and gave the fields to the men of his own village, all three hundred acres, so that the land would be no further burden on him or on his sister. He sold everything movable. The sale raised a large sum, and he gave it to the poor, keeping a little back for his sister.

On another Sunday he was in church again at the reading, listening for what would come. The words were the Lord’s to his disciples: “be not anxious for the morrow”. He went out and gave away the last of the money he had been holding for his sister.

Then St. Anthony talked with his sister — about love, about truth, about the fear of God — until she wanted the same life he wanted. St. Anthony put his sister in the care of women of the district who had vowed their virginity to God, all of them known to him, and left money for her keep and her schooling. She grew old a virgin, and in time she led other consecrated women.

St. Anthony did not go far. There were still few monasteries in Egypt and no monk had gone out to the far desert, so a man who wanted to live this way lived alone near his own village. He moved into a house just outside Coma, far enough out to be by himself and no further. He worked with his hands, spent part of what he earned on bread and gave the rest to people who needed it. In the next village there was an old man who had lived as a hermit since he was young, and St. Anthony went over to watch him and took up the same way of life.

The people of Coma called him God-beloved. Some of them welcomed him as a son, and others as a brother.