Saint Anthony on the Divine Physician

In my readings of the Desert Fathers over the past couple of weeks, I stumbled over some of St. Anthony's teachings on the omnipresence of God and his immanent presence to his creatures, reflecting on the law implanted within us (the Natural Law) and how it prepares us for Christ, showing us that we are inadequate and in need of God's mercy.


Truly, my beloved in the Lord, not at one time only did God visit His creatures; but from the foundation of the world, whenever any have come to the Creator of all by the law of His covenant implanted in them, God is present with each one of these in His bounty and grace by His Spirit.

But in the case of those rational natures in which that covenant grew cold, and their intellectual perception died, so that they were no longer able to know themselves according to their first condition; concerning them I say that they became altogether irrational, and worshipped the creation rather than the Creator.

But the Creator of all in His great bounty visited us by the implanted law of the covenant. For He is immortal substance.

And as many as became worthy of God and grew by His implanted law, and were taught by His Holy Spirit and received the Spirit of Adoption, these were able to worship their Creator as they ought: of whom Paul says that they received not the promise on account of us (Heb. 11:39).

And the Creator of All, who repents not of His love, desiring to visit our sickness and confusion, raised up Moses the Lawgiver, who gave us the law in writing, and founded for us the House of Truth, which is the Catholic Church, that makes us one in God; for He desires that we should be brought back to our first beginning.

Moses built the house, yet did not complete it, but left it and went away. Then again God raised up the choir of the Prophets by His Spirit. And they also built on the foundation of Moses, but could not complete the house, and likewise left it and went away.

And all of them, being clothed with the Spirit, saw that the wound was incurable, and that none of the creatures was able to heal it, but only the Only-begotten, who is the very Mind of the Father and His Image, who after the pattern of His Image made every rational creature.

For these knew that the Saviour is the great physician; and they assembled all together, and offered prayer for their members, that is, for us, crying out and saying, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? (Jer. 8:22) We would have healed her, but she is not healed: now therefore let us forsake her and go away. (Jer.51:9)

Antony the Great (c. 251-356): Letter 2 (trans. Derwas J. Chitty).