Macarius was born in Egypt about 300. Palladius, who came to the desert soon after his death, says he withdrew from the world at about thirty, spent sixty years in the desert, and was ordained priest. He settled in Scetis, the wilderness now called Wadi el-Natrun, and became the father of its monks; he is said to have visited Antony and learned from him.
The desert sayings remember him as gentle with sinners and severe only with himself: it was said that, as God covers the world, so Macarius covered the faults he saw as if he did not see them. Under the Arian emperor Valens he and Macarius of Alexandria were exiled for a time to an island in the Nile. He died about 391, and the monastery that bears his name in Wadi el-Natrun is still inhabited by monks today.
Macarius the Egyptian in the library (1 work)
- Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St Macarius the Egyptian — 4th century; translation 1921
Homilies on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the transformation of the heart, treasured in the Orthodox East and by John Wesley.