Saving the Church (and the World) - Again

17 January 2026  Ephesians 6:10-13, 18

Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot

“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and power,…against the spiritual forces of darkness in heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

There was once a ruler who looked out on his realm, finding wickedness and disorder everywhere. Everywhere were signs of cultural rot, and religion seemed to be everywhere in decline. People not only doubted traditional religion, but also didn’t seem to want a new religious solution either. The education system seemed to be arrayed against any religious challenges, and demanded of both teachers and students that they renounce, or at least keep quiet about, any religious values at variance with the values of the administrative state.

Leaders and influencers in the culture, though they may have been demoralized by evidence of the cultural rot all around them, could not be brought to defect to any religious program that seemed to be new to them. If religious persecutions broke out, as they did from time to time, most people, following their leaders and influencers, could not rally themselves to object overmuch.

If the Church and the world are going to be saved again – and they will be – we have good reason to believe it will happen the same way. Intense prayer, intense study of the Bible, intense communities of intentional disciples, intense witness. It won’t be just monks, either.

At most, they found the persecutions to be in poor taste, and they continued to insist that there would be no religious solution to the problems of their time. The leaders and influencers continued to control the commanding heights of politics, education and culture. Attacks on religious solutions were considered “smart” and “respectable,” while religious solutions were denounced as unsophisticated, intolerant, and irredeemably stupid. The ruler, following the leaders and influencers, declared his intention to use all the resources of his government to revive the culture and make it again glorious. And if that required a heavy hand at times, it was worth the cost, any cost.

It could be tempting to see in this a description of the current presidential administration in the U.S. But it is not. It is a description rather of the principate of the Roman emperor Diocletian, who on 24 February A.D. 303 began the largest, most extensive, most brutal persecution of Christians in history. It went on for 8 years, and according to some the Church was finally saved only by the Edict of Milan of 313 A.D., by which Constantine made Christianity the religion of his government (though not of the Roman Empire, which did not happen until A.D. 380). The actual rescue, however, began just two years after the Great Persecution broke out, with the emergence into public view of St. Anthony of the Desert. He had gone into seclusion in the desert of Upper Egypt around A.D. 270 to do battle with temptation and demons. He emerged in 305 to organize and lead the small communities of Christian hermits that had sprung up around his place of seclusion. It was these monks who saved the Church at a time when it seemed likely that the Church would be assimilated and secularized as simply the chaplain to the Roman state. The monks of St. Anthony became the standard of true Christian devotion at a time when coziness with power was the sorest temptation.

It was not the last time when such communities would save the Church. In the 6th century St. Benedict formed the communities that not only renewed the Church, but saved the culture of Europe by preserving the literary heritage of Greece and Rome. In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic revived the Church again at the start of the modern era when wealth and political power again tempted Christians and Christian leaders. In the 16th century communities led by St. Ignatius of Loyola inaugurated Christian missions that spread Christianity around the world. In all these periods, and others, the Church (and the world) have been saved and transformed by communities of intense prayer, intense study of the Bible, intense devotion to intentional discipleship, and intense witness.

If the Church and the world are going to be saved again – and they will be – we have good reason to believe it will happen the same way. Intense prayer, intense study of the Bible, intense communities of intentional disciples, intense witness. It won’t be just monks, either.

St. Anthony of the Desert, pray for us.