These seven letters were addressed by St Antony (251-356 AD) to his disciples. This hermit of the Egyptian desert draws our attention to those things which are essential in the spiritual life. Among the main themes are the witness of the Holy Spirit in the conscience of each person, the need for self-knowledge, the call to follow Christ, the unity of the Church, and our mutual co-inherence as members of the Body of Christ.

This book revolutionizes our understanding of the life and thought of the great anchorite father of the Egyptian desert. It is a signal contribution to our knowledge of Egyptian Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.—Birger Pearson, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Samuel Rubenson, by means of a fresh analysis of the letters of St. Antony, exposes the distortion of the picture of early Christian monks as unlettered and primitive. Rubenson describes the desert monasteries as centers of theological reflection in Egypt, showing how they combined the speculative philosophy of the Greeks and the biblical tradition. Included in this volume is a new translation of the letters themselves, which are shown to be authentic and an important source for the study of the desert fathers and the early monastic tradition. The later image of Antony is demonstrated to be influenced by church politics of the latter part of the fourth century. Samuel Rubenson is Associate Professor at Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Seven letters were written by St. Anthony the Great, which are ever so simple yet inexplicably profound, reflecting the still life of the desert, far away from the tumult and distraction of the world. These letters reveal the path to God with such clarity as befitting of someone who has tasted and experienced the love of God in truth, and are as beneficial and relevant today, as they were in the fourth century.

Fairacres Publications 120 Scholars have often concentrated on the theological writings of St Athanasius (c. 296-373 AD) and on his influence as a religious leader, so that his contribution to the monastic life has not received due recognition. In these six letters addressed to monks, Athanasius is revealed as a wise spiritual guide and loving pastor, determined that the monks should receive sound teaching, so as to avoid the pitfalls of heresies current at that time. As Leslie Barnard notes in his Introduction, ‘The permanent significance of these letters lies in their wisdom, moderation and balance.’

In a city mired in endless decay, where the youth suffer through all the horrors of urban blight, hope comes in a most unassuming form: a tiny brick schoolhouse run by two Felician nuns where a singular basketball genius takes teenagers from the mean streets of Jersey City and turns them into champions on the hardcourt. Coach Bob Hurley had been working miracles at St. Anthony High School for over thirty years, winning state and national championships and offering his players rescue from their surroundings through college scholarships, when he met his most dysfunctional team yet. In The Miracle of St. Anthony Adrian Wojnarowski follows Hurley through a gripping and heartrending season as he struggles to lead a troubled team to glory through his unparalleled understanding of the game and his ceaseless determination to see no more children lost to these streets. In The Miracle of St. Anthony, acclaimed sports journalist Adrian Wojnarowski follows Hurley through a gripping and heartrending season, as he struggles to lead a troubled team to glory through his unparalleled understanding of the game and his ceaseless determination to see no more children lost to the city streets.

The book reproduces the cleaned paintings for the first time. It also describes and analyzes their amalgam of Coptic (Egyptian Christian), Byzantine, and Arab styles and motifs as well as the religious culture to which they belong. In 1996, funded by the United States Agency for International Development and at the request of the Monastery of St. Antony, the Antiquities Development Project of the American Research Center in Egypt began the conservation of the paintings in the church. The paintings revealed by the conservators are of extremely high quality, both stylistically and conceptually. While rooted in the Christian tradition of Egypt, they also reveal explicit connections with Byzantine and Islamic art of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some newly discovered paintings can even be dated back to the sixth or seventh century.