St Macarius the Great

A camel driver's son from the Nile Delta, Macarius withdrew into the desert of Scetis around 330, and the monastic settlement that gathered around him remains alive today as the Monastery of St Macarius in Wadi Natrun. He visited Anthony the Great and carried the elder's spirit into a new generation. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve his gentle severity: slandered by a village girl who blamed him for her pregnancy, he quietly worked to feed her until the truth came out; he taught a disciple to learn from the dead in the cemetery, who answer neither praise nor insult. Ordained priest against his own wishes, he was called 'the young elder' for his early wisdom. The famous Fifty Spiritual Homilies circulate under his name, though scholars judge them the work of a later Syrian author. His memory is the fragrance of the first desert.