St Macrina the younger (330-379) virgin and sister of Saints Basil and Gregory
St
Macrina the younger belonged to a family of saints associated with the
city of Caesarea in Cappadocia.
Much of what we know about her and her
family is from a treatise On the soul and resurrection, also known as the Macriniae, written by her younger brother, St Gregory of Nyssa.
Her grandmother, St Macrina
the Elder, had to flee with her husband during the Diocletian
persecutions (303-4).
Her parents, rhetorician Basil the Elder, and
Emmelia, her mother, are honoured as saints as are four of her brothers -
Basil of Caesarea (2 Jan), Gregory of Nyssa (9 Mar) and Peter of
Sebaste and the monk Naucratius. Macrina was the eldest child of the
family of ten.
Helping with the upbringing of the other children
From
her early years her parents taught her the Scriptures and the Psalms.
Betrothed to a steady young man who died, she did not want to marry, but
stayed with her mother Emmelia helping with the upbringing of the other
children.
Basil becomes a monk and bishop
When Basil had
finished his studies of rhetoric at Athens, he was rather full of
himself.
Macrina took him in hand and he soon gave up rhetoric and
became a monk and went on eventually to become bishop of Caesarea.
Macrina led the life of a consecrated virgin in the family home.
Gregory also
Gregory, five years younger than
she, married and taught rhetoric, then (after his wife either died or
became a nun) he became a monk and was appointed bishop of Nyssa in 371.
A religious community
When Macrina was about
forty, her father died. She and her mother joined in setting up a
religious community near Pontus, on the banks of the River Iris
(northern Turkey). Macrina later became the leader of the community and
its spiritual director.
Death and influence
Basil died in 379. Gregory,
in grief for his brother, went to visit his sister. He had not seen her
for eight years and now she was almost on her death bed.
She consoled
Gregory in his grief with thoughts of the resurrection, quoting John
12:24: "Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."
God's
abundance, she adds, makes many additions.
Macrina was so poor when she
died that Gregory had to provide a shroud in which to bury her.