Life of Macrina

Contents

Reading pages: 1–5 · 6–9 · 10–12

1. 1Gregory explains that he writes at a friend's request after their meeting in Antioch, and tells of Macrina's grandmother, her mother's reluctant marriage, and the vision that gave the child the secret name Thecla.
2. 2Macrina is educated in Scripture rather than pagan poetry, refuses all suitors after her betrothed dies, holding that marriage, like birth and death, is one, and stays always with her mother.
3. 3Macrina serves her widowed mother, draws her toward the ascetic life and wins back the proud young Basil to philosophy; Naucratius leaves a public career for solitude on the Iris.
4. 4Naucratius dies suddenly while hunting; Macrina's steadfastness keeps their mother from grief, and mother and daughter take up a common life with their former maids, living like the angels.
5. 5Macrina raises her youngest brother Peter; their mother dies blessing them as first-fruits and tithe; Basil becomes bishop and ordains Peter, then dies; Gregory, after a synod at Antioch and eight years of exile, sets out to visit her.
6. 6Gregory dreams of shining martyrs' relics, finds Macrina dying on a plank, hears her discourse on the soul and the resurrection, and her thanksgiving for God's blessings on their family.
7. 7On her last day Macrina, freed from fear of death, turns toward the east and prays to Christ, who has destroyed death, crushed the dragon and given the sign of the cross.
8. 8Macrina ends her prayer asking for a shining angel and forgiveness, signs herself with the cross, dies at the lamp-lighting, and the virgins break into lament for their mother and teacher.
9. 9Gregory turns the virgins' wailing into psalmody; the widow Vetiana and the deaconess Lampadia help prepare the body, revealing Macrina's iron cross, a ring holding a relic of the cross, and the scar of a healed tumour.
10. 10Crowds gather for an all-night vigil; Gregory arranges the singing, and with bishop Araxius carries the bier in a candle-lit procession to the church of the martyrs where their parents lie.
11. 11Mindful of the command not to uncover a parent's shame, Gregory covers the parents' remains before laying Macrina beside her mother; on the way home an officer of Sebastopolis tells how Macrina promised to heal his daughter's eye.
12. 12The officer's wife discovers on the road home that their daughter's eye has been healed by Macrina's prayer; Gregory ends by declining to record her further miracles for fear of unbelief.