Count the Cost

In the early church, faith in Christ came at a cost. The earliest Christians often lost family and friends because they gave up their religion. They may have even lost property and businesses because of persecutions at various times. Many were imprisoned and tortured for their faith. Many died as martyrs. After Constantine issued the “Edict of Milan” much of that changed. The threat of persecution ended and being a Christian no longer involved the threat of martyrdom. It was around this same time that the rise of a new movement in the Christian life began to emerge. That new movement would come to be known as Monasticism.

The father of this movement, an Egyptian named Anthony, died in 356. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, wrote down Anthony’s story a year later. According to Athanasius, it was the Gospel account of Jesus telling the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor that compelled Anthony. He applied this statement directly to himself, gave up all his possessions, and went to the dessert to pursue a life wholly focused on God.

Monasticism has changed and developed over the centuries since Anthony was first compelled to go into the dessert. Monastics have found ways to separate themselves from the world in order to pursue holiness both individually, as anchorites, and in communities, like those who follow the rules of St. Basil or St. Benedict. Clearly, not everyone is called to the monastic life of course. However, as Ivan Kauffman states so beautifully in his book Follow Me, “The monks demonstrated, as the martyrs before them had, that Christian faith makes it possible for ordinary people to live in an entirely new way, but they did so in a new way – by their lives rather than their deaths.” Maybe this is what it means to daily take up our crosses and follow Him.