The way is called asceticism, or originally, “the discipline,” and the institution it created is called monasticism. Although Antony is sometimes considered the founder of monasticism, he was not. But he put monasticism on the Christian map because of his extraordinary practice of monastic disciplines. In the novel and movie The Natural, baseball player Roy Hobbs longs to be “the best there ever was.” It terms of how early and medieval Christians understood the spiritual life, Antony was indeed considered