from the desert: a few sayings from Abba Anthony on his feast day

Abba Anthony said: "From our neighbor is life and death. If we gain our brother, we gain God, but if we cause our brother to stumble, we sin against Christ."

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Abba Anthony said, "I saw the snares that the enemy spread out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get through from such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility."

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The brothers praised a monk in the presence of Abba Anthony. When the monk came to see him, Anthony wanted to know how he would bear insults; and seeing that he could not bear them at all, he said to him, "You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but destroyed from within by robbers."
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