It seems that another great influence in the life of Athanasius dates from the period of the persecution, and may have been actually a result of it.  The persecuting of the third century had driven many Alexandrian Christians to take refuge in the Egyptian desert; and some had found there a life so congenial to Christian piety that, when the danger was over, they did not return.  Thus was born monasticism which was destined, when persecutions were past, to take their place as the leaven of the Church’s life.  The impetus to asceticism continued in the interval of peace; and thirteen years before Athanasius was born a young Copt of the name of Antony had taken up his abode as a solitary in a ruined fort at Pispir, on the right bank of the Nile.  He emerged after twenty years a monument of Christian sanity; and in the Diocletian persecution, which was then beginning, he became the head and centre of monasticism in the Egyptian desert.  Athanasius, who subsequently wrote Antony’s life, says that he himself “was his attendant for a long time.” . . .

His relations with the monks, the spiritual sons of Antony, run through the troubled years like a peaceful current beneath a stormy sea.  The monks were unswerving in their loyalty to him; and he was consistent in his support of them.  It was as “one of the ascetics” that he himself had been acclaimed for election to the episcopate; and it may be that he longed for the monastic vocation, even as Antony longed for martyrdom, and was not granted it.

Antony of the Desert, warrior and saint of God, died in 356 at the age of a hundred and five, and in the same year Athanasius was exiled for the third time (from “The Life of St Athanasius” in On the Incarnation. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).

There are several interesting things about this quote, but most interesting to me were these two things:

• Antony longed for martyrdom.  You don’t hear very often about people longing for martyrdom.  I was talking recently with a friend about some of the things Piper said about asceticism, and my friend graciously pointed out to me that there is a great danger in attempting to merit righteousness through taking up conscious acts of self-denial.  So we need to be careful not to long for suffering out of sinful motivation.  But is there a sense in which we can long to be granted a death that most closely resembles our king and most clearly displays to the world his supreme value?
• Antony was not granted martyrdom.  He even survived several of the early persecutions living to the ripe old age of 105!  As strange as it may seem for Antony to desire martyrdom, it may seem even stranger that God wouldn’t grant it.  The wording used by the author is particularly well-chosen I think.  It is God who gives martyrdom, and he is not obligated to grant it to anyone.