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Catholic Saints
St. Macrina the Younger
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Dive into the lives of Holy Women You’ve Never Heard Of with Dr. Elizabeth Klein and Dr. Jessica Murdoch. St. Macrina the Younger comes from the "second holiest family" as the oldest sister to three canonized saints. She depicts how our domestic homes can become places of sanctity.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Welcome to form now. I am Dr. Elizabeth Klein, and here with me today is Dr. Jessica Murdoch. We are both professors who teach here at the Augustine Institute, and we decided to do a little series on holy women you've never heard of. So more obscure female saints. I have lots of feminine, saintly heroes from the tradition that aren't necessarily as popular as I think they should be. And so we're going to cover some of these saints and we're going to do them in chronological order. So we have a couple from the early church, a couple sort of medieval saints, and one modern saint. So for this first episode of More Obscure Female Saints, we're going to be talking about one of my favorites, Saint Macrena the Younger. Tell me more about Saint Macrena. I don't know so much about her, except for that she's a sister to the Cappadocians. Yeah, I think Saint Macrena, I think she should be really famous, but unfortunately has been eclipsed by her more famous brothers. So I like to say that Saint Macrina is from the second holiest family because she's the older sister to three canonized saints, Basil the Great or Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Peter of Sebaste. Her mother is also a saint, regarded as Saint, Saint Amelia. And then her grandparents all suffered under the persecution under Diocletian. So she's an early Christian Saint from the 4th century. And so the generation before her there was kind of a persecution under a particular emperor. So all of her grandparents were divested of their property. And her grandmother, Macrina the elder, was a martyr. And so she has a kind of very holy family. And then closely sort of in their family circle is also Gregory of Naziensis, who's also, as Dr. Murdoch was mentioning, is called the Cappadocians. So the Cappadocian fathers are this kind of group of 4th century theologians. So that's kind of her. Her. I don't know her biography. She's the older sister, but she has a very beautiful life. How do we know her life actually? Yeah, so her thinks. Thanks for reminding me. Her life's almost for. Skipped that part. So her life is this kind of short letter. It's about 30 pages long. It's written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa. And so it's written on the occasion of her death. So he has been away from home for a long time. And he has this kind of premonition. He's on his way home, and he's told that his sister is ill. And so the story actually kind of starts at her deathbed and him having the conversation with her and then kind of reflecting back on her life and who she was. Yeah. So let me think about how I can tell the story of Saint Macrina, because it's sort of backwards. So Macrina is this older sister, and she kind of ends up becoming the matriarch of the family because the father, Basil the Elder, dies. And in the letter where Gregory tells her life, he really emphasizes that she is the reason for the second holiest family, that she's the kind of source of sanctity for the family. And so she is the one who convinces her mother then, after her father has died, to kind of take on this monastic life. So they're from a very wealthy family. They have a very large estate. They own properties in multiple Roman provinces. And Macrina decides to turn their estate into a kind of, like, quasi monastic community. And her mother and her live as equals with the servants. So they kind of, you know, get rid of this kind of servant master distinction, and they all live together a life of common prayer. And it seems like it kind of was also, like, I don't know, a local, like, retreat center. Like, it's this local monastic community. And people would come out and stay with them and pray with them, take meals with them, and then leave again. And so Macrina's brother Basil, you know, would come home and say, there he was, the bishop of Caesarea. Or Gregory, who was the bishop of, would come home and sort of spend time in that family estate as a place of sort of prayer and rest. And I think this form of monasticism, it's very common in the early church, these women were often widowed. Young Roman women were married to men who were much older. They would be left with these estates, and they would often have this kind of second vocation in life where they would have a monastic community, and they would invite people kind of from the community into their homes. And I think it's kind of interesting for us today to think about that kind of monastic life, because we're more familiar maybe, with sort of St. Francis of Assisi, who gives everything away and, like, throws his clothes off and, you know, lives a life of poverty. Whereas sort of female monasticism in the early church was more about, like, inviting people into your home or into your state rather than divesting yourself of all their property. And I kind of think that that has interesting implications for how we think about maybe our lives as women. After our children are grown, then we're kind of in a similar situation in a way, where we have this home that we've built and we have this. Well, most of us don't have estates, but we have this kind of place that we've built, but we no longer have necessarily children to raise. And is there a way that we can kind of model that? It's a really interesting point. I wonder if it wasn't modeled on the early church. These, like, small communities working out of their own homes. Yeah. And I do think that it is continuous with the idea that in the early church, you know, they didn't necessarily have the money to build churches or places of meeting. And so you would have these, you know, Roman benefactors. Often women, as you know, in the Gospels, like people like Lydia, are mentioned in Acts as people who had estates and maybe no longer had children or husbands at home. And those become kind of of the places of Christian meeting or maybe even become these kind of domestic church locations. So I do think it grows out of that, especially as the idea of women monastics sort of going off to the convent. That's still very new in the early church. You know, women still are seen as very much in the domestic sphere. So you have kind of this cool domestic monasticism combo going on in someone like Macrina's life. And she actually was betrothed to be married, but her fiance died before the wedding. And so she took it as a kind of living witness to the resurrection, not to Mary, because she said, like, you know, he died a Christian, and so he still lives in heaven. Right, right. So he kind of. She kind of took that as a witness to his. His life and him still. Him still living. So was Macrina an example for her brothers or vice versa? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned that Gregory of Nyssa saw her as kind of like, she's responsible for everyone's sanctity. So I mentioned how she kind of led her mom along in this kind of monastic adventure. But she also had the kind of role of, like, I don't know, fraternal correction. She would often kind of knock her brothers down a few pegs. And so we know Basil of Caesarea. If you don't know Basil the Great, he's maybe not as big of a saint in the Western church, but in the Eastern church, he's sort of one of the three great holy hierarchs. One of the liturgies is named after Basil. So very, very Famous saint, very well known orator, good speaker, good preacher, very intelligent. And so Gregory tells us in his life of Macrina that, you know, Basil, he's the oldest son, he gets sent off to the fancy school and he comes home after being away at college learning rhetoric and feeling very proud of himself. And, you know, he's doing well in class. Everybody thinks he's amazing. And Macrina basically tells him, like, well, you know, you could learn to be a good speaker and be a good lawyer and be famous for a generation, or you could live a life of virtue and be famous forever, you know, And I just thought, I just think that's, it's funny if you think about like the actual brother sister scene that must have been. But then also that's actually what happened. Like, it's prophetic. It's actually very true. You know, if, if Basil, like his father, had been a good lawyer, you know, only people like me who read a lot of Patrick's history might know him. But because he took his sister's advice and took that sort of chastisement to heart of his pride that he is, you know, famous forever, that he did become this great, well known saint. And then there is another story that Gregory of Nyssa tells about her sort of doing the same thing to him, knocking him down a few pegs. So Gregory of Nyssa is a bishop and he's involved in doctrinal controversies, one over the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It's a big controversy during the time of the Cappadocians. And how to describe this? And there's councils being held. And throughout the course of this debate, Gregory ends up getting deposed from his diocese, you know, false accusations of money mismanagement or whatever. And so he slinks off back home to Macrina and, and whines about, you know, how bad this is and his fate. And he, you know, he's not being treated fairly or whatever. And she just looks at him and she says, like, why do we even think you're worthy to suffer these things for Christ and get such like, and get such glory? Like, our parents were a lot holier than you are and they were not thought worthy to experience what you're going through. So, like, you need to thank, like, thank the prayers of your parents and like, take sort of the honor that Christ has given you. And it's like, okay, wonderful witness. Yeah. And also like, it's because of the holiness of her life that, you know, she's, you know, she's practicing what she's preaching, right? She's Living a life of virtue, and she's, you know, giving up, really, this wealthy property to the use of other people. And so she kind of has that, like, authority to say, like, I'm living this kind of life, and God's giving you a gift and an invitation to live kind of a more austere, austere life for him. So I think that's a good lesson for us. And I think she's just such a beautiful model and witness, because so many of us women, like, we're often behind the scenes in our family. We're not necessarily the ones going out. You know, I'm the one on formed, not my husband. But, you know, we're not necessarily always the ones who are in the limelight. But Gregory just really does this beautiful glimpse into the domestic life and how fundamental she was to the flourishing of the holiness of her family. And you find this all over in saints lives. Like, often saints come in groups, and not everyone in the group is as famous as all the other members of the group, but it's that sort of, like, communal building in holiness. And. And I think she's also kind of a model of the domestic church. We talk about that a lot now, the domestic church. But in her case, it was kind of like a literal domestic church. It was kind of like a church at her house, but also that ability to manage the house, but with detachment. Because I think sometimes, at least I, as a mother, think, like, it would be nice if I didn't have to pay bills and if I just got to be in a monastery and someone else was worrying about where our car came from and what we were gonna eat, you know, and it could just be, like, detached, but she isn't like that. She isn't just someone who joins a convent and gives everything away. She still has to manage her property, and she has to manage it. You know, her mom isn't capable of doing it, and so she has to do it for the sake of everybody, of all the servants of all her family and everyone who comes to visit. And so Gregory tells a story about how she has to take on, like, doing the taxes. And she has to do taxes in three different provinces and the Roman government because she has all this property. And to just, like, think about the idea of, like, doing taxes with detachment. Like, I don't know if there is another, you know, sort of. I don't know if the Makrina patron state of doing taxes, but the idea of being able to. But she does seem to be a real model of practical wisdom. Yeah. And you know, I would recommend, if you're interested in Macrina's life, to read it. It's not very long and so I just actually brought the little volume along. Her life is in this book. It's called Lives of Roman Christian Women. And so it's got a number of other lesser known female saints, you know, if you want to check them out. But it's just kind of a little 30 page life. And it really is just the life of someone who died to themselves and lived for Christ more and more every day, who saw life as preparation for death. As Gregory tells us that she always had her eyes fixed on eternal things. You know, with how she dealt with the death of her father, with the death of her, her fiance, and with the death of actually Basil, her brother also dies before her. And then she herself just dies a very beautiful death. And I don't know if we sort of think about that march towards the grave as a slow process of, you know, inviting other people into our lives, dispersing our property in this detached way so that finally, you know, we're kind of free to live for God. And I think that's, that's just what she shows. So thank you so much for joining us for this little chat about Saint Macrina the Younger. I hope that you liked learning about her holy family and that she will be an intercessor for you. Saint Macrena, pray for us.
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