Saint Macarius

(Feast day: January 19)

Saint Macarius was born in Alexandria around 305 to poor pagan parents. He worked as a baker. He came to know the Christian religion through wandering monks who preached Christ. He spent three years among the catechumens, then received baptism and began to live a life of asceticism and mortification of the senses. He settled in the desert, where he practised the strictest fasting and detachment: he ate only once a week and slept only two hours a night.

The Bishop of Alexandria called him and ordained him a priest at the age of forty. He took no pride in this, but grew even more in the practice of virtue, in the pursuit of holiness and in going deeper into the desert. Many became his disciples. He spent his nights in prayer and brought many heretics back to the true faith.
Saint Macarius discovered that the true meaning of the solitary life is not simply isolation from people, but a sincere desire for union with God, the Lover of mankind. The true solitary flees from people in body, but in practice loves every person.
The Arian Emperor Valens exiled him to a pagan island; its people came to believe in Christ through him, and the emperor sent him back to his hermitage.

He worked many miracles and healings, and had the power to drive out demons with a simple sign of the cross. Once a hyena came to him and began tugging at his garment. He followed it to its den, and it brought out its three cubs, which were deformed. Amazed at the animal’s intelligence, he prayed and laid his hands on them, and they were healed. The hyena went away and came back with a hide in its mouth, which it offered to him; he used it as his bed until his death.

Another of his wonders: when the rain stopped falling in Alexandria, the patriarch sent for him. As soon as he arrived, the rain began to pour and kept falling until they asked him to stop it; he prayed to the Lord, and it stopped.

Some of his best-known sayings

“Since the day I became a monk I have never eaten my fill of bread or slept my fill. And none of the courageous fathers fell ill, because they disciplined their bodies within due measure.”

“Guard your ears from gossip, and your hearts will be pure; flee from everything that defiles the heart.”

“Guard your tongues by not speaking evil of your brothers, for whoever speaks evil of his brother angers God who dwells in him. Whatever anyone does to his neighbour, he does to God.”

He lived ninety years, sixty of them in asceticism, and fell asleep in the Lord around 395.

Prepared by Rita, of the Sawt el Rab team