Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

I am exceptionally heartened by the feast of Macrina of Caesarea this week. While I am grateful for her celebration every year I am even more so during Lectionary Year C, when her feast falls between two Sunday lessons that often become arduous in interpretation. Last Sunday we heard the Gospel that seems to pit Martha against Mary and this upcoming Sunday we will hear about the impending destruction of Sodom. Amidst this Macrina provides a saintly balm.

She is the sister of two major theologians, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, and her other brothers include bishops and judges. Part of her life became keeping the familial hearth and home for her mother, as she aged, and her brothers, as they went about serving the church in various ways. This involved a robust amount of work like unto what Martha is chastised for, but done in a way that constantly evoked from her brothers admiration for her contemplative and prayerful style. She was the unpublished support person in the midst of her family, but all of her brothers’ works are thought to include her content, critique, and inspiration. A saint of the behind the scene roles often belittled as like unto Martha but on which the lives of multiple other saints depended.

The other factor is the community she created alongside her mother in their family home. It is representative of the opposite of what Ezekiel describes as the sin of Sodom which is “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, while not providing aid to the poor and needy.” (Ezek 16:49b) She transformed what began as an aristocratic family estate of slave ownership into a convent where former aristocrats and formerly enslaved lived as equals amidst Christian discipleship, providing for the poor and needy while forgoing an excess of food, ease, and pride. 

Her life gives us a crucial lens to understand the lectionary lessons that surround it. That the vital work of housekeeping and hospitality that Martha took up is not an error, but that we must learn to go about such tasks amidst being in the presence of God. That the error of societies that fall into deep abomination is their failure to provide for those facing poverty, hunger, and need and that a Christian society is one that works to bring about equality of peoples and alleviation of suffering. So every three years, as we wrestle with these texts so often misunderstood and problematically preached, I am thankful for the feast of Macrina of Caesarea and her witness to the truth of these scripture texts. 

Pax,
Ben