Section 82

Although Antony had become so widely known and gave such answers to those who came to him, he returned again to the inner mountain and maintained his customary ascetic discipline.

Often, while people were with him and he was sitting or walking, he suddenly became silent, as Scripture describes in Daniel. After some time he would resume exactly what he had been saying to the brothers before. His companions understood that he was seeing a vision.

Many times on the mountain he saw things taking place in Egypt and told them to Serapion the bishop, who was inside with him and saw that Antony had been caught up in a vision.

Once, while Antony was sitting and working, he entered a kind of ecstasy and groaned deeply at what he saw. After some time he turned toward those present, still groaning and trembling. He prayed, fell to his knees, and remained there for a long time. When the old man finally rose, he was weeping.

His companions became frightened and anxious and desperately wanted to know what he had seen. They pressed him until he was compelled to speak. With many groans he said:

“My children, it would be better to die before the things I have seen in this vision come to pass.”

When they asked him again, he burst into tears and said: “Wrath is about to overtake the Church, and she is on the point of being handed over to people who are like irrational beasts. I saw the table in the Lord’s house, with mules standing around it on every side in a circle. They kicked everything around them just as a herd kicks when it leaps about in confusion.

“You heard how I groaned, because I heard a voice saying, ‘My altar will be defiled.’”

The old man saw these things, and two years later the present invasion of the Arians and the plundering of the churches occurred. They violently carried off the sacred vessels and made pagans carry them. They forced pagans out of the prisons to join in their services, and in their presence committed outrages upon the holy table.

Then we all understood that the kicking of the mules had shown Antony beforehand what the Arians, irrationally like beasts, were now doing.

But when Antony had seen the vision, he comforted those who were with him: “Do not lose heart, my children. Just as the Lord has been angry, so he will heal us again. The Church will soon receive her proper order again and shine as she normally does. You will see those who were persecuted restored, wickedness retreat again into its own hiding places, and the true faith speak openly everywhere with complete freedom.

“Only do not defile yourselves with the Arians. Their teaching is not the teaching of the apostles but that of demons and of their father, the devil. It is barren, irrational, and without enlightened understanding—like the senselessness of these mules.”