Feast day: July 19

St. Macrina the Younger

Virgin · c. 330–379

Patron of —

The eldest of ten children in a family of saints, who turned the family estate into a monastic community and formed the faith and minds of her brothers, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa.

Macrina the Younger was the eldest of the ten children of a remarkable Christian family of Cappadocia that produced several saints — among them her brothers St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Born about 330, she was named for her grandmother, St. Macrina the Elder, who had handed on the faith through times of persecution.

Betrothed in youth, she lost her intended husband to death before the marriage and resolved to remain unmarried, devoting herself wholly to God. After her father's death she became, in effect, the spiritual heart of the family: she persuaded her widowed mother to embrace a life of asceticism, and together they turned the family estate on the river Iris into a monastic community of consecrated women.

Her influence on her famous brothers was profound. It was Macrina who, when the brilliant young Basil returned from his studies puffed up with worldly success, recalled him to humility and to the service of God — helping to shape the man who would become one of the founders of Eastern monasticism.

She died in 379. Her brother Gregory of Nyssa, present at her deathbed, wrote a loving biography of her and a dialogue, 'On the Soul and the Resurrection,' in which he casts Macrina as his teacher, discoursing serenely on death and eternal life even as she lay dying — earning her the title 'the Christian Socrates.'

She shaped two of the greatest Fathers of the Church — her own brothers — and Gregory wrote a whole book recording her wise, serene death.

Image: AnonymousUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09508c.htm