Biography of Makaria the Great

At the request of his parents, he married, but soon widowed. Having buried his wife, Macarius told himself: "Listen, Macarius, and have care for your soul, for you have to leave earthly life." The Lord awarded the saint of his long life, but the mortal memory has been constantly with him since then, forcing the exploits of prayer and repentance. He began to visit the temple of God more often and delve into the Holy Scriptures, but did not leave his elderly parents, fulfilling the commandment of the veneration of his parents.

According to the death of parents, the Monk Macarius "Macarius" - with the Greek. The Lord sent him such a leader in the person of an experienced elder-foreign, who lived in the desert, not far from the village. The elder accepted the young man with love, instructed him in the spiritual science of vigil, post and prayer and taught needlework - weaving of baskets. Having built a separate Kelly near his own, the elder placed a student in her.

Once a local bishop arrived in a poultry and, having learned about the virtuous life of the Monk, set, against his will, the clergy of the local church. However, Blessed Macarius was burdened by a violation of silence, and therefore he secretly went to another place. The enemy of salvation began a stubborn struggle with the ascetic, trying to frighten him, shaking Kelly and inspiring sinful thoughts.

Blessed Macarius repelled the attacks of the demon, protecting his prayer and the sign of the Cross. Evil people erected abuse to the holy, slandering in the seduction of the girl from the near village. He was pulled out of his cell, beat, mocked him. The Monk Macarius is a temptation with great humility. The money made up for his baskets, he meekly referred to feed the girl.

The innocence of blessed Macarius opened when the girl, having suffered for many days, could not give birth. Then she confessed in torment that she slandered the hermit, and indicated the actual culprit of sin. When her parents recognized the truth, they were amazed and intended to go to Blessed with repentance, but the Monk Macarius, avoiding anxiety from people, retired from those places at night and moved to the nitrian mountain in the Faransk Desert.

So human malice contributed to the success of the righteous. Having lived for three years in the desert, he went to St. Anthony the Great, the father of the Egyptian monasticism, whom he had heard, still living in the world, and burned with the desire to see it. Rev. Avva Anthony with love accepted the blissful Macarius, who became his devoted student and follower.

The Monk Makarii lived with him for a long time, and then, on the advice of St. Avva, he retired to the skitter desert in the northwestern part of Egypt and shot it off with his exploits that they began to call him the "old man", since, having barely reached the age of thirty, he showed himself an experienced, mature monk. Many attacks of demons were experienced by the Monk Macarius: once he carried palm branches for weaving the baskets from the desert, he met his devil in the way and wanted to hit the saint with a sickle, but could not fulfill this and said: "Macarius, I endure great sorrow from you because I can’t defeat you, you have a weapon that you reflect me, this is your humility." When the saint was 40 years old, he was dedicated to the dignity of the priest and set up by the rector of the Avtia Monoks, who lived in the Skithian desert.

In these years, the Monk Makarii often visited the great Anthony, receiving instructions from him in spiritual conversations. Blessed Macarius was given to be present at the death of Holy Avva and inherited his staff, with which he accepted the purely spiritual power of the great Anthony, just as the Prophet Elisei once accepted pure grace from the Prophet Elijah along with the sky that fell from heaven.

The Monk Macarius committed a lot of healing, people flocked from different places for help, advice, asking him for the holy prayers. All this violated the solitude of the saint, so he dug up a deep cave under his Kelly and was removed there for prayer and godly thought. The Monk Macarius reached such boldness in the walk before God that, according to His prayer, the Lord resurrected the dead.

Despite such a height of the achieved God -like, he continued to maintain extraordinary humility. Once, Holy Avva found a thief in his cell, who loaded his things on Kelli's donkey. Without giving the appearance that he is the master of these things, the Monk began to silently help to link the luggage. Letting him go with the world, Blessed said to himself: “We have not brought anything to this world, it is clear that we can’t take anything away from here.

May the Lord be blessed in everything! Once the Monk Macarius walked along the desert and, seeing the skull lying on the ground, asked him: "Who are you? When you, Avva, pray for those in hell, we get some relief." The reverend asked: "What are these torment? When you pray, we begin to see each other a little, and this serves us with some comfort." Hearing such words, the reverend widened and asked: "Are there even more cruel torments?

They tolerate even more severe torments." Once, during the prayer, Blessed Macarius heard a voice: "Macarius, you have not yet reached such perfection as two women living in the city."The humble ascetic, taking his staff, went to the city, found the house where women lived, and knocked. Women accepted him with joy, and the reverend said: "For the sake of you, I came from the distant desert and I want to know about your good deeds, tell us about them without hiding anything." Women answered with surprise: "We live with our husbands, we have no virtues." However, the saint continued to insist, and then the women told him: "We married our native brothers.

For the entire time of life life, we did not tell each other a single evil or offensive word and never quarreled among ourselves. We asked our husbands to let us go to the Convent, but they do not agree, and we vowed not to pronounce a single worldly word to death. "The holy ascetic glorified God and said:" Truly, the Lord does not seek a virgin, neither a monk, nor a laity, but appreciates a person’s free intention and sends the grace of the Holy Spirit and controls the life of every person.

The striving to be saved. "During the reign of Emperor Valent, Arians - the Monk Macarius the Great, together with the Monk Makariy Alexandria, was persecuted by the Arian Bishop Luke. They seized both the elders and, by putting on a ship, took him to a deserted island where the pagans lived. Learning about what had happened, the Arian bishop was permitted and permitted and permissible and permissible The elders to return to their deserts and humility of the reverend was transformed by the human souls, how to pray, the Monk replied: "For prayer, it is not necessary for a lot of words, it is only necessary to say:" Lord, as you wish, have mercy on me.

" If the enemy attacks you, then you only need to say: "Lord, have mercy! When the brethren asked:" How can you become a monk? I asked them how I can become a monk. They replied: "If a person does not abandon everything that is in the world cannot be a monk." To this I answered: "I am weak and cannot be like you." Then the monks replied: "If you can’t be like us, then sit in your cell and crush about your sins." The Monk Macarius gave advice to one monk: "Run away from people and you will be saved." He asked: “What does it mean to run from people?

Rev. Makarii also said:“ If you want to be saved, be like a dead man who is not angry when he is dishonored, and is not exalted when he is praised. ”And also:“ If you are repled - like praise, poverty - like wealth, lack of abundance, you will not die. For it cannot be that the jurisprudent and working in piety fall into the impurity of passions and demon seduction.

"The prayer of the Monk Macarius saved many in dangerous circumstances of life and retained from troubles and temptations. His mercy was so great that they said about him: "As God covers the world, so Abba Macarius covered the sins that he, and seeing, as if he had not seen, and hearing, as if he had not heard." The Rev. lived up to 97 years, shortly before the death, the Monk Anthony and Pachomius appeared to him, who informed the joyful news of his close transition to the blessed heavenly monastery.

Giving instructions to his students and blessing them, the Monk Macarius said goodbye to everyone and rested with the words: "In your hands, Lord, I betray my spirit." For sixty years, Holy Avva Makarii spent in a dead desert for the world. Most of all, the Monk spent in an interview with God, often being in a state of spiritual admiration. But he never stopped crying, repenting and working.

Avva adopted his abundant ascetic experience into deep theological creations. Fifty conversations and seven ascetic words remained the precious heritage of the spiritual wisdom of the Monk Macarius the Great. The idea that the highest good and the purpose of man is the unity of the soul with God is the main thing in the creations of the Monk Macarius. Talking about how to achieve sacred unity, the Rev.

was based on the experience of the great teachers of Egyptian monasticism and on his own. The path to God and the experience of the God of the God of the Holy ascetics is open to every believing heart. Therefore, the Holy Church and included in the common evening and morning prayers the ascetic prayers of the Monk Macarius the Great. Earthly life, according to the teachings of the Monk Macarius, with all its labors, has only a relative meaning: to prepare the soul, make it capable of perception of the kingdom of heaven, and to educate in the soul affinity with the heavenly Fatherland.

This can be achieved if "we truly believe and love God and we rotate in all his holy commandments." If the soul, engaged to Christ in holy baptism, will not promote the grace of the Holy Spirit granted to it, then it will be treated to "excommunicate from life", as it turned out to be distant and incapable of communicating with Christ. The internal feat of a Christian determines the measure of perception of this unity.Each of us acquires salvation by grace and the divine gift of the Holy Spirit, but to achieve the perfect measure of virtue necessary to assimilate the soul of this divine gift, only "by faith and love in the effort of free arbitrariness." Then "how much by grace, so much and in truth" a Christian inherits the eternal life.

Salvation is a God -human affair: we achieve complete spiritual success “not only by divine strength and grace, but also by bringing our own works”, on the other hand, in the “measure of freedom and purity” we come to more than one of our own worshiping, but not without “assistance from above God's hand”. The fate of a person is determined by the actual state of his soul, his self -determination to good or evil.

The miracles and visions of the blissful Macarius are described in the book of the presbyter of Rufin, while it was composed by the Monk Serapion, the bishop of the Temunta Lower Egypt, one of the famous figures of the Church of the 4th century.