St. Francis de Sales studied the Fathers of the Church thoroughly and referred to their lives many times in his own writings.
St Anthony the Abbot was no exception!
In addressing his spiritual daughters, the Visitation Nuns, in his Spiritual Conferences, St. Francis de Sales used the example of St. Anthony the Abbot as a model for true holiness. He exhorted the Sisters in this manner:
” But, my dear daughters, I entreat you to consider a little the life of those great religious, for instance, of a St. Antony, who has been honored by God and man on account of his very great sanctity.
Tell me, how did he arrive at so great a degree of sanctity and perfection? Was it by dint of reading, or by conferences and frequent communions, or by the multitude of the sermons that he heard? By no means; he arrived at it by making use of the example of the holy hermits, taking the abstinence of one, the prayer of another, and thus, like an industrious bee, he went about gathering and collecting the virtues of the servants of God, to compose of them the honey of a holy edification.
And St. Paul, the first hermit, did he attain to the sanctity he acquired, by the reading of good books? He had none. Was it by the communions or confessions that he made? He only made two in his life. Was it by conferences or sermons? In the desert there were none, and he saw no one except St. Antony, who went to visit him at the end of his life. Do you know what made him a saint? It was his fidelity in applying himself to that which he had been called to, and had undertaken at the beginning, and in not amusing himself with anything else.”
Today is the Feast of St. Anthony the Abbot. Let us try his approach to holiness in the new year!
Source: Three Spiritual Laws, Chapter v11 of Spiritual Conferences of St Francis de Sales