Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Will the Real Macarius Please Glaze Up, February 10, 2004
Its too bad at times that history can cross over its facts. Macarius is one of its victims, maybe a mix of two different persons from around 385-430 AD, one an Egyptian desert father & the other a Syrian monk, therefore the term 'Pseudo' is always used before this collection of writings. Because of this mix up, it is not know if this set of writings were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD as a part of the heretical movement called `Messalians' which emphasized prayer rather than the sacraments, or if these writings are `Orthodox' & have greatly influenced eastern Christian spirituality, & later Pietism & Methodism.Within this spiritual masterpiece, Macarius writes about the `Brotherhood' with its duties & instructions of living, a sort of monastic manual. Then the writings focus of the primary need to follow Jesus Christ, under the control of the Holy Spirit, while grazing directly at God the Father by direct experience. This is done chiefly by prayer with 12 steps of progression to perfection that causes a 'Sober Intoxication' that affects first the single person, than the community at large. Paulist Press does another fine job creating an easy to read, well-made paperback that can fit nicely with the other books from the fantastic series `Classics of Western Spirituality'. Highly recommend.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Macarius Enthusiasm rooted in the Realism of the Desert , August 24, 2007
"I read Macarius and sang, wrote John Wesley ... There are countless others, alike in Eastern and in Western Christianity, who have experienced a similar joy through reading Macarius. The Homilies are written with a Warmth of feeling, an affectivity and enthusiasm, that are instantly attractive. ... his is an enthusiasm rooted in the realism and austerity of the desert." Bp. K. Ware, Preface
Author, Pseudo-Macarius:
Macarius of Egypt (301-391) who inspired Wesley, assuming he was reading in the Spiritual Homilies, is one of the most revered of the desert fathers, described as 'bearer of the Spirit.' The publication of seven new homilies in 1918 of Macarii Anecdota, attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt in the Harvard Theological Studies has revived the interest in the authorship of the Macarian writings, and the mystery surrounding them.
Pseudo-Macarius, according to some scholars, was a Messalian monk (condemned as heretical in 383). Recent notions support that the author of the Fifty Spiritual Homilies was a fifth-century Syrian monk 'whose conception of Christian spirituality was derived almost exclusively from Gregory of Nyssa.' He is one of the greatest of all the Eastern Church teachers in the quest for perfection. Although Gennadius recognizes a letter addressed to the novice monks, as the only writing of Macarius, there is no evidence to deny the authentic character of the fifty homilies ascribed to him, even if edited later by the Syriac Symeon the Logothete. While the seven so-called Opuscula ascetica edited under his name by Possinus in 1683, are later compilations from the homilies, made by the Syriac writer Symeon, who is probably identical with Metaphrastes (d. 950). Macarius likewise seems to have been the author of several minor writings, and a number of other letters and prayers including the Arrow Prayer (adopted by the Hesycasts as the Jesus Prayer). Those who read Macarius are instructed on the stages of divine ascent, holiness of the heart, progressive perfection, and the affective manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
Messalian movement:
Greek historian Sozomen identifies the first Syrian monks as boskoi or "grazers," homeless people who ceaselessly praised God as they wandered the mountain regions, consuming neither bread nor meat nor wine. During this period the nebulous group of Messalians (Syriac: People Who Pray) were classified as heretics with specific doctrines attributed to them by church authorities and councils. This activity was the result of an ecclesiastical process of defining, and homogenizing different forms of Christian life, marginalizing any disturbing factions or competing sects. But since the alleged Messalian practices were rooted in the Gospels rather than a Messalian tradition, what was supposed to be uniquely Messalian could be found all over the Byzantine empire wherever Christian faithful turned to the Gospels for devotion on ascetical forms of monasticism and mysticism. Epiphanius of Salamis included Messalians in the Panarion, his famous catalogue of heresies. Wandering, cohabitation of males and females, total renunciation of material possessions, unceasing prayer and irregular fasting, and argia (refusal to work and thus begging) were their basic sins. Messalians, were condemned in the council at Ephesus in 431. John of Damascus cited 18 sections from their anathematized manual, Asceticon, in his On Heresies, but these citations have been shown to be excerpted from the spiritual homilies of Pseudo-Macarius. We are warned, therefore, to be wary of the paradigms of heresy-hunters like Epiphanius, by Daniel Caner's Berkeley doctoral dissertation modifying our understanding of such patterns of ascetic behavior of those wandering, begging monks and ascetics .
Desert Traditions in p-Macarius:
The teachings of Macarius, in harmony of all Desert Father are identified by a mystical and spiritual typos of thought which has endeared them to Christian mystics of all ages, while in his anthropology and soteriology he follows Athanasius, and leads to Cyril. Certain characteristic passages of his homilies assert the Semi-Pelagian theology of free will, even after the fall of Adam. He reflects entire depravity of man, while introducing and postulating a centrality of kenosis as a way toward virtue, ascribing to Synergy, man's ability to attain an affinity to accept salvation.
Simon Tugwell, wrote on Macarius, in 'The Study of Spirituality', "What we learn from this is an extremely high ideal of perfection. At times Macarius seems to imply that, by grace we can attain to this ideal in this life, but what matters is that we should believe that God's commandments and promises are realistic, even if perfection comes only after this life."
Macarius Salvific Vision:
David Ford, of St. Tikhon Orthodox Seminary critically compares Macarius' vision of Theosis with Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection and finds that in significant areas "Wesley departed from the spirit and the specific teachings of Makarius." The desert father stress on the inward "witness of the Spirit" as assurance of salvation and perfection; his conception of entire sanctification and its attainment as the highest goal of the Christian life, 'rather than simply the seeking of God himself, and of participation in his life, which cannot be categorized.'
* Macarian perfection, concludes Ford, is not a specific, identifiable experience, but rather a yearning after God and progressive participation in the divine nature which in the end presents itself as deification. The purpose of the Lord's coming, according to Macarius, was to alter and create our souls anew, and make them, as it is written, "partakers of the divine nature," and to give into our soul a heavenly soul, that is the Spirit of the Godhead leading us to all virtue, that we might be enabled to live eternal life. (Homily 44.9)
* Macarius' reference to the gift of a 'heavenly soul' or the 'Spirit of Godhead,' according to Ford, is an affirmation of Ireneaus' concept of the Holy Spirit as originally a constitutive part of Adam's nature which was lost in the Fall. Before original sin there was original blessing, rediscovered recently by Matthew Fox. Since God became human in Christ, says Macarius, our original human nature can be restored and surpassed, our potential divine nature realized, in the dynamic process of theosis in which ...sin is rooted out and one recovers the original configuration of pure Adam. Humankind, however, thanks to the Spirit's power and to spiritual regeneration, not only measures up to the first Adam, but is made greater than he. Man is deified." (Homily XXVI)
* For Macarius, perfection is nothing less than the surpassing of human nature and becoming in some sense divine, through the work of grace required for the attainment of total sanctification through baptism, the Eucharist, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Macarius did not urge Christians to seek or claim a specific state or experience, of 'full salvation,' the unique experience and assurance of love made perfect in the soul, but just to seek simply God. Macarius, in the desert fathers tradition, did not teach any doctrine of 'salvific assurance,' warning repeatedly against ever making such a claim." Macarius' wisdom and humility in never claiming to have actually attained perfection or entire sanctification in his lifetime. Macarius as an excellent model of Christians stated in his preface to the Homilies: "Whatever he insists upon is essential, is durable, is necessary" Macarius references to ascetic life and to the notion of theosis or 'deification' is perhaps the most distinctively Alexandrian doctrine in the Macarian literature"
Macarian Homilies & Spirituality:
Fr. Golitzin of Marquette University, relates Macarius' Paradigm on luminous metamorphosis as "Many Lamps are Lightened from the One," saying, "...since I take the transfiguration of my title as inclusive for Macarius of all of these. To touch briefly on some of the points to follow, he perceives Christianity as the renewal of the human being. God in Christ has entered into our world and, in baptism, into the Christian's body and soul. The latter is thus, in potential, the royal throne of Christ, and to work toward the conscious fulfillment of that potential, that is, to a loving awareness and even perhaps vision of the indwelling glory of Christ in the Spirit, is the whole aim of Christian life on this side of the eschaton. Hope and longing for that encounter engage one in a total effort of moral and psychological reform, an effort which, once committed to, reveals in its turn the limitations of any purely human effort, and so the necessity of grace to overcome the force of sin rooted in the soul. Humility, thus, and constant prayer provide the necessary ground for that stress on the visitation of grace for which the Macariana are primarily known: the light-filled experience of the divine presence 'perceptibly and with complete assurance."
Fifty Spiritual Homilies:
This fine book, written twenty years ago, on Eastern Spirituality explores the mystical legacy, and theological foundation of the fourth-century edifying Homilies. The anonymous author of the writings (commonly referred to as Pseudo-Macarius, Macarius-Symeon) had a decisive influence on shaping of the Christian monastic and mystical tradition. The book offers a serious attempt to analyse the mode and extent of that influence. Fr. Maloney, S.J. who pioneered to take this project of providing a modern English translation, went beyond the exploration of the writings to the mission of the desert fathers, and the scope of their living Christian tradition. His elaborate and systematic coverage in the book introduction, he follows the...
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Macarius & Sanctity, March 17, 2009
In his diary entry for July 30, 1736, John Wesley wrote: "I read Macarius and sang." One assumes he sang because he found in this ancient "Father" a message of life and light, an explanation of the gracious spiritual transformation available to us sinners through the workings of a gracious God.
According to Macarius, "Whoever approaches God and truly desires to be a partner of Christ must approach with a view to this goal, namely to be changed and transformed from his former state and attitude and become a good and new person, harboring nothing of 'the old man' (2 Cor 7:17)" (p. 223; H.44). Unlike Wesley, however, few of us have the facility with Greek to read Macarius, so we're blessed to have a modern translation, Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, tr., ed. George A. Maloney, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, c. 1992). Modern scholars have almost given up trying to decide who exactly "Macarius" was (several candidates by that name have been located) or precisely when he lived. So we just call him "pseudo-Macarius" and know he lived sometime around 400 A.D.
Wesley's affinity for Macarius, becomes understandable when you discover the ancient saint's concern for the work of the Holy Spirit which imparts Grace and brings about entire sanctification, holiness of heart, in obedient believers. "Thus the soul is completely illumined," Macarius said, "with the unspeakable beauty of the glory of the light of the face of Christ and is perfectly made a participator of the Holy Spirit" (p. 38; H.1).
Still more: "the souls who seek the sanctification of the Spirit, which is a thing that lies beyond natural power, are completely bound with their whole love to the Lord" (p. 52; H.4). Unlike many of the Western Fathers, who at times over-stressed the role of good works, Eastern Orthodox theologians such as Macarius singularly attributed sanctification to the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, in his "Introduction," George Maloney writes: "Macarius is one of the first witnesses of what modern Christians would call the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He conceives this to be an ongoing process of surrendering to the indwelling guidance of the Holy Spirit to the degree that the individual cries out for the Spirit to heal the roots of sinfulness that lie deeply within the soul" (p. 19). The cleansing from sin, which comes about as one participates with the life of the Holy Spirit, Who enables one to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Being holy is not so much a matter of external performance as of inner attitude and commitment. "Perfection" is not flawless behavior but forthright surrender to God's perfect will.
Surrender is our free response to God's gracious invitation and working. Macarius continually insists that we retain freedom of the will throughout the sanctifying process. "You can trust me," said Macarius, "that grace did not prevent the Apostles, who were brought to perfection by grace, from doing whatever they wished to do, even if they preferred occasionally to do something that was not in keeping with grace. For, indeed, our human nature tends toward both good and evil and the opposing force acts by enticement, not by necessity. You possess free choice to move in the direction that you wish" (p. 178; H.27). Yet our free choice, our role in the process, never diminishes the fact that we are saved by grace. Wesley no doubt found Macarius' stance on prevenient grace congruent with his own. Maloney insists: "Macarius gives a solidly orthodox teaching on the interrelationships between God's unmerited grace and man's free will to cooperate with grace and thus actively work for his salvation. Macarius always insists that the Christian could not even begin to make a move toward the Good, toward God, without God's graceful help" (p. 15).
In the Preface to this volume, a contemporary Eastern Orthodox scholar, Kallistos Ware, summarizes Macarius' theology: "Christianity, as Macarius understands it, involves much more than assent to reasoned arguments or outer obedience to a moral code. It consists above all in the awakening of our spiritual senses, so that we attain a direct, palpable awareness of God's Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts" (p. xiv). Since it's a lived experience, a process whereby God fully saves sinners, the prescribed spiritual process takes a soul born into sin which needs to be (and may in fact be) delivered from sin's bondage. This involves a successful struggle with evil whereby the believer, the disciple, cooperates with the divine initiative, culminating, Ware says, in "the stage when sin is cast our from the heart by the Holy Spirit, working in cooperation with our human will. Cleansed from evil, the soul is then united to Christ the heavenly Bridegroom and is 'mixed' or 'mingled' with the divine Spirit, in this way attaining a state higher than that enjoyed by Adam before the fall" (p. xiii).
In Macarius's words: ". . . sin is uprooted and man receives again the first creation of the pure Adam. By the power of the Spirit and the spiritual regeneration, man not only comes to the measure of the first Adam, but also reaches a greater state than he possessed. For man is divinized" (p. 164; H.26). Westerners, Wesleyans included, rarely go so far as Macarius in claiming so much for the sin-cleansing work of God in man. Wesley himself refused to even allow the possibility of regaining "Adamic perfection" while here on earth. Yet Macarius shares with the Orthodox the conviction, espoused by first-rate thinkers such as St Irenaeus and St Athanasius, that "God became man that man might become God."
I've extensively cited the Preface and Introduction to this volume because they admirably sum up and evaluate Macarius' thought. The "fifty homilies" and "great sermon" are, as the titles suggest, simply collected sermons. Macarius treated various texts and developed appropriate themes. Thus any systematic understanding of his works is considerably helped by the scholarly interpretations found in this volume. The sermons themselves, however, are refreshing to read, delighting both devotional and theological appetites.
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by G.E.H. Palmer
by Benedicta Ward
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