Jan. 17 Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot, Memorial
The Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot (251-356) from the 3rd century. St. Anthony, the Father of the monastics, retired to the desert at about the age of eighteen in order to live in perfect solitude. Many heard about his ascetic life and came to join him in his hermitage, He laid the foundations of community life, and gave to his disciples that profound broad and sane instruction, the mature result of solitude and prayer, which forms the surest basis of Christian asceticism.
