The Life
Macarius was born around the year 300 in a small village in Egypt to pious Christian parents. He was married briefly as a young man; his wife died soon afterward. Macarius understood this as a call from God and from then on sought the monastic life. After his parents’ death he became a disciple of an old hermit who taught him fasting, prayer, and basket-weaving. The local bishop ordained him a deacon against his will, and Macarius slipped away. Soon afterward, a young woman of the village falsely accused him of being the father of her child. He silently bore the slander, sold baskets to support her, and only when she retracted the lie at the moment of childbirth did the village learn the truth. Macarius fled even the praise of men and went into the deeper desert. He visited Saint Anthony the Great, who recognized him as a true man of God. Macarius settled in the wilderness of Skete and spent the rest of his life there, sixty years in the inner desert, healing the sick, teaching disciples, and weeping daily for his sins and for the world. He reposed at about the age of ninety in 391.
Macarius’s parents arranged a marriage for him in his youth, as was the custom. He consented to please them. The marriage was very brief: his wife died not long after they had been joined together. Macarius did not become bitter at this loss. He understood it as a word from God. He said quietly to himself: “Take heed, Macarius. Have care for your soul. It is fitting that you forsake the life of the world.” He buried his wife, returned to his parents to care for them in their old age, and from that day the memory of death never left him.
After Macarius’s parents died, he was ordained deacon by the local bishop against his will. He fled his home village to a quieter place to escape the disturbance. While he was living there, a young woman of the village became pregnant outside of marriage. When her parents pressed her for the name of the father, she was afraid and named the holy hermit Macarius instead. Her family came to his cell, dragged him out, beat him, hung an iron cooking-pot around his neck, and led him through the village in disgrace. They demanded he support the girl. Macarius did not protest his innocence. He went back to his cell, wove more baskets than before, sold them in the market, and quietly sent the money to the girl’s family to feed her and her unborn child. He never said a word in his own defense. When her labor came, the pain was so great that the girl confessed the lie before all the village. Macarius had borne the dishonor without complaint.
When the girl confessed the lie, her parents and the whole village were filled with shame. They wanted to come in procession to Saint Macarius’s cell to apologize publicly and to honor him for his patience. Macarius heard of their plan. He did not stay to be praised. He left his cell in the night, walked into the deeper desert, and settled on Mount Nitria in the wilderness of Pharan. He had borne the dishonor when it came; he refused to wait for the honor that followed. He had done what he did for the love of Christ alone, not for any human reward.
After about three years on Mount Nitria, Macarius made the long journey to visit Saint Anthony the Great, the Father of Egyptian monasticism, who was still living at his cell on Mount Colzim near the Red Sea. Anthony was already very old. He received the young desert father with deep love. When he saw Macarius, he said the words the synaxarion preserves: “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile.” These were the very words the Lord had used of Nathaniel in John 1:47. Macarius lived for some time at Anthony’s cell as his disciple. On Anthony’s instruction he eventually withdrew to the wilderness of Skete in northwestern Egypt, where he made his cell and where he would spend the remaining sixty years of his life.
Macarius made his cell in the wilderness of Skete, a great empty desert to the northwest of the Nile Delta. There he spent the remaining sixty years of his life. He prayed without ceasing. He worked at his palm-baskets to support himself and to give to the poor. He fasted, kept vigil, and slept very little. The brothers called him “the young old man” because his spiritual maturity exceeded his years. Other monks began to gather around him at Skete. He became their abba and their teacher. The wilderness of Skete became one of the great centers of Christian monastic life in the world.
One day, while walking in the desert, Saint Macarius came upon a human skull lying in the sand. He stopped and stirred it gently with his staff. By the power of God, the skull spoke to him. “Who are you?” the saint asked. “I was the high priest of the pagan temple of this region,” the skull answered, “when the worship of the idols was great in this place. I led many souls into the worship of demons, and I am now in hell.” “Is there any consolation?” the saint asked. The skull answered: “When you, holy father, pray for those who are in hell, we receive a small consolation. We see each other’s faces only at those moments. The Christians who pray bring us a faint relief.” Macarius wept and prayed. He asked the skull what was below them in hell. The skull answered: “Below us are those who knew the name of Christ but denied him. Their suffering is greater.” Macarius blessed the skull and walked on, weeping all the way back to his cell, praying for all the souls of the lost.
The Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount that the pure in heart will see God. Macarius spent his sixty years in the desert working out exactly what this means in flesh and blood. He came to teach — in his sayings, in his life, and in the homilies that bear his name — that the heart is the place where God meets the soul. To purify the heart is to clear away every false thought, every attachment to sin, every barrier between us and the Lord, until the heart becomes a small temple where Christ dwells. Macarius lived this. The pure heart is not just an inner peace; it is the actual seeing of God in this life and forever in the next.
When Macarius was nearing the end of his life, two figures appeared to him in his cell. They were Saint Anthony the Great and Saint Pachomius the Great — both already long reposed and already in the glory of God. They had come to bring him a word from the Lord. “Macarius,” they said, “your departure to eternal life is nine days from now.” Macarius received the news with joy. He gathered the brothers of Skete around him, exhorted them with great tenderness to keep the Rule and the traditions of the holy fathers, blessed each one, and prepared himself for death with prayer and weeping for his sins. On the ninth day, as the angels of God came to receive his soul, he repeated the words of the Lord on the Cross: “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” He reposed in peace at about the age of ninety in the year 391.
Macarius gives us, more than perhaps any other desert father, the teaching that the Christian life is the slow patient cleansing of the heart. The heart is where the Lord meets the soul. Whatever else we do, if our hearts are not being purified, we are not really making progress. He spent his sixty years on this single work — weeping for his sins, watching his thoughts, praying without ceasing, refusing the praise of men, bearing dishonor, loving the souls of the dead, gathering disciples, teaching them the same simple work he himself did. He left us an image of what the Christian life actually looks like: not dramatic, not famous, just the long quiet work of the heart in the love of Christ, year after year, until the Lord comes to take us home.