The life of St Macarius the Great
The sources differ on the shape of his early life: one strand remembers him working in his youth as a driver transporting saltpeter, an ordinary trade he left behind at thirty to withdraw into the desert; another strand instead remembers him as a young man who married at his parents' wish and, left a widower soon after, turned to the ascetic life from that grief rather than from his trade. He sought out Anthony the Great and remained under his direction for some years, until Anthony judged him ready for a solitary life of his own and sent him on to the remote desert of Scetis. Ordained priest there, Macarius spent the rest of his long life in that same wilderness, and around the middle of the fourth century a community grew up near him that became one of the great monastic centers of Egypt, still bearing his name. Tradition credits him with an extraordinary range of spiritual gifts, healing, discernment of thoughts, the interpretation of Scripture, and prophecy among them, gifts that drew disciples from across the Christian world to seek his counsel even as he sought nothing but greater solitude for himself. He is commemorated on the same day as a younger contemporary and friend who shared his name, Macarius of Alexandria, and the two should not be confused with one another. Macarius the Great reposed around 390, at the age of ninety, remembered as one of the fathers whose sayings and example shaped the whole tradition of Egyptian monasticism that followed him.
